Chapter Twelve
“So, Tara?” Shay said, drawing her aside in Jilly’s bridal shop after they’d finished trying on their bridesmaids’ gowns, “you’re quiet. What’s going on? Are you having flashbacks because of that bear run-in?”
Tara sat down in the white satin chair near the wall with Shay. Kira was fussing over Dair’s gown. Dair was self-conscious over her amputated lower leg, that the outline showed when she moved in the dress. “Since Harper had to kill that grizzly, he’s been waking up every night from a nightmare.”
“I’m not surprised,” Shay said, nodding. “That had to scare the hell out of both of you, a bear suddenly charging you like that.”
Snorting softly, Tara smoothed the dark blue wool fabric across her thigh. “Yes, it did.”
“Are you both having PTSD reactions to it?”
“Yes.” Giving her a sorrowful look, she said, “You know how it is. A sight, a sound, a smell, a crisis or superstress will trigger us in a heartbeat. And then we shake for days, even weeks afterward.”
Reaching out, Shay placed her hand on Tara’s white, long-sleeved silk blouse. “I know.”
“Do you and Reese have that happen, too?”
Shay rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes. For Reese, it’s the smell of gasoline. He was a company commander in Afghanistan, had a hundred and twenty Marines under his command. They had an IED lob over the fort wall and hit the fuel facility. Gasoline exploded everywhere. A number of his Marines died or were badly burned and he never forgave himself. So, when he smells gasoline, that day, those casualties and his burned Marines, slam back into him.”
“Like it does all of us.” She studied Shay, who was dressed in bright orange slacks, wearing a pale peach tee beneath it. “What happens, then?”
“Oh, Reese dives into the flashback. If I’m around when it happens, I sit with him, hold him. That really helps him to come back to the present, not be dragged and trapped in the past.”
“That’s nice,” Tara murmured. “Does it interrupt his sleep, too?”
Smiling softly, Shay said, “Before we got together, he’d wake up screaming. Scared me awake in my bedroom across the hall from his.”
“That’s what’s happening to us right now,” Tara admitted, frowning.
“You have shadows under your eyes and Harper looks exhausted. Garret came over a few days ago, alerting us to your situation. He’s worried for you, too. He knows what it’s like.”
“I hate it. I hate that it tears us apart, Shay. It seems never-ending.”
“But it does improve over time.” She slid her arm around Tara and gave her a quick squeeze and released her. “Just keep your faith. It does get better.”
“That’s what Harper keeps telling me,” she grumped. “There are days I believe him, and then there are days when I lose all hope.”
“That’s because you’re sleep-deprived. You know how your emotions get their knickers in a twist when you’ve lost night after night of sleep. I went through a couple of years of that before it started ramping down. Getting that adaptogen from Taylor really was the first window of hope to open for me. I hated being anxious and feeling threatened twenty-four hours a day. And you’ve just gotten your prescription within the last month or so. It takes time.”
Grimacing, Tara muttered, “I’m impatient. I’ve always been that way, Shay.”
Laughing, she patted Tara’s arm in a motherly fashion. “We’re all Type A’s; there’s no getting around that one.”
Tara felt better. “I’m glad I’m talking to you about this.”
“There’s always a pot of coffee on over at our house, so come over any time you want, Tara. You can’t get through this alone. We’re all here to help one another. Each of us needs support every now and then.” Her eyes sparkled. “Let’s talk about happier things. Is there something sweet going on between you and Harper?”
“Yes and no,” Tara said. “Yes, we have a connection. But it’s stalled because we’re in this cycle of PTSD and we’re no good to ourselves or to each other. It’s just getting through and surviving every day. You know how that is?”
“I do,” Shay said gently, giving her a sad look. “The bear incident triggered both of you big-time, as it would anyone. When something like that happens and you’re a vet who has PTSD, it’s a hundred times worse on us mentally and emotionally. Are you two managing or are you at each other’s throats?”
