From This Day Forward (7 page)

It wouldn’t stop her, but it would slow her down
once she regained consciousness. 

Then
Noah sprinted for the narrow tunnel. No time to waste. He’d been away from home for far too long. The time had come for him to protect his own. No one would threaten those he loved and get away with it. To hell with foreign threats in faraway lands. The fight had just become personal.

But first, back to his CO to report the basics about a mission gone wrong in some fashion that the United States Army would accept and that would allow him to go home to take care of personal business. Because nothing had ever been more important or more personal.

Maybe it was time to call in that favor from David Pearson. The North American Consortium of Dragons owed him in a big way from the last time one of his missions had crossed jurisdictions and tangled with the magickal community. He hated when the magickal realm bled into the mundane. It happened way too often for his comfort. And it made Special Operations messier than they already were. Calling David might be the only way out of this situation in a quick, clean, timely manner.

Because
, finally, he’d run out of both time and excuses.

Noah wouldn’t lose his family for the consortium or the U.S. military. Dragon mage. Delta Forces operator. Or not. Hell, no. His wife and children came first. David would have to sort this situation and this Fox-Dragon-whatever-she-was out with the larger dragon community. It wasn’t his problem until she came knocking at his door again.

Then he’d be ready.

Chapter Five: Alone at Last

April couldn’t breathe. Noah’s commanding
officer, the military chaplain, and the doctor they’d been kind enough to send—just in case she needed a sedative—had departed after an hour of explaining details that had blurred in her head once they’d said, “Your husband is Missing In Action.”

Not dead. But the commanding officer had made it very clear he presumed Noah dead. They wouldn’t stop looking, but they hinted he’d been captured by a terrorist cell three days ago. They hadn’t said it in s
o many words, of course. The Army would admit nothing until they had a dead body and a full confession.

There had been no contact. No negotiations. No deal to trade Noah for one of their members held at
GitMo. Therefore, Noah was presumed dead.

Dead. Her biggest fear come to fucking, full-blown life.

With trembling fingers, April dialed Yana’s number.

“
Hello, dear. So nice to hear from you.”

“
Yana. Noah’s missing. They think he’s been captured by a terrorist cell. But his CO thinks he’s dead. Oh, God. No.” It was the first time she’d said the words out loud. And it sounded so awful.

“
I’m coming over.”

“
No. Don’t. I need some time to pull myself together.”

“
Pah. Nonsense. You need your family at a time like this.”

“
No. Please. I need a little space. I’ve got something I need to do—” Her voice caught. Tears clogged her throat. She couldn’t finish.

Noah gone. God, how would she survive it? She pressed her hand to her chest and massaged the painful constriction there.

“What can I do to help you?” Yana’s soothing voice drew her back to the moment.

“I need you to pick up the girls from school and stay with them for a day or two until I figure out how I’m going to tell them about this.” She gripped the phone hard, her voice fierce. “I won’t tell them he’s gone until we’re sure. I won’t put them through that kind of hell. But they can’t see me this way. They’ll know.”

It was the situation with her dad all over again.

Only her mom hadn’t waited to share the pain. She’d blasted them all with it, as soon as she got the news. Her father had disappeared with no communication for five days. Five days for a ten year old was an eternity. A full lifetime of devastation. And April had agonized each of those five long days, not sleeping, not eating. Nothing. Until they heard from him.

She wouldn’t do that to her own girls. They loved their father. Adored him just as she had her father. She wouldn’t drag them through this until she was sure Noah was dead. And
then, when she had to, she’d find a way to make this news less painful for them. Somehow. Less traumatic.

How the hell did you do that when your own heart had shattered into particles as fine as baby powder scattered on the floor? She didn’t know. But she planned to figure it out alone over the next few days.

“Oh, honey.” Her grandmother’s voice broke. “Don’t worry about the girls. I’ll pick them up and let them know you had to take care of something unexpectedly. We’ll have a grand time. I can drop by and pick you up, too. Take you all home. I can certainly take care of you. You’ll need someone—”

Tears streamed down April’s face. She squeezed her eyes shut, used the palm of her hand to wipe her cheek, then fanned herself to try to pull it together enough to speak.
“No— No. I need some time alone. I’m a mess. I can’t believe— I mean. I knew this was always a possibility. But— He always said dragon mages were invincible. The resistance to death in the dragon mage blood. And I believed—” A sob snagged in her throat. “It was all a lie. To make me believe he’d never abandon me.” She slid down the wall that had propped her up and curled into herself. A low, wounded howl ripped from her. “He can’t leave me, Yana.”

