Wanted A Real Family(39)

Finally, Peter had said, “You know I’ve always been a straight shooter.”

Jase had retorted, “Same here.”

Peter had taken a photograph from his pocket, or rather a printout of a photograph. Before he’d handed it to Jase, he’d said, “Believe me, I don’t want to show you this, but better me than someone else. If I could shoot this last week, then others have seen her, too. It will only be a matter of time until word gets around.”

The journalistic community was a small world, even though they were scattered all over the continents. With emails, text messaging and social media, not much got by anybody.

Jase had been on painkillers, then. They hadn’t been dulling the pain all that much or the absence of his fiancée whom he hadn’t seen since a few weeks before he’d been shot. He’d had a premonition of what he was going to see in the photo and he’d braced himself as best he could.

The photograph was, of course, telling. With the Eiffel Tower in the background, Dana was kissing a man in a way that told anybody passing by this wasn’t a brother or a friend. Peter had seen it and captured the shot.

“Two questions,” Jase said.

“Go ahead.”

“Does she know you saw her?”

“No. I didn’t want her making up some kind of story, and I wanted you to be prepared. What’s the second question?”

“Who is he?”

“Do you really need to know that? Because I don’t think it matters, really, who he is. She was shaken up by what happened to you.”

“So shaken up she’s kissing anybody these days?”

“Something like that. You know her, Jase. She’s a risk taker. She likes danger. But she doesn’t like anything bad to touch her.”

“This didn’t touch her, it touched me.”

Peter just gave him a look.

“In other words, she’s afraid I’ll never be whole again?”

“I don’t know what she’s afraid of. Maybe you’d better ask her.”

Dana had been on assignment. Though they had spoken once or twice on the phone, it had never occurred to him until then that if she really wanted a life with him, she would have been at his bedside.

Back then he hadn’t known much about relationships. He hadn’t known much about commitment. After all, he hadn’t known his biological father, his mother had died of a drug overdose and he’d had three foster parents before Ethan had adopted him. What did he really know about relationships at all?

Except when Dana had walked into his hospital room a few days later, he’d known a relationship meant more than the opportunity to be unfaithful. He’d suddenly known that an engagement should mean building a life together, not living separate lives.

Dana had been flippant at first, avoiding his gaze, even jittery, which was unlike her. Under other circumstances, he might have suspected it was the hospital room and his condition. He was hooked up to IVs and monitors. His shoulder was wrapped and in a sling. Two ribs were broken, and he was still healing from a second abdominal surgery. That was enough to make any visitor jittery.

But he knew more than that was going on, and he wasn’t going to play games. He told her to look in the drawer by the bedside table. When she did, she found the picture.

“Who took this?”

“Does it matter? Pictures don’t lie, right? Pictures don’t, but you’ve been.”

“I don’t know what to say, Jase.”

It wasn’t an “I’m sorry” or “It won’t happen again” or “Can you forgive me?” Any of that might have revived feelings he’d once had. She simply said, “You have a long recovery process, here. I probably won’t be back in the States for a few months.”

“So my getting shot’s the problem?”

“No, but when you got shot, I started thinking. You talk about kids as if you want to have them someday. You relate to them like I can’t. I don’t want to be a mother. I want to stay in the life I have. But the way you talk about your father’s vineyard sometimes, I think you want more than a life as a photojournalist.”

“I know I want to be involved with someone who knows how to be faithful.”

“You deserve someone who knows how to be faithful. Obviously that person isn’t me. I turned to someone else because I was upset about you...about everything I’d realized about us...how we’re different in things that matter.”

Although he’d felt bitterness and resentment and betrayal, they hadn’t parted as enemies. What was the point? If nothing else, Jase was a practical man. Still...that photograph was etched in his mind.