Tara heard the amusement in Shay’s voice, but she knew the woman wasn’t teasing her. It wasn’t a funny situation. “We avoid that at all costs, Shay. If Harper is having a bad evening, he’ll go down to the tack room in the arena and repair leather until he can work through what he’s dealing with. Or I’ll go into my bedroom, shut the door and work on my stock photo website. We know when we’re getting edgy and just seem to naturally want to protect each other from the worst side of ourselves.”
“That’s as good as it gets. When Reese first came to the Bar C and stayed in our house because we didn’t have wrangler homes built yet, I was really fearful about it. I had my ups and downs, too. But we talked, and that was the single most important decision we made between each other. Talking helped us understand each other’s predicament.”
“Was that after you fell in love with each other?”
Shaking her head, Shay said, “Oh, no. It was like we had this mental telepathy from the moment we met. Our emotions were so raw and on the surface anyway that we picked up on the slightest emotional or mental change in each other. We started doing it right after he took that room in our home.”
“Harper and I seem to have that connection, too,” she said, wonder in her voice.
Lips lifting, Shay said, “Well, I’m not surprised. We saw the way Harper looked at you during the barn dance at Red Tail Ranch.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told Reese the other day that I thought Harper was falling in love with you, Tara.”
Staring at Shay, she gulped.
“Don’t you see it?” and Shay tilted her head, smiling.
“No,” Tara said abruptly. “I mean, I’ve kissed him. I’ve enjoyed it. But I’m scared, Shay. And I told him that.”
“Scared of what?”
“That I’m very unsure of two PTSD vets sharing anything but hell on earth, violent ups and downs of emotion, sleepless nights, flashbacks . . . it’s a never-ending cycle,” and her voice dropped off into an aching whisper. “There’s no such thing as normal anymore, not for either of us.”
“Listen,” Shay said, becoming more reassuring, “love transcends even PTSD, Tara. At least if you both have the same symptoms, you know what to do to avoid hurting the other person. Or if they’re having a bad day, you know how to support them and understand what’s really going on inside them to a degree. Those aren’t minuses in my book, those are plusses.”
“You know Harper lost Olivia, his wife, to his PTSD?”
“Oh,” Shay growled, “that bitch.”
Brows raising, Tara sat up and stared at Shay. She wasn’t one to use curse words at all, so it startled Tara. “Shay, that’s not like you. I’ve never heard you call another woman that.”
She saw anger coming to Shay’s blue eyes. Her small hands fisted in her lap.
“And I’ll just bet Harper has told you his failed marriage was all his fault, because of his PTSD? That Olivia was an angel?”
“Well . . . something like that. You’re really upset. Why?”
“Harper is the kind of guy who, if he can’t say something good about someone, he won’t say anything at all. He glosses over others’ eccentricities and mistakes and takes on the burden himself.”
“Well,” Tara said, “he was a combat medic. He’s got that kind of nature: gentle and caring. I think I’ve heard two curse words out of him in the months I’ve been living with him.”
Pushing her fingers through her short hair, Shay muttered, “All of that’s true and I know Harper is going to make a wonderful paramedic after he graduates next year. We’re going to be very lucky to have someone like him here in the valley. But Olivia?” She blew air between her lips, her brows dipping. “She was a spoiled little rich girl, Tara. She fell in love with Harper when he was on leave between deployments. Her parents said he was beneath her socially and economically, that he was only a sailor. But she married him anyway, I think, for spite against her parents trying to control her because she had just turned eighteen. She never really loved Harper. He was a victim of her manipulations in her war with her parents.”
Tara’s throat tightened and she whispered, “Tell me. It’s important, Shay. Please? He paints a picture of her as being the one who was hurt in that marriage because of his PTSD.”
“You need to talk about this with Harper. I’m not going to tell what I know. This has to be between you and him. If he cares for you as much as I think he does, he’s going to tell you the truth. All of the truth. He tends to shoulder the blame, even if it’s not his to take on. That’s all I’ll say. Olivia wounded him severely. He was already wounded by so many deployments. But she cut out his heart.”