“
Listen to me, April. He’s not dead. You believe in him. He is strong. His magick is strong. If Noah said he’s invincible. I believe him. And if anyone can survive harrowing circumstances, captured or not, it is Noah Easton. He’s a force of nature. Don’t you dare give up on him yet.”

April cried, tears so heavy she thought she’d suffocate. She gasped for breath.
“I don’t know what to do.”

“
Close up the shop. Go upstairs to the apartment above the shop or walk over to my house. Rest. You don’t need to do anything. Not right now. No big decisions. No big changes. I’ll call Janelle and Iris to cover the shop for the next few days. You need to clear your schedule.”

April hugged her legs to her chest and rested her cheek on her knees, phone still pressed between her shoulder and ear.

“No. I’m fine. I can get home.” She could, but whether or not she’d ever be fine again remained to be seen.

“
I don’t want you driving. I’ll take the girls to your house in Laughlintown. Go home, April.”

And by home, she meant the family homestead a few blocks away on edge of town. The Conrad home. The heart and soul of the family. The same house generations of Conrads had lived and died in. She’d moved out when she and Noah married and established their own home in Laughlintown five miles away.

“I’ll stay at the spring house for a few days.”

“
Good. You’ve always been able to find peace there. Now, go. Close the shop. Go home. Take care of yourself. They’ll call soon. You wait and see. You’ll have good news before you know it.”

April didn’t believe she’d get good news any time soon. But she did need to burrow in
—find a granule of hope somewhere. The spring house would be a good place to begin her search. “Okay. I’ll go home.”

She didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t go looking for Noah herself. She was powerless to do anything but wait. She had no military background, no training. No idea even where in the world he’d been. She was at the mercy of the military machine. She had to trust that they’d
inform her when they knew something. She prayed, when it came, the news would be good.

“
All right, dear. Don’t worry about the girls. I’ll take care of everything.”

“
Thank you, Yana. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“
You’d manage to carry on, girl. You’re a Conrad, through and through. And Conrads are survivors. We’ve been dealt some hard knocks where love is concerned. But we Conrad women have always, always figured out how to come through it standing.”

Funny. Because April wasn’t standing. She sat huddled in a fetal position behind the counter of her tea shop, hiding, crying, desperate and alone. And she couldn’t imagine ever standing again if Noah was, indeed, dead.

“I’ll try, Yana.”

“
All right. Love you, dear. I’m just a phone call away if you need me. Call me, okay?”

“
I will.” The spring house was a magickal place. A quiet refuge. The one place at the family homestead where she’d gone when her life fell apart. She’d hid there for three days after her father contacted them saying he wouldn’t return home. Some of her most life-changing visions had occurred there. And she’d experienced the most powerful magick of her life at the spring house. A family legend said that the heart of Mystic Springs’ magick burbled up there, right under the Conrad spring house.

April believed it. She’d experienced it. And she would go home. Stay at t
he spring house. She needed to.

“
Yes. Thank you. I— will.” She sniffled. “I love you, too, Yana. I’ll call you later. Bye.”

April disconnected the cordless phone, the handset slipped from her numb fingers, and clattered to the floor.

The tears wouldn’t stop.

She used her sleeve to mop them off her face. She fished a tissue out of her jeans pocket and blew her nose, then she rested her forehead on her knees and just held on while the pain and the sadness overtook her, squeezed the life out of her.

Everything hurt. She crawled to the front door, locked it, and flipped the Open sign to Closed. So what if it was mid-morning? Her life had just crashed around her and it might as well be the middle of the darkest night she’d ever known because nothing would never be the same. The whole town would know within an hour anyway. No one would expect her to remain open.

