Chapter Twenty-One
Selena walked from Evan’s truck to the house alone after asking him not to get out and take her to the door. She’d used the excuses that it was cold and windy and he needed to get home so he could rest before going to work. But they both knew the real reason.
He’d said he loved her.
He couldn’t love her. She couldn’t afford to love him back.
As she put the key into the lock, the front door suddenly opened, startling the breath out of her.
“Mom,” she said. “What are you doing up at” — she checked her watch — “five fifteen in the morning?”
Her mom went toward the living room, where the lamp and television were both on. “I passed out as soon as I got home. Slept from seven thirty last night until four and couldn’t go back to sleep. Then I realized you weren’t home yet.”
“I’m home now. Nothing to worry about,” Selena said irritably.
“Considering you were out all night with a man who seems to care a lot about you, I’d expect you to be more chipper.”
“Yeah, well, the unexpected sucks.” Selena made a beeline for her bedroom.
Unfortunately, closing the door didn’t keep her pesky mother out.
“We need to talk,” her mom said after following her in.
“No, we really don’t.” Selena wanted to sleep and ignore everything that was swimming around in her head. She crawled in under her blankets, fully dressed, sitting against the headboard.
“What is your problem, Selena? Evan seems like a good man. Handsome, smart, brave. Willing to take care of you and your baby. And yet you’re pulling your usual stunt.”
“Oh, I am?” Selena didn’t even fake interest, keeping her voice monotone.
“Looks like it to me. You’re running away.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Yet.” She’d definitely considered it though. The more time she and Evan spent together, the more she thought it would be safer to get away now. Before she cared too much. Before his job caught up with him.
Her mom, wearing mauve silk pajamas, crept onto the other side of her bed and stretched out on top of the covers. “If I thought you didn’t care about him, I’d back off. But I think you do. Am I right?”
Selena closed her eyes and wondered when her mom had started giving half a crap about what she did or who she cared for. “I don’t suppose you’d just let me go to sleep, would you?”
“Selena! You’re going to be a mother in a few months. You need to figure out how you’re going to handle that.”
“I’m going to have the baby, Mom. Going to do what everyone else does … try to figure out how to raise a child.”
“You could have help.”
“Evan?” Selena turned to look at her mom as if she’d grown a horn on the top of her head. “I should marry him so I can have help with the baby?”
“You should marry him because you two make a good couple and I think you’re both half in love already.”
“It doesn’t matter how I feel about him. Maybe I do love him. I don’t know. But it doesn’t make a difference.”
“Why not?”
“Do you understand what he does for a living?”
“Of course I do. You know very well I married a man with a blue-collar job. One that could kill him.”
“And look where that got you.” Selena squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to think about her dad’s death, not to cry. Not now.
“It got me two amazing children. It got me years of happiness and a good marriage with a wonderful man.”
“It got you years of loneliness and grief.”
Notably, she didn’t argue with that. “So you think that, because Evan is a firefighter, he’ll die on the job.”
“It’s a distinct possibility,” Selena said, leaning forward. “He goes into burning buildings, Mom. So much could go wrong.”
Her mom surprised her by nodding empathetically. “Lots of what-ifs to consider.”
“Yes, exactly. And to put a child in that situation, where he or she could lose a father… How can I knowingly do that?”
“You mean like I did,” her mother said quietly. “Is that something you’ve held against me all these years?”
Selena thought about it for a minute. “No, actually. I haven’t. The only thing I’ve held against you is the way you stopped being part of our family as soon as he died.”
“We were all affected so much by your dad’s death,” her mom said, sorrow edging her voice. “You, in particular. You two were so close. You always were a daddy’s girl.”
“It was devastating,” Selena said matter-of-factly. “But just as bad was what happened to you, to us, afterward. What if I’m the same way, Mom? What if I married Evan, something happened to him, and then I shut down too?”
She dared a glance at her mother in the light of dawn and saw her swallow hard, saw her emotion, her pain. Instead of the usual unemotional mask, the expression remained there, drawing her features downward. Tugging at Selena against her will.
“You won’t, Selena.” Her voice was lower, quiet, yet firm with conviction.
“How can you know that?” Selena asked.
Her mom sat up in the bed, pulling a throw pillow to her and hugging it. “What I’m about to say I’ve never told anyone besides my therapist. It’s something I don’t like to think about and certainly don’t like to say out loud.”
Selena’s internal alarm went off. She and her mom didn’t have serious talks.
“Being married to your father, I lived in fear from the time he graduated from the academy. At first I didn’t talk about it much. Figured it was my problem. Didn’t need to burden him with my fears. Then as time went on, I started to be a little more open.”
“I’m sure he knew you were scared for him anyway,” Selena said.
“Maybe. But I think they have to approach their jobs very differently. They don’t fear them. They can’t. They believe they can handle just about anything that’s thrown at them. If they went out in the field scared of what might happen, they’d mess up and maybe die.”
Selena considered what she said, turned it over in her mind, and finally nodded. “Maybe.”
“Just before your dad’s last assignment, my fear skyrocketed. One of his colleagues had a close call. I no longer remember the details. I just know it scared the daylights out of me.”
Selena thought about the firefighters on the mural. They weren’t even colleagues of Evan’s, but thinking about the men who had died had heightened her fear for Evan.
“The day before he left, I went a little crazy. I was so afraid for him.”
“Did you have a premonition or something?”
Her mother shook her head. “Nothing as concrete as that. Just cold, stark fear. It’d gotten bad enough that I was panicky. And I expressed my fears to your father.”
Her mom’s voice cracked and tears filled her eyes.