Pain drifted through her chest. The trembling in Shay’s voice told her the rage the other woman held against Harper’s ex-wife was genuine. “Okay . . . I’ll do that. When there’s a time that’s good for both of us.”
Shay gave her a wry look. “Timing is everything. You and Harper have gone through a lot together in an intense, short amount of time. Catch him on an up day, Tara. And you be up, too. Okay?”
Nodding, Tara reached out, squeezing Shay’s hand. “Yes . . . I will. He’s important to me. Every day, I discover something new about him that I like.”
“You’re falling in love with him whether you want to admit it or not,” Shay said in a low tone, gripping her hand, holding her gaze. “I know you’re not ready to go there yet, Tara. But you two are good for each other. And I understand the hurdles between you. Reese and I had them, too. And as a matter of fact, Garret and Kira had their hurdles to scale before they could reach out and love each other. So have Noah and Dair. It’s going to take time. Just be patient with yourself and with Harper.”
May 31
“I love the idea of a picnic lunch out in this pasture,” Tara told Harper.
It was Memorial Day, and that was a special day for all of them at the Bar C. They had attended services as a group at the local church that morning and said prayers for the military fallen and their families. They had then gone to the local cemetery, which had a section for veterans. They laid flowers on the graves and said a prayer for all those who had been laid to rest. All of them had been in combat, so they understood how precious life was and how quickly it could be taken away.
The temperature was in the midseventies, a rarity, with the sun shining brightly, a few puffy white clouds drifting across the valley from west to east. Tara saw Harper’s eyes grow warm as he brought over the leather saddlebags carrying their lunch. He knelt in front of her, opening them up next to the small green-and-blue-plaid wool blanket Tara had laid out.
The horses had their bridles removed, the halters on with lead ropes wrapped around the saddle horns, so they were able to eat their fill after Harper had placed hobbles around their front pasterns. Both animals would willingly graze the thick, rich green grass along the slope beneath the grove of pines.
“Our first picnic of the year,” Harper agreed, handing her the plastic boxes containing the food. He set the thermos of coffee down near his knee. “We were trying to picnic during that Prater Canyon hike, but that didn’t work out so well,” and he smiled a little.
“Have you been looking around for grizzlies?” she asked, amusement in her tone as she opened two of the plastic boxes, each containing a turkey and cheddar cheese sandwich. She poured hot coffee into two plastic cups, setting them nearby. Harper stood and removed his chaps, hanging them over Ghost’s saddle. They’d been repairing fence posts after returning to the ranch. It had been his idea to spend an hour together at the pine grove in one of the largest lease pastures.
Harper removed his Stetson, set it on the corner of the wool blanket, and then sat down, crossing his legs, facing her. “I have been watching for bear,” he admitted ruefully. “The horses aren’t spooked or wary. They’re our initial warning.” He gestured to the slope. “And we’d see one coming a mile away. The horses would hear him first, though.”
Glancing over at Socks and Ghost, Tara smiled as she handed him his sandwich. “Right now, our horse friends are oblivious to their surroundings. They’ve gone to horsey heaven in this nearly knee-high green grass. I’ve always marveled at how thick and lush our valley grass was in the spring and summer. It’s amazing. It grows so fast.”
Harper munched contentedly on his sandwich, his elbows resting on his knees. “That’s why grass leases are something Shay and Reese want to be able to give out to cattlemen. This grass is rich with all kinds of nutrients. Cattle fatten up fast on it.”
“Shay told me at one time, before her alcoholic father let the Bar C fall into this state, he was one of the richest ranchers, with the exception of Maud and Steve Whitcomb, here in the valley. Grass leases are a huge moneymaker for any rancher if they’ve got the acreage.”
“There’s a lot of land with this ranch,” Harper agreed, giving the surrounding area an appreciative look. “I know Reese is looking to get all the lease pastures back up and operational by next year. This year, it’s strictly fence-mending time. Shay’s father let this place fall into shambles. It’s a shame really.”
