were for me. Telling me was an accident. In retrospect, I realize he’d wanted to spare me the pain of dealing with another loss, the death of someone else who loved me.
If Mark thought that by leaving me he was doing me a kindness, he was wrong. I learned later that he couldn’t tell me for fear I would talk him out of taking on this risky mission, and he was right. I would have done everything within my power to keep him in Cedar Cove. He had basically gone on a suicide mission.
When he left I told him, mainly because I was bitter and angry, that I wouldn’t wait for him. I’d already cracked that protective shell in which I’d hidden for three long years, and I wasn’t retreating. I was going on with my life. I would date again, and I had, although I hadn’t met anyone who made me feel alive, at least not in the way Paul and Mark had. Still, I went out and had started to forge a new life for myself.
Mark has been gone almost nine months now, and I’ve heard from him only once. One time. It happened late in the night when I was woken out of a sound sleep by a phone call. It was Mark letting me know he was in Iraq and had found Ibrahim. The connection was bad and I was able to catch only part of the conversation, which upset me terribly. I hungered for every bit of information he could tell me, longing to hear the sound of his voice, which came in sporadic spurts. As best I could understand, he was making his way out of the country along with Ibrahim, his wife, and their two small children. Where exactly he intended to go and how he’d get there remained a mystery.
In our broken, frustrating conversation, Mark asked for my help. If he was able to get Ibrahim and his family out of Iraq, he needed to be sure I would help them settle in the United States. What he didn’t say, or what I was unable to hear due to our faulty connection, was that he needed me to do this in case he didn’t make it out of the country alive.
With no other option, I promised Mark I would do everything in my power to see to the needs of this family. How could I not when Mark had risked his life for their sake?
Like I said, that was nine months ago, and since that time I’d heard nothing more.
Nada.
Zilch.
Not a single word.
No letter. No phone call. No communication of any kind.
I could only believe that after this amount of time he’d failed, and Mark, like Paul, was forever lost to me.
It was June now, and I’d grown downright comfortable with avoidance. I chose not to think about Mark. Or at least I tried, but, frankly, I hadn’t been successful. What I had managed to do was keep everyone else from talking about Mark. Mostly my mother, who took pains to remind me that she continued to pray for him and the success of this undertaking.
I didn’t want to hope Mark was alive. It was easier to accept that he was dead. Harsh, I know, but you have to understand, Paul’s remains weren’t recovered and identified for a full year after the helicopter crash. Every single day of that year, every single minute I held on to the hope, clung to it like someone hanging off the ledge of a twenty-story apartment building that against all reason Paul had managed to survive.
I refused to do that a second time. For my own mental well-being I had to let go. I’d rather go down in a flaming free fall than continue to live on empty hope.
Peggy Beldon was someone else who refused to ignore my determined effort to move on. Peggy and Bob Beldon own Thyme and Tide, another B&B in town. After I bought the inn, they more or less took me under their wing and helped me figure out what I was doing. They’re good friends, along with Grace Harding. Her husband died before I moved into town, and she fell in love and remarried. She understood what it meant to be a widow and shared some insights into this new stage of life I’d entered. I appreciated their friendship.
The one person who seemed to understand and appreciate my attitude was Dana Parson. She was a relatively new friend I met