April collapsed on the floor right where she was and let the sadness that gripped her ravage her body. She cried for her husband, the love, the loss. The days they’d never experience together. She cried for the small girl she’d been the first she’d experienced such a life-shattering loss, when the first man she’d ever loved, her dad, had been lost. All the fear, all the silent rage she’d felt at being abandoned again coursed through her like flood waters destroying everything in its path. She let it all flow. Let it all consume her. Carry her on its tide.

Because she didn’t know what else to do.

Didn’t know how else to survive this but ride the destruction like a raft bobbing and tossed and spun by the ravaging, violent currents of waters too muddied and furious to do anything but hang on and hope for the best until the torrent subsided.

It might have been minutes, it might have been hours, she had no idea . . . but sometime later, after the tears had dried up and she felt like a walking tooth ache, April pulled herself together, found her coat in the back room and started to walk the few blocks to the old family homestead. She’d walked a block, trudging through cold, bitter snow, before she realized she couldn’t remember if she’d locked the front door of the Tea Cozy. She walked back.

Nope. The door hadn’t been locked.

She locked up and retraced her steps through the alley between her shop and the bar. Mick O’Rielly stepped out the back door of the bar, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He watched her with shadowed eyes. “I’m so sorry, April. If there’s anything—”

“
Thanks.” She cut him off with a hand and the single croaked word, but she kept walking. She couldn’t talk to anyone else. Not yet. She was too raw. And she had no idea what would come out. If what was roiling inside her was any indication, it would be bilious. Hurtful. And she couldn’t allow that because these people, her neighbors and fellow business proprietors, had done nothing to hurt her.

So she traipsed a block out of her way just to take the quiet neighborhood route to Yana’s. The cold wind slapped her already tear-chapped face. She tugged her hat further down over her ears. All she wanted to do was burrow in. Protect herself. She knew she must look like a zombie
, walking through the quiet, snowy streets of Mystic Springs.

Dusk had begun to set and it was that eerily silent hour when a neighborhood seemed to slumber, waiting for its inhabitants to return from their daytime lives to spring to life once again. Windows remained dark and houses empty. Glassy, black eyes, void of life
, stared at her as she trudged past.

And that was okay with her. Because it’s exactly how she felt. Empty. Her soul void of the love and warmth that had just this morning bubbled and lived there.

April put one foot in front of the other. Her snow boots making fresh tracks in the pristine snow. They’d gotten maybe five inches of new snow today that had yet to be shoveled off of the residential streets. Finally, she reached the edge of town.

The Conrad Homestead stretched before her. An old brick farmhouse that had originally been built in the 1600s, but had been added onto over the years, sprawled on a three-acre plot of well-manicured lawn that backed to the woods. The main house had been painted a tan color years before April had been born and received a fresh coat of paint every few years.

Dark green shutters hung at the windows and were more than ornamental. Heavy cast iron brackets held them open in fair weather, but had been kept in well-oiled working order so the heavy wood could be closed in case of gale-force winds that sometimes ripped through the mountain town at unexpected times.

Tonight, the wind didn’t stir. The stillness crept into April’s heart. C
old. Quiet. Dead. A two-hundred-year-old oak stood in the front yard. Its branches thick, but barren, spread to embrace the steely gray sky.

Tears stung her face again. She swiped them away before they could freeze. No.
She was right to stay at the cottage spring house. She couldn’t handle the feelings the old homestead stirred up right now. She wouldn’t sleep in the main house tonight. Memories of happier times with her father and mother would bombard her. Before he disappeared from their lives, leaving her mother in a constant state of sadness and on a slow drift to apathy. She’d just stopped caring about anything after Daddy left. No, April couldn’t face the pain and sadness in that house tonight. She’d sleep in the spring house.

The small stone cottage
that they called the spring house sat far back in the woods. Conrad legend said the spring house had been the first building on the property. The original homestead. Hidden from view. Quiet. Peaceful. It was the one place April could find solace no matter what pain plagued her. The cottage acted as a balm. So she wasn’t surprised Yana had suggested she stay there the next few days. By the time she’d trudged through the deep snow to the front door of the stone cottage, she couldn’t appreciate the gingerbread feel of the steep snow-covered sloped roof or the icicles hanging from the eaves.