The Return of Cord Navarro

Chapter 14

The helicopter’s whirling blades kicked up dust and debris as it took off with a full load consisting of the pilot, Dale, and the four poachers, Chuck in handcuffs. Dale had been concerned about Cord, but he’d assured the sheriff that he didn’t have so much as a headache and seeing a doctor could wait. As the screaming sound eased, Shannon faced the fact that she, Matt, and Cord would be alone until it returned.

If only she and Matt had gone down first; that way she wouldn’t have to speak to Cord, could put off telling him that he’d destroyed something inside her because, as too many times before, he’d hidden behind silence.

Matt hadn’t seemed to mind. Had he been too distracted to notice how little his father said to him, or did he somehow know something she didn’t?

No, that couldn’t be.

Cord had known the poachers were up there, but he hadn’t told her because he believed she couldn’t handle it.

Despite everything she’d been through in life, he didn’t believe she was strong enough-either that, or communicating with her hadn’t been that important to him. She hadn’t wanted to be spared; she would never want that.

Over and over again she’d told Matt how much she loved him, held him until he grew restless and embarrassed because others were watching. When he and his father talked, it had been about the fight with Chuck, how fast the helicopter could travel and how much weight it could carry, tracking techniques. Cord hadn’t said a word about a father’s fears, his love for his son.

That’s all she wanted, for Cord to tell Matt how much he loved him. If he could at least do that…

And if he couldn’t…

Matt was asleep. It took her several seconds to realize her son was no longer simply resting by leaning against a rock. Because he’d slid over to one side and was slowly sinking to the ground, she helped him the rest of the way. Only then did she acknowledge that Cord was watching her.

Although she wanted to stay with Matt, she walked away from him, left him to his peace. “I don’t know what those men are going to be charged with,” she said when she’d gotten as close to Cord as she dared, not that the words mattered. “Whatever it is, we will probably have to testify. Of course, if you’re off on another rescue…” She felt a sharp pain in her left forearm and realized she’d been gripping it with all the strength in her.

“I’m proud of you,” he said.

“You are? For keeping up with you?”

“For not falling apart.”

“Apart? I-”

“I know. You aren’t a woman who caves in. I shouldn’t have tried to protect you the way I did.”

“No,” she said, surprised at his admission. “You shouldn’t have.”

“But you wanted me to.”

“What?”

“Don’t deny it, Shannon. The things you said, the look in your eyes, I knew.”

She had; she couldn’t lie to him about that. “But for you to have to weather what you did alone, why?”

“Because looking for Matt is the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”

“No, Cord.” Her arms dropped by her side. She couldn’t make them move. Couldn’t let him go this easily, couldn’t stop the words inside her. “Not the hardest.”

Although he stared at her without blinking for the better part of a minute, he said nothing. Nothing. “Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”

He took a long, deep breath. “Summer.”

Now it was her turn to stare. Cord looked weary and she wondered if he might collapse, but he simply widened his stance and went on meeting her gaze. “I remember what you were like then,” he said softly.

She didn’t want this conversation. Not now and maybe not ever. “Thank God, things ended the way they did for Matt,” she blurted. “I think he’s going to look back at it with a sense of pride. I couldn’t have stood it if…if-” Stop babbling.

“If you’d lost Matt, too.”

“Yes. Summer…”

“What about her?”

“She-I never got to hold her, Cord, not really.”

Despite the turmoil of her thoughts, she was aware that he’d taken a few steps toward her. “Finally.” He breathed the word.

“Finally, what?”

“We’re going to talk about our daughter.”

After everything she’d been through, she didn’t know how she could handle this, but before she could escape, he continued. “We should have said more before. So much more.”

When? What was he talking about? She tried to think how to ask the question, but he was so close, and despite her exhaustion, she wanted him, wild and unthinking.

Oh, yes, unthinking. Unwise.

“I felt Summer’s spirit all the time we were following Matt,” he said. “I’d like you to know that.”

Summer is in the wilderness with Gray Cloud. That’s what he had said years ago when she desperately needed him to mourn with her. “I’m glad you did.”

“Shannon, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Shut me out.”

Stop this conversation, now! Before it’s too late. “That’s how you felt? Shut out?”

“Yes.”

He scared her, or maybe it was herself she was afraid of. “I didn’t know. You never told me.”

“Neither of us told the other what we should have.”

His words rocked her, forced her beyond herself. Had she failed him as badly as he’d failed her? “Maybe…maybe we didn’t. There weren’t any guidelines, no one telling us how to say goodbye to our baby daughter.”

“Tell me now. What was it like for you?”