“Alcoholism not only destroys the person who drinks, it also destroys his or her job and the family as well.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, biting into his sandwich. “Shay and Reese have had a really tough time bringing the Bar C back. Have you heard anything else from your dad about Crawford suing the ranch?”
“Not yet. But it’s coming. Shay said something about it the other day. Ray is putting in papers with the Clerk of Courts pretty soon, I guess.”
“They don’t need this. The old man, if he gets this ranch returned to him for legal reasons, will end up destroying it completely. Garret was telling me that Crawford ran off all his wranglers and his foreman, he was such a mean son of a bitch to them when he was drunk.”
She munched on her sandwich, seeing how relaxed Harper was. This was a perfect day. “And he’ll do it again if he manages to take this to court and in front of a jury. I’m just hoping that when that day comes, he’ll be his old, nasty self.”
“Yeah,” Harper said, grimacing, “him showing up drunk at court. That would do it.”
“He’s crafty, from what Noah told me when we talked about Ray one time. He’s sneaky, manipulative and abusive. After he told me what kind of man he was, I felt so sorry for Shay. I never realized until that time what she’d gone through growing up with him. I can’t even imagine it. I count myself lucky to have two great parents who loved me and didn’t abuse me like Shay was abused.”
“Me too,” Harper said. “We’re the lucky ones.”
“Did you ever have a dream of what your marriage partner would be like once you met her?” Tara asked him. “I mean,” and she laughed a little, wondering if this was the right tact to take with Harper about Olivia, “I always dreamed of finding a man like my father. Did you dream of a wife something like your mom?”
Shrugging, Harper finished off the sandwich and picked up his plastic mug of steaming hot coffee. “I guess I never really thought about my life that way. I was more focused on what I wanted to be, that I wanted to go into the military and serve.” He gave her a wry look. “Marriage wasn’t on my radar, but it happened.”
“You never dreamed of the kind of woman you wanted to marry?” She found that hard to believe, knowing she sure had dreams of the man she’d like to marry someday, if the right one came along.
“Don’t you think it’s more a woman thing?” he teased, the corners of his eyes wrinkling.
“Probably,” Tara groused, an unwilling grin pulling at her lips. “But did Olivia fulfill your idea of a wife?” She knew she was on thin ice with Harper, but he was in a good space today and so was she. He gave her an amiable look.
“She was eighteen, a wild child, rebellious, and I was twenty-one when I met her by accident in San Diego. I was between deployments, on my thirty days of leave, soaking up the Southern California sun and being a beach bum. She looked damned good to me in that little black bikini she wore when a bunch of us played volleyball on the beach.”
“Tell me more,” Tara urged, realizing Harper had reached a point with her of deeper trust. That alone made her heart yearn even more for this kind of personal, intimate exchange.
“Not much to tell. She had one hell of a body, was beautiful, willful; what guy could resist her?”
“Did she come on to you or did you chase her?”
“She chased me, but I let her catch me.”
She saw some sadness in his thoughtful-looking gray eyes as he continued to sip the coffee. “You said she was a wild child. What did that mean?”
“Her parents were very, very rich. Owned a palatial estate in La Jolla. Father was a movie producer, big name, and he had a lot of power. Her mother had been a Hollywood actress until he married her. Olivia was the result.” He straightened and pulled over the thermos, pouring himself more coffee and filling her mug up to the brim while he was at it. “Olivia was wild to get out from beneath her parents’ control would probably be the best way to put it. She had just turned eighteen and was now an adult. Her big gripe was that they could no longer tell her what to do. She had a really nice apartment facing the beach on the main street and invited me over for a party she was having that evening.”
“That was probably quite a party,” Tara said.
“Well, it was interesting,” Harper said. “Most of her friends were other Hollywood teens like her. They were wild and rowdy. I felt like the old man in that group.”
