“There’s where you’d be wrong,” Cait told him. “You need to acknowledge it and not bury it, so it won’t sneak up on you again.”
He shook his head. “I’m OK now and have my focus back. For a while, little things used to set me off—but therapy’s helped and the imagery the doctor suggested has been working.
“We weren’t even supposed to be there…wrong place, wrong time. Napolitano was my friend—the squad leader. I was stitching him back together, but once the IED hit, he insisted that I take care of his men first. I didn’t know he’d been hit again…if only I had just worked faster.”
He locked gazes with Cait and didn’t look away while he told the story. When he was finished, he grabbed both of her hands in his. “Can you understand why I felt so guilty?”
Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Honestly? No.”
“Dad? Mom?” he asked, knowing his parents had heard every detail.
When they looked at him as if he were crazy, Cait pulled him to his feet and into her arms. “Face it, Gannon, you’re a hero.”
He wanted to say something, but the warmth of her embrace filled the empty spots he’d exposed in his soul. Her love seeped in, binding the wounds, healing the hurt. Humbled, he buried his face in her hair and said a silent prayer of thanks that she hadn’t walked away from him.
“Why don’t you and I start supper?” his mother said, tugging on her husband’s arm to get him moving.
“Cora, wait,” he said, but she shook her head.
“They need more time to sort this out, John. You come on inside.” Reluctantly, he went.
“I’ve really missed them,” Jack said, listening to the snippets of conversation and his father’s grumbling as it drifted out through the screen door.
“They love you.”
He looked into Cait’s eyes, encouraged by the love reflected back at him. “Cait, I know I’ve made a mess of what we’d started, but can you find it in your heart to give me another chance?”
“You don’t need one.”
“Don’t I?”
“You haven’t used up the first one yet.” She waited a moment before adding, “Thank you for giving me a chance to gather my wits and courage to hear the rest of your story.”
“So you still love me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Duh.”
“How can you make light of this, Caitlin?”
“Because I want you to understand that while it is huge for you, I don’t see it the same way.” She cupped his face in her hands and brushed her lips against his. “I remember the look on your face at graduation, when they announced you were headed to the Great Lakes A School and that you were going to be a navy corpsman.”
She let her hands glide down his neck to his chest and then around his back. “You were so handsome, standing there so straight and so tall. I never thought you’d look twice at me. You were Meg’s age…I was just a kid.”
“I still think you don’t understand.”
“Then I saw the distant look in your eyes when you came home on leave. You weren’t the same. I couldn’t imagine the things you’d seen and done for our country, but my dad could. He reminded us that war is hell and that some men are scarred by it physically, some mentally, and then there are some who quietly do their duty, never asking to be recognized, just wanting to do what they’d been trained to do—some of them patching the wounded back together—like you.
“And I see you as the auburn-haired doctor who came home to fill his father’s shoes and take over his practice when your dad retired and your parents announced they were moving to Florida.”
She watched his eyes as she added, “You didn’t have to do that, but otherwise everyone in Apple Grove would have had to drive nearly an hour to get to the next closest doctor in Newark. Do you realize how important you are to this community? Mr. Weatherbee, Mrs. Winter, all of our older residents who can’t always drive into town when they’re sick? You continue your dad’s practice of making house calls. Who the heck does that these days?”
He shook his head. Far be it from him to interrupt Caitlin Mulcahy when she was on a roll.
She laid her head on his chest and whispered, “You didn’t have to throw yourself on top of those marines. But you did. You didn’t even think twice. You just did.”
Easing back, she let her gaze meet his. “If I could take away the horrors that you’ve seen, the pain you’ve suffered, I would,” she told him. “But it’s all part of who and what you are…the man I fell in love with.”