“He tried to comfort me and I wouldn’t have any of it. I kept going, building on my fears, making them worse. I started listing all the ways things that could go wrong. Mind you, I didn’t know what kind of assignment he was going on, but that didn’t matter. My imagination was out of control.”
“I can understand that,” Selena said honestly.
“The next day he died.”
A lump the size of Texas lodged in Selena’s throat and she couldn’t say a word.
“And I’ve wondered…” Her mom hesitated, sucking in a shaky breath. “I’ve thought maybe it was because I opened his mind to doubt. I went through scene after scene of ways someone could hurt him. What if that was enough to put the slightest fear, doubt into him? What if I was partly to blame for his state of mind and that’s what got him killed?”
Tears fell freely down Selena’s cheeks and she reached out to hold her mother’s hand. “It wasn’t your fault, Mom.”
“To this day, I don’t know. God knows I’ve spent enough on counseling to sort through it, but how can I ever believe I was blameless? And the guilt—” Her mom’s voice cracked again. “I’m so sorry, Selena. When he died, I could hardly face you and your brother. I felt so responsible. Like every ounce of your pain was my fault. I shut down. It took me years to realize my mistake, to understand what it had done to our family, but by that time, I didn’t know how to get you back. How to repair the damage.”
For several seconds, maybe minutes, Selena couldn’t say anything. Her mother’s pain was so evident, something she hadn’t seen or understood for all these years. Sure, she knew her dad’s death had cut her mom to the quick, just like the rest of them, but…
She couldn’t imagine living with the guilt, justified or not.
Selena squeezed her mother’s hand. “You weren’t responsible for his death, Mom. They’re trained to handle the job, regardless of how scared their family may be.”
Her mom sniffed indelicately. “Maybe. But that doesn’t make me feel any better. It hasn’t, all the hundreds of times I’ve told myself that over the years.”
“Forgive me for being dense, but this is supposed to convince me to marry a firefighter … how?” The words came out accompanied by a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “Have you lost your mind?”
“I lost my mind years ago, honey.” They both smiled at that. “No. My point, somewhere in that twisted story, is that you can’t let your fear rule you. Can’t let it get out of control. It’s normal to feel scared when someone you love is in a dangerous situation, but you absolutely cannot let the what-ifs run your life. Respect the fear but never let it control you.”
Selena stared at her for several seconds. “And how do you do that?”
“I imagine a support network would help. There was a group of FBI wives who got together frequently, and I’m sure a big part of it was to connect with others who went through the same emotions.”
“I don’t remember you going to that.”
“I never did. Stupidly, they weren’t in my social circle, so I didn’t think there was any point.”
If that wasn’t vintage Clara…
“I regret that. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed what happened to your father, but then I would’ve had a support system to help me through it. To help me help you through it.” She reached out and ruffled Selena’s windblown, bed-messed hair. “That’s something I truly regret.”
Selena didn’t know what to say to that. They’d had their differences for as long as she could remember, and suddenly she was seeing her mom in a different light. One with shadows and nuances she’d never imagined. “I wish you would’ve talked to me sooner. No matter how hard it would’ve been. You never gave me the chance to understand.”
Her mom did something then that shook her to the core — she broke down into noisy, indelicate sobs, covering her face with her hands but unable to drown out the sounds of sorrow and regret.
“I’m so sorry,” her mom said when she could finally manage to speak.
“Shh. You were doing the best you could in really horrible circumstances.” Selena found she meant the words. Years of anger melted away as she grasped what her mother had been trying to handle by herself.
Her mom nodded as they wrapped their arms around each other. They stayed like that for several minutes, neither of them speaking. Her mom’s crying gradually slowed.
“So. About Evan … that’s all you’ve got for me? Support groups?” Selena wished for a magic answer. A way to make it possible for her to find happiness.
“I’ve got a little hindsight, as well,” Clara said, straightening and smiling sadly. “It helps to understand that this is who these men are. Their careers are as much a part of them as their hair color and their fundamental beliefs.”
“Probably true.”
“By focusing on the fear, I think we lose sight of that. Become less supportive of them. Maybe even become inclined to try to change them or convince them to do something else.”
“You’re talking about Tom now, right?” Selena said, missing her brother so much at the mention of him that her chest ached. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to talk him into doing something besides the military.”
Her mom nodded. “If he did, it would end up being something just as dangerous, I imagine. Police. Fire department. FBI. You know your brother.”
Selena had never been able to think that much about it, but now that she did, she realized her mother was right. “So that’s why you never show your fear about his military career.”
“Oh, I fear for his life every single day. No mother wants her son to go off to war.”
“I couldn’t understand why you wanted to throw a party for him.”
“Going back into action was important to him. It was either throw a party or go a little more insane from the fear.”
Selena nodded slowly. “Why couldn’t you tell me this at the time?”
“You weren’t exactly listening to me if you’ll recall.”
“Maybe.” Selena crossed her arms stubbornly. “It doesn’t make me feel any better about Tom being over there. Have you heard from him lately?”
“He called a lot at first. Less frequently now. I’m sure he’s in the middle of something.”
Something. That’s what Selena hated. The something could likely get him killed.
“I’m glad we talked,” she said. “I think I understand what you’re trying to tell me but…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. It terrifies me.”
“You’ve got time. The baby isn’t due for several months. It won’t be easy, but you’re a strong woman, Selena.”
Her mom had never paid her such a compliment, and she had to admit she reveled in it. “Thanks, Mom. I don’t feel strong.”
“I hate to see you let love pass you by, honey. Please tell me you’ll try.”
Selena thought about the man she did, in fact, love, about how much she wished their future would work out. She nodded. “I will. I’ll try.”