Hillary Jordan - When She Woke

Part of it, she wouldn’t have dared share. Though she hadn’t seen Aidan Dale in over two months, he was still an insistent presence in her thoughts. As she sewed pearls onto veils and rosettes onto bodices, she remembered his many kindnesses to her family, the fervency of his prayers for her father, the comforting warmth of his hand on her shoulder. Again and again, she relived the moment when she’d looked into his eyes and seen her own feelings reflected there, or thought she had. Two things kept her from dismissing it as a wishful figment: He hadn’t come back to the hospital after that day. And Alyssa Dale had.

She’d paid them a visit the very next morning. Hannah and Becca were alone with their father; their mother was home resting. The previous day’s excitement and the long, tense buildup to it had left them all spent. Hannah was catnapping in the chair beside her father’s bed. She was distantly aware of a murmured conversation taking place between Becca and another woman, but that wasn’t what drew her up out of sleep. Rather, it was the prickling sense of being watched. She opened her eyes to find Alyssa Dale standing at the foot of the bed, exactly where Aidan had stood, staring down at her. Disconcerted, Hannah looked around the room, but Becca wasn’t there.

“Your sister had a call, and she went outside to take it,” Alyssa said softly. “She didn’t want to wake your father.”

“Oh,” Hannah said. She felt slow and stupid. She knew she ought to get up and greet her visitor, but Alyssa’s frank, assessing gaze seemed to pin her to the chair. In public Alyssa Dale was the quintessential minister’s wife: demure and gracious, pretty without being beautiful enough to cause resentment, dignified without being aloof. Now, for the first time, Hannah perceived the intelligence that inhabited the other woman’s mild hazel eyes. Had she missed it because she hadn’t expected to see it there, or because Alyssa usually kept it hidden?

“Congratulations on your father’s good news. You must be very relieved.”

“We are, thank you.” Hannah pushed herself to her feet, stretched out her hand. “I’m Hannah.”

Alyssa nodded but didn’t extend her own. “Yes, my husband has mentioned you. In his prayers.”

Hannah let her hand fall to her side. “It’s kind of you to have come.”

“Aidan told me the Lord worked a miracle yesterday. I wanted to see it for myself.”

Alyssa’s eyes didn’t leave Hannah’s. The scrutiny made her want to squirm. “Well,” Hannah said, “we’re all incredibly grateful for his concern.”

“The Lord’s or my husband’s? People do tend to confuse the two.” Alyssa’s tone was gently acerbic. “Of course, that’s only because they haven’t been around him before he’s had his morning coffee.”

Hannah said nothing, nonplussed by the image that popped into her mind of Aidan in his pajamas, his hair disheveled, his eyes heavy-lidded. Alyssa watched her with a knowing expression that held a hint of warning, and Hannah’s cheeks burned as it occurred to her just how many women must have fancied themselves in love with Aidan Dale over the years. She must be one of dozens, hundreds even, who’d fantasized about him. Wished him unmarried to this astute, composed woman.

“Hannah,” Becca said in a loud whisper. She stood in the doorway, holding up her port. “Mama wants to talk to you.”

Hannah suppressed a sigh of relief. “Please excuse me, Mrs. Dale.”

“No, I should be going,” Alyssa said. “We’re off to Mexico tonight, and South America and California after that, and I’m still not completely packed.”

“A long trip, then,” Hannah said.

“Three weeks. Long enough.” She didn’t need to add, For him to forget you.

For a while, it seemed he had. Summer gave way to fall, and the temperature finally dropped down into the double digits, and as the first holos of cavorting skeletons and witches on broomsticks began to appear on her neighbors’ front lawns, Hannah’s memories of Aidan started to lose their definition, taking on the hazy quality of images seen through tulle. If he’d ever had feelings for her—and she was becoming doubtful that he had—he must have since come to his senses, as she herself needed to do. Even to think of being with him, a married man, a man of God, was a grave sin. And so in Bible study, she made a point of sitting next to Will, a shy young man who’d been casting yearning looks her way for weeks, and when he finally got up the courage to ask her out, she accepted.

She’d had two serious boyfriends, one her senior year of high school and the other in her early twenties. They were nice young men, and she’d enjoyed their company and attention, but neither of them had stirred anything deeper in her than affection and a sporadic sexual curiosity she had no intention of exploring, not with them. That wasn’t enough. They weren’t enough.

Nor, she soon realized, was Will, though by every rational measure he ought to have been. He was a veterinarian, sweet, shy, funny in a self-deprecating way. They started dating in mid-October, and by mid-November, when the oak leaves began to drift to the ground in spiky brown curls, she knew that Will was falling along with them, and that she was not. “Please, Hannah, give him a chance,” her mother urged, and so she continued to see him. He became ardent, spoke of love, hinted at marriage. She stilled his roving hands and deflected his near-proposals. Finally, when his frustration turned to anger, she cut him loose, bleeding and disoriented, her own heart perfectly intact.

Aidan wouldn’t leave it intact, she’d known that from the first. Long before they became lovers, she could foresee that there would be an after, and that it would lay waste to them both.

Still. She hadn’t envisioned this: herself a Red, an outcast, while Aidan went on with his life and his ministry, moved with Alyssa to Washington to take up his new post as secretary of faith, continued to inspire millions by his words and example. Hannah knew he thought of her, missed her, grieved as she did for their lost child. Blamed himself and tormented himself with what-ifs. Probably hated himself for not coming forward.

Still.

She watched the fly buzz busily around the room. When it landed on the floor beside her, she killed it with a vicious smack of her hand.

I AM A RED NOW.

It was her first thought of the day, every day, surfacing after a few seconds of fogged, blessed ignorance and sweeping through her like a wave, breaking in her breast with a soundless roar. Hard on its heels came the second wave, crashing into the wreckage left by the first: He is gone. The first subsided eventually, settling into a dull ache, but the second assailed her with relentless fury, rolling in every ten, twenty minutes, gone, gone, gone, swamping her with fresh grief. The sense of loss never diminished. If anything, it seemed to grow more raw as the day of her release neared. She wondered how her heart could hold so much pain and still continue its measured, insistent thumping.

If only he were here, I could go to him. The notion was absurd, a puerile fantasy, and though she dismissed it at once, its ghost lingered, flitting about at the edges of her thoughts and stirring up memories of the first time she’d gone to him, at the hotel in San Antonio. With them came the inevitable twinge of desire. Even now, after all that had happened, she still felt it.

It had started with a call, a couple of weeks before Christmas. The despondency that had weighed on her like a lead apron during the last weeks with Will had lifted, leaving her more determined than ever not to settle for anything less than a bone-deep love. She’d felt it once, or the beginnings of it; she could and would feel it again. Aidan Dale, she swept forcibly from her mind. She begged God’s forgiveness for having desired him and swore to Him and herself that she’d never be so weak again.