“Drugs?”
He grimaced. “Didn’t see any, but they all acted like they were on something. That comes from being a combat medic and recognizing it in some of the guys I had to treat from time to time.”
“Was Olivia a drug addict?”
He squirmed. “She didn’t behave like one,” he muttered. “But later? Yeah, she liked cocaine. I didn’t realize it until after we were married about three months. She was enamored with military guys. And I fell for her because I was nose-diving into PTSD, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. I wanted something fresh, clean, upbeat and positive. Olivia was all those things to me. Looking back on it? I shouldn’t have married her. She was too young and immature and I was a grown-up who had seen too much. We did share a love of the beach, surfboarding and the water.”
“It must have been quite a change for you.” She could see the regret in his eyes, although he said nothing for a moment, staring out across the green pasture, deep in thought. Tara swore she could feel Harper wrestling with a lot of sudden emotions.
“I’m afraid Olivia wasn’t prepared for how I’d come home after nine months of combat. It was hard on her.”
“And hard on you, too?”
“Yes, I suppose so. I was afraid to sleep in the same bed with her when I came home. She took it the wrong way, really hurt her feelings and trust in me.”
“You must have had a pretty bad deployment. A lot of combat?”
“Yeah, you could say that. I was waking up fighting, striking out. I was afraid if she slept with me, I’d hit and hurt her by accident. I tried to explain it to her.”
“But she didn’t have the maturity to understand?”
“She tried,” he said quietly. “But yes, age does make a difference, especially in something like a marriage.”
“Did she have a temper?”
“Yes. And mine was hair-trigger, too, because of my PTSD. We both lost our tempers and I would yell at her. And she’d yell back. I wasn’t exactly mature about it either.”
“At least you had a reason,” Tara muttered. “I see you on some days, Harper, when you’re feeling edgy because of the PTSD, get out of our house and go to the barn to work.”
“I learned through my marriage with Olivia not to stay to try to sort it out when I’m feeling like that, Tara.” He gave her a concerned look. “I’d never want to hurt you when I’m in that space. Olivia was my whipping post and I didn’t have the brains to figure it out until it was too late.”
“But she never figured it out either? Was she as defensive as angry when you were? Did she verbally attack you?” Tara knew Olivia was a spoiled, willful child, not a woman who had maturity. She was pretty sure Olivia got her way with her temper tantrums with her parents and, later, she was playing it out on Harper. Tara couldn’t imagine the stress on him if Olivia didn’t grow up and lose her narcissism and selfishness.
“No, she was pretty self-centered. But what teen isn’t? I know I was. I’m sure you could look back and see it in yourself.”
“I don’t know,” she answered, “because my parents taught me early on to care for others. I’ll bet your parents were like that with you, too. They didn’t let you fall into that me, me, me syndrome that a lot of kids do.”
“Yeah,” he said wryly, “my parents were an awful lot like yours: responsibility, duty to others and respect for all regardless.”
“How did her parents respond to you?”
“Not well.” He sighed. “But at the time, I didn’t care. All I knew was that when I was with Olivia, I felt alive. I felt . . . well . . . normal. I could hide in her effervescence. She was in love with life and she infused me with it, too, and that was exactly what I needed. I’d seen too much killing and suffering. She was like life, the life I wanted.” Finishing off his coffee, he added, “But it was the wrong reason to marry her. I was running away from everything. Libby Hilbert has helped all of us who are here to see how we try to escape the horrors we’ve seen and survived. I was using Olivia to escape. And now, I realize what I did. It wasn’t fair to either of us really.”
“You didn’t know. But I understand about the hiding. I never used drugs or alcohol to escape, but I loved getting paperbacks from charities like Operation Gratitude and buried myself in novels.”
“Far healthier than what I did,” Harper said, giving her a look of pride.
