I realized what a complete jerk I had been. I've got a lousy job, but at least it's something … Faye …” Tears filled his eyes and suddenly he couldn't contain his feelings for her anymore. He bowed his head and began to cry, and after a moment he looked at her honestly. “I didn't know what to do with myself when you went to work. I felt as though I wasn't a man anymore … as though I never had been … but, oh God, I don't want to lose you, Faye … please … oh babe, please …” He pulled her into his arms, and Faye felt as though her heart had found its home again. She had never really given up on him. She wasn't even sure she ever could. She put her head on his shoulder and the tears began to flow again.
“I hated you so much for a while … or at least I wanted to …”
“I wanted to hate you too, but I knew I was the one who was wrong.”
“Maybe I was too. Maybe going back to work wasn't the right thing, but I didn't know what else to do.”
He shook his head. “You were right,” and then he smiled at her through his own tears, “you and your crazy ideas about making me a producer one day …” He smiled tenderly at her. What a good woman she was, how lucky he was to have her back in his arms, even for an hour or two.
She was shaking her head at him. “That wasn't a crazy idea. It's possible, Ward. I could teach you everything you need to know. You could hang around the set on this next film.” She looked hopeful but this time he shook his head.
“Can't. I'm a working man now. Nine to five and all that.”
She laughed. “All right, but you could still be a producer one day, if that's what you want.”
He sighed and put an arm around his wife. “Sounds like pipe dreams to me, my friend.”
“Maybe not.” She looked up at him, wondering what life would bring. At least it had brought him home to her again.
He stood in the doorway to the ugly house in Monterey Park, looking at her. “Do we give it another try? … No … more correctly, will you give me another chance, Faye?” She looked at him long and hard, and slowly a small smile dawned in her eyes. It was a smile born of wisdom and disappointment and pain. She was no longer a young girl. Life was no longer the same as it had been a few years before. Her whole world had turned upside down, and she had survived. And now this man was asking her to walk along beside him again. He had hurt her, deserted her, cheated on her, betrayed her. And yet, deep inside, she still knew that he was her friend, that he loved her, and she him, and that she always would. He didn't have the same instincts that she had, and was not nearly as well equipped to survive. But perhaps, side by side, hand in hand … maybe … just maybe … in fact, she was sure of it. More important, she was sure of him again.
“I love you, Ward.” She smiled up at him, feeling suddenly young again. It had been an endless few months without him. She never wanted to live through that again. She could survive anything but that, even poverty.
He stood kissing her then, as the children looked on, and suddenly they all began to laugh, and Greg pointed at them, laughing the hardest of all, as Ward and Faye began laughing too. Life was sweet again, as it had been long before, only better now. They had both been through hell and back, not unlike Guadalcanal in some ways. But they had won the war. Finally. And now life could begin again. For all of them.
CHAPTER 10
Ward gave up his furnished room in West Hollywood, without ever staying there again, and he moved back into the ugly house he hated so much in Monterey Park, without ever noticing this time how dreary it was. It looked wonderful to him as he carried his bags up the stairs to their room.
They had three idyllic weeks before the children went back to school, and Faye began her new film. And when she did, he insisted that she take the car, while he took the bus to