He was wounded and weak, maybe as tired as Matt. If she told him that, maybe she could back away from what stirred and simmered between them, but if she did… “Do you remember what the doctors said, that she didn’t have a chance? That we were lucky she lived such a short time.”

“I remember.”

“They were right. She would have never really known what it was like to be alive. She’d…she’d never ride a horse or go hiking with you or trail after her big brother.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Cord, do you remember what you said to the doctors the day she was born?”

Instead of answering, he simply looked at her until she felt the words boil out of her. “You said that some things weren’t meant to be.”

“Sometimes they aren’t.”

She wanted to lash out at him. If she could feel anger, maybe saying this would be easier. But he’d given her back Matt, and they’d made love last night and she could never hate him. “I carried her inside me, Cord. Before we knew what was wrong with her, I’d lie there at night feeling her move. I had so many dreams-so much…I felt her being born. Me. Not you.”

“I gave her a name.”

She felt bombarded and off balance. Felt like crying all over again. “I…yes. You did. A beautiful name. And you took that picture of her, the one you carry. Why didn’t you show it to me before?”

“Shannon, you were locked up inside yourself. I didn’t know how to reach you, didn’t even know how to begin. I was afraid that no matter what I did or said, it would be the wrong thing.”

Because we were so young? Because neither of us knew how to communicate, not just you? She started to touch him, then pulled back, afraid of the risk.

“I held you when she died,” he told her in a tone that sounded as hollow as the wind racing across a barren plain. “It was the only thing I could think to do.”

“I cried. You didn’t.”

“I didn’t need to.”

“Didn’t need…”

“I tried to tell you that. Tried and failed. I know that now. Through Gray Cloud, I found peace, something I was unable to give you. I wish it could have been different, that your grief hadn’t scared me.”

“Scared? Peace?”

“Shannon, I went into the woods right after she died because I needed answers, a way to deal with what had happened. I asked Gray Cloud to take care of our daughter. He told me she was in the air, the earth, water. She would always be in those places, always be safe and happy.”

It hurt to speak. “You told me Summer was with him and I shouldn’t be sad. Cord, I didn’t have your belief in Gray Cloud and his world. I needed more than words about her being with her great-grandfather. I needed you.”

He looked as if she’d slapped him. Still, he didn’t lean away. “I had-”

“I know. You had to work so you could pay the bills. I understand that much better now than I did then. But-”

“But I shouldn’t have let it take me away from you. I wanted to talk to you, wanted to help you start talking, but I was afraid that whatever I said, it would be the wrong thing.”

“You did?”

“I knew how you felt about my being gone. I thought I knew how much you hurt. I didn’t want us to dwell on that. I thought-I wanted to avoid causing you any more pain. Only, that was the wrong thing to do. I know that now.”

“Cord, I just saw you with that man. You aren’t afraid of anything.”

“Back then I was afraid of your emotions, your grief. My inability to give you the sense of peace I’d found.” He continued slowly, his voice rough. “I can’t be anything except who I am. I was shaped, to a large extent, by my grandfather.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? Really?”

Not sure what he wanted from her, she waited.

“Gray Cloud came to the hospital just before my mother died. He found me in an empty room where I’d gone to hide and told me I was going to live with him. Then he took me to see my mother. She opened her eyes and looked at him and he looked back, but they didn’t say anything. After she died, he held me, but he didn’t say a word. I don’t think he ever spoke her name again.”

“Why… not?”

“It was too hard for him. I knew that, in my heart. He’d be watching me and I’d see something in his eyes that told me he was thinking of her. Mourning lost years. He’d touch me or we’d go off into the mountains together and I’d know that was his way of being close to her. And of bringing us together without having to talk about it.”

As she stood listening to the breeze and unseen birds with Cord beside her but not touching, she felt exhaustion seep into her very being. He’d told her something important, something that might, finally, allow her to understand him. But searching for and finding their son had stripped away her ability to think. To feel.

“Cord, we need to get off this mountain. Maybe then…”

He gazed at her for long seconds, then let his attention shift to Matt’s huddled form. Looking at him, she was once again filled with an urgent need to put distance between them. She’d nearly died when their marriage collapsed around her; she couldn’t handle any more emotion. Couldn’t handle anything.

Without telling Cord what she was doing, she walked over to where he and Chuck had fought. She wasn’t sure whether she could see his blood or not; it didn’t matter. What did was facing the fact that Cord had risked his life and now she felt nothing, absolutely nothing. Their marriage had ended seven years ago. It had to remain buried.

When a full minute passed without Cord having said or done anything, she turned back around. He wasn’t where she’d left him. Where-

A sound so light she couldn’t be sure she’d heard it pulled her attention toward Matt. Cord was standing over him, looking so much a part of his surroundings that she wasn’t sure whether he was real. He stared down at his son.