Tara was finding Harper always looked at the positive side of life, not wanting to say too much about the negative or dark things that haunted him. She understood it was his combat corpsman disposition, and that it came naturally to him. She saw a tiredness in his eyes, realizing that talking about his failed marriage was like an anchor pulling him into deep water again. “Did you and Olivia just sort of drift apart? You were gone most of the time. I’m sure she had her Hollywood friends to keep her entertained.”
“Yes, it sort of disintegrated over time. I wouldn’t sleep with her when I returned from deployment, and that made her furious with me. She just couldn’t or didn’t want to understand that I was in a continual war zone.”
“Most civilians can’t begin to put themselves into what we’ve seen or survived,” Tara said sympathetically.
“For Olivia, I was an old man who was no fun anymore. She wanted to go to parties and I didn’t. I couldn’t handle the loud music. She wanted to go out all the time to five-star restaurants, and we didn’t have the money. In the end,” he said, “she asked for a divorce and I gave it to her.”
“She doesn’t strike me as someone who was very kind.”
“No, that wasn’t a part of her,” he agreed. “Looking back on it, we were like oil and water and never mixed. She was enamored with the concept that the only real man for her had to be from the military. I’m afraid I disappointed her badly on that score. I was no hero.”
“But by the same token,” Tara pointed out, “she idealized you and you would never be able to live up to it.”
“Correct,” he muttered, reaching inside the second saddlebag and pulling out their dessert. Shay had made everyone peanut butter cookies yesterday and brought some over to them. “But I was running and hiding, too. I used her as much as she used me.”
“She probably wounded you with words.”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug, handing her three cookies. “She’s a highly intelligent person and, yes, she had a mouth on her. She’s got a bear-trap mind and thinks faster than most people, including me.”
“So,” Tara murmured, biting into a cookie, “you got the receiving end of a lot of verbal abuse?”
“Any time Olivia was angry, I was blamed for it some way. It was never her fault, and she never took responsibility for her part in our dance with each other. Lack of maturity,” he said, munching his cookie, a look of satisfaction coming to his expression.
Nodding, Tara said, “I avoided getting married. I knew that deployments were changing me, that something inside me was happening and I was different from before. And because I was unsure, scared of it, not getting a full picture of what was going on within me, I didn’t want to get into a relationship. I knew I could hurt someone with my out-of-control temper and the irritation that hit me sometimes.”
“Well,” he said, raising a brow, “you at least had the self-awareness, as Libby calls it, to realize that you were wounded and that you could turn around and wound someone else with your words and actions. Olivia never gave that two seconds of thought before she’d lash out at me.”
“Probably hard to take?”
“In the end, it was really tough. She said some pretty bad things about me, and at the time, it scored my heart and soul. I was raw emotionally anyway from the PTSD. But coming home to her was like getting another dose of combat, just a different kind, was all.”
Aching for him, Tara could only give him an understanding look. Now, Shay’s comments made more sense to her. And it helped her understand Harper in a new way. “And that’s why you’re so tentative about us, what we might have?”
He gave her a sad look. “Yes, it is.”
“I’m nothing like Olivia.”
“No, you’re not. But I still worry about my PTSD. I handle it, I control it, but there’s days or nights when I don’t do very well with it. I don’t ever want to hurt you when I’m in that space.”
“I see you take evasive action every time you’re caught up in it,” she noted gently. “But I’m in the same boat with you, Harper. My PTSD has its ups and downs, too.”
“Yes, and I see you go hide away in your room and shut the door. That’s when I know you’re feeling edgy.”
“At least we don’t take a pound of flesh out of each other. That’s a huge step forward for both of us.”
“We’re self-aware now. We can feel the PTSD starting to stalk us and we know what to do to protect our partner or the people around us. That’s positive and it’s a healthy step forward, as Libby has often told the group.”
“I really like you a lot, but I’m afraid . . .”
“I know you are,” he said gently, reaching out, squeezing her hand resting on her knee. “And it’s okay. I understand. I’m no prize myself.”
She gave him a round-eyed look, disbelief in her tone. “Oh, yes, you are!”