Now all he had to worry about was if she was pregnant. Not using any protection had been a conscious decision on his part. They hadn’t even talked about it the way couples should – hadn’t discussed the possibility of starting a family so soon. It wasn’t that Rush had been so eager for Lindy to get pregnant, he realized with a flash of insight. But he hadn’t wanted a repeat of what had happened with Cheryl. If Lindy’s stomach was swollen with a baby when he returned, he didn’t want any question in his mind about who was the father.
Rush refused to believe he’d actually done anything so stupid as to play that sort of silly mind game. Lindy wasn’t going to cheat on him – he refused to even consider the possibility. But then he’d honestly assumed she loved him, too – the same way he loved her. It hadn’t even taken her a month to forget him.
Lindy let herself into the apartment and stopped when she found her brother sitting in front of the television, watching a late afternoon talk show. Steve’s behavior was really beginning to concern her. He’d been assigned shore duty, and when he wasn’t working he sat around the apartment with a lost, tormented look that reminded her of how she’d felt when she’d first arrived in Seattle. His behavior wasn’t the only thing that was getting on her nerves. He’d become so cynical and so sarcastic about life. His thinking seemed so negative that she didn’t like to talk to him anymore. There’d been a time when she’d admired him for the way he’d handled the emotional trauma of the divorce, but his letters had been a convenient front. It became clearer every day that the healing process hadn’t even started in Steve. He still loved Carol, and he needed to either patch things up between them or accept the divorce as final. Otherwise it was going to ruin his life.
"Hi," she said, and walked into the kitchen, setting down the grocery bag on the counter. "What’s Donahue got to say today?"
"Who?"
"The guy whose program you’re watching."
"Hell, I don’t know. Something about nursing mothers."
"And that interests you?"
"It’s better than staring at some stupid game show."
"It’s a beautiful day. You should be outside."
"Doing what?"
Lindy sighed. "I don’t know. Something. Anything."
Steve stood and came into the kitchen. "Do you want me to do something for dinner? Peel potatoes, that sort of thing?"
She thanked him for his offer with a smile. "I’ve got everything under control." Opening the refrigerator, she set the milk inside and decided now was as good a time as any to wade into shark-infested waters. "Is Carol still living in Seattle?" Lindy asked the question and then turned to face her brother.
"Carol who?"
His words may have been flippant, but he couldn’t disguise the instant flash of pain in his eyes.
"Carol Kyle, your wife."
"Ex-wife," he corrected bitterly. "As far as I know she is."
"I think I’ll give her a call."
A year seemed to pass before Steve answered. "Before you start meddling in someone else’s troubles, you’d better take care of your own, little sister."
Lindy’s heart flew upward and lodged in her throat. "What do you mean by that?"
Steve pointed toward the mail that was stacked on the kitchen table. "You must have put the wrong address on that long letter you’ve been writing all month to Rush, because it’s been returned."
"Oh, no." A sickening feeling invaded her limbs and her eyes widened with dread. "Returned? But why?" She reached for the thick manila envelope and checked the address. "Oh, Steve, what will Rush think if he doesn’t get any mail from me?"
"The only thing he can assume under these circumstances. That you married him on the rebound and regret it."
She raised her hands in a gesture of abject defeat. "But I don’t feel that way, not at all."
"Lindy, sit down. You look like you’re about to faint." Her brother pulled out a chair and carefully lowered her into it. He walked a couple of times around her, as though gathering his thoughts on how to handle the situation.
Tears of frustration were hovering just beneath the surface. She’d faithfully written Rush each night, pouring out her heart to her husband, reassuring him each day how much she loved him and how proud she was to be his wife. She’d written about meeting the other wives and told him about the social get-together they were planning to celebrate the halfway mark of the six-month cruise. She’d drawn a picture of the lacy silk nightie the girls had given her as a wedding gift and told him how eager she was to model it for him.
There were weeks when she’d scribbled long epistles as many as six and seven times. Since the mail was only going to reach him once a month, Lindy had written it in journal form, marking the days.
To her surprise, this long separation wasn’t anything like he’d suggested it would be. Rush had warned her that two weeks after he was gone she’d start to wonder how she ever imagined herself in love with him. Two weeks from the day he left, Lindy had made a giant card to tell him exactly the opposite had happened. If anything she loved him more than ever.
Over and over she had read the thick letter she’d received from him, until she had set each precious line in her memory. Rush’s letters had been her lifeline to sanity.
The realization that he had received only a short one from her early after he sailed out of Bremerton, if that, was almost more than she could bear thinking about.
"What are you doing?" Steve asked, when Lindy reached for the phone.
"Calling Susan."
"What good is that going to do?"
"I…I don’t know." But Lindy had to talk to someone before she went loony. Susan would know what to do.
"Hello?" Susan answered on the third ring, and Lindy could hear the twins crying in the background.
"Susan, it’s Lindy. Something terrible has happened, and I don’t know what to do." She was speaking as fast as she could, her voice raised and shaky.
"Lindy? Slow down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying."
"My letter to Rush came back," Lindy explained, doing her best to keep her voice as even as possible, although it wobbled like a toy top winding down after a long spin.
"Did you have the right address?"
Lindy reached for the envelope and read off Joanna’s street numbers.