She heard the sound again, a human being in pain. Matt? No. Matt was dead to the world.

Cord. The sound came from him.

She began to tremble but forced herself to remain a silent observer. Slowly, shoulders heaving, he lifted a band to his face and pressed it against his forehead. Then he dropped to his knees, his body hunched over his son’s sleeping form.

Grabbing blindly for something to hold on to, she snagged her palm on a branch but ignored the pain. Cord’s entire body shook, deep spasms wrenched from his soul. She felt heat in her eyes and had no desire to try to stem her own emotion.

Cord, crying for his son.

Alone.

As she closed the distance between them, her left foot brushed against a rotting branch. She kicked it aside, blinked to clear her vision, and kept going. Then when she was only a few inches from him, she stopped. Maybe he didn’t want to share this moment with anyone. If she’d been the one in his place, she’d want and need privacy.

But the two of them already shared the child responsible for his tears.

“Cord?” Feeling as if she’d never touched him before, she laid her right hand along the side of his neck. “He’s all right.”

Silence. Only this one she understood as clearly as she understood the beating of her own heart.

“You found him. No one-no one but you could have done that. He’s alive. Thank God, he’s alive.”

Cord’s body quieted a little. Still, his every breath took incredible effort. Acting instinctively, she leaned forward and kissed the top of his head. He placed a hand on Matt’s cheek; his fingers began a restless, aimless movement over smooth young flesh.

“He’s fine, safe.”

Cord still did nothing to acknowledge her presence. Or rather, if she hadn’t known him-known him in a way she hadn’t comprehended until this moment-she wouldn’t have been aware of the change in him. But although he continued to struggle to control the emotion that had him in its grip, she felt him begin to relax. To find peace within himself.

“Why didn’t you tell me how scared you were?”

“Scared? It wasn’t…that.”

No. It wasn’t. He’d been terrified when he heard the rifle and undoubtedly uneasy from the moment he knew who shared Copper Mountain with them. But his tears had been born of emotion far deeper than fear-love for his son.

“I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

She felt the effort it took for him to push himself to his feet, half saw, half felt him turn toward her, and wondered if he cared that she could see his tears. As soon as he touched her cheek, the question evaporated.

“There’s nothing else in life like it.” His unsteady fingers slid under her chin, found the side of her neck and covered the vein there. “No feeling in the world like what we feel for our children, is there?”

“No, Cord. There isn’t.”

“Love. There aren’t any words.”

Cord’s love for Matt. She’d just seen that in all its beautiful intensity. “No. There aren’t. Sometimes it becomes so powerful there’s nothing to do but cry.”

He nodded. “I love Summer. As much as you do.”

“I know that now.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I’d been able to convey everything I felt and thought when our marriage depended on it.”

“I wish you had, too. No.” Her body became restless; she didn’t know what to do with herself. “That’s a horrible thing for me to say. What you felt for her was there all the time, but I’d wrapped myself into a tight ball and wouldn’t let anything touch me, most of all you. If I’d understood what you were saying when you told me you’d entrusted her to Gray Cloud, if I hadn’t tied myself up in knots -”

“Don’t.”

She spoke with her eyes closed, tracing each word as it flowed from her heart. “Everyone – man, beasts, trees, birds, earth, all share the same breath.” She opened her eyes. “You said that to me earlier today. You tried to tell me the same thing years ago. I heard you today. I should have the first time.”

“I gave you Gray Cloud’s words, not mine, because I didn’t know how to tell you what was in my heart. Shannon?” When he paused, she sensed his struggle and waited him out. “I don’t ever want to do that to you again. I didn’t want to break down. I fought it because-stupid!-I thought I had to keep that to myself.”

“You didn’t.”

“No, I don’t,” he whispered. His eyes darkened, asked her to come into the depths with him. “Shannon, Matt and I don’t always need words.”

“I understand. Now.”

“But he deserves to hear-to see how precious he is to me. Just as I want you to.”

Cord. “You…”

He brushed her hair back from her temple. “You have beautiful eyes. Green like the forest. I fell back in love with you during our search. Or maybe I finally realized I’d never stopped loving you.”

“Oh, Cord.”

“I want you to know that, tonight, tomorrow, for the rest of our lives.”

“The rest-”

His forefinger, steady now, rested on the pulse at the side of her throat. “I love you.”

He was the one with the beautiful eyes, dark like a midnight forest. “And…and I love you.” Her heart sang the words. She stood on tiptoe, offering her mouth, her heart, to the only man she’d ever loved.