Page 30 of Shadow Target

He felt her relax utterly against him, her arms winding around his waist, pressing her cheek against his damp t-shirt below his shoulder, feeling her sigh what he hoped was her happiness at being in his embrace once more. He pressed a kiss to her hair, the strands tickling his face. “Willow? I’m scared to death, but I’m going to tell you what’s in my heart. I never did when we were married, but I’m trying to change that. I want, more than anything, to have a second chance with you. I want to court you. I want to hold you and listen to what’s in your mind and heart. I want to really listen and feel you emotionally this time, not just ignore all that like I did before. I want to try and share how I’m feeling with you, instead of shutting down and pushing you away from me.”

He felt her arms tighten around him for a moment, felt her tremble in his arms. It was driving him crazy what her answer might be. Pressing his lips against her temple, Shep rasped, “Tell me you want another chance like I want one with you? I know I don’t deserve it. I hurt you so damned badly and I’ll be forever sorry that I did. I want to make it up to you. This doesn’t have to be fast. I’ll take it at whatever pace you’re comfortable with, Willow. I know we can make this work. I feel it in my heart. I’ll try every damned hour to be a better man for you than I was before. Let me try… give me one more chance…”

CHAPTER 9

The late December winter sun in Ethiopia was bright, its warmth creeping into Willow’s clothing as she looked at the tall reeds that grew along the edge of Lake Tana. She was going to spend another rare free day with Shep. Another month had passed and the drumbeat of creating safer Delos schools in different villages was high and steady. With her floppy hat on, shading her face from the equatorial sunlight, she felt the stress melting away. Her shoulders relaxed and she sighed. Maybe because she was, at last, with Shep for a few precious private hours once again. It was like getting her beloved chocolate to Willow. Since their last boating on Lake Tana in November, she’d rarely seen Shep. Mostly, he stayed in whichever village was being helped by the Delos construction crews at that time.

Shep sat in the boat’s well, holding the handle of its old gasoline motor which putt-putt-putted away. A single line of twenty white pelicans flew overhead, looking like a string of feathery pearls moving across the sky. It was going on barely ten a.m. Willow had packed them a hearty lunch with lots of water bottles, stashing the whole fare away in their large knapsacks. Today, they were going on a real adventure! The sky held long white trails of what looked like mare’s tails across the deep blue above them. There was no wind, and the sun warmed them.

Having lived here for over a year, Willow knew that the temperature moderated in the winter season. It was dry in comparison to summer, which brought so much hot and heavy humidity up from the lake then. Where had the time gone? Time seemed to have passed in a blink of her eyes. She had invited Shep to take some time off to start seeing the country and get educated on its history. He seemed eager to spend any time, no matter how short or long it was, with her. They’d rarely seen each other, what with the villages being prepped and ever more construction materials being flown in five to eight times a day.

The eucalyptus trees with their white trunks were thick along one area up on a hill of one of many islands they were heading toward. Shorebirds skittered back and forth along the muddy lakeside turf, and white pelicans in groups of ten or more were out plying the shallow waters for easy fishing. They passed a canoe paddled by an Ethiopian youth who had a fifty-gallon tank of oil behind him. He was most likely bringing it to one of those many nearby island where oil was needed to heat their thatched-roof huts through the winter. Willow pointed them toward a small inlet that had a poorly made wooden wharf of sorts, half of it rotted away from time and weathering, floating haphazardly in the water around what was left of it.

“This is a narrow peninsula that looks like an island. We’ll head in over there and bring the boat up alongside that.” she said, pointing.

Nodding, Shep guided the slender wooden boat they had rented into the quiet, muddy waters around the decaying jetty. No one was around that he could see; only thick trees, plenty of rushes that were knee to waist high, and clumps of reeds at least ten to fifteen feet tall on the other side of the tiny inlet. A person could get lost in thickets like those for sure, Shep thought, having never seen reeds so tall that they stood like such an impenetrable wall. He liked that Willow had put her red hair into a ponytail today, her floppy hat planted firmly above it to keep the sun off her neck and face. She wore an olive-green tee under a long-sleeved khaki shirt, again to protect her fair skin from the equatorial sunlight. Willow had warned him that, where they had to hike, they would be getting thirsty fast, and there was no water, or food available on the strip of land that sat between Tana and a river whose other side was more like jungle. He liked adventures like this, and welcomed the break with Willow. Moments of privacy between them were so rare now. She and Dev were flying nonstop, and, at times, they even met their flight hour limits, and had to quit for the day. He was just as busy, setting up meetings and working with the construction crews, waiting for the building materials to be fully delivered to the first, second and third villages, all seventy miles away and on the other side of Lake Tana.

Willow carefully climbed out of the tippy little boat; the rope provided to moor it to the wobbly untrustworthy wharf post lying nearby. Once she was out, and had tied off the boat, Shep handed her both heavy knapsacks they would be carrying. Gingerly leaving the boat, he opened the straps on hers, and she shucked into them, rearranging the weight across her shoulders and back until it felt comfortable. He did the same, always looking around, inhaling the smell of mud, and the scent of rotting fish that, by the looks of it, some fisherman had scaled and gutted some days earlier.

“Ready?” she asked, all good to go.

“As I’ll ever be,” he said, tightening the belt of his own ruck around his waist. “Lead the way…”

Willow took off at a good hiking pace, but as soon as they got out of the inlet area, moving to the strip of the peninsula where there was plenty of rushes and underbrush to negotiate, often coming up to mid-torso, growing out of the flat of the land they were traversing. She felt thrilled to be away from all the flying and to be doing something like this that satisfied her curiosity, always having had a love of architecture and archeology. At this time of year, as they trod the trail toward the ancient stone monastery site, there was not a hint of any other human presence, neither seen nor heard.

Roughly one mile from where they’d tied their boat to the wharf, Willow wiped her brow as she continued at a hiker’s pace whenever possible, the rushes and marshy area left behind. Now they were on gravel, rocks and loose soil heading upward along a slope. The trees around them had thinned out considerably, not privy to the water nearer the shore. The sky was now mixed with fluffy white chunks of clouds, sometimes hiding the sun for a moment or two. She heard Shep’s footfalls not far behind her. Her heart sang. She hadn’t been this happy for so long that she almost felt euphoric; barely aware of her booted feet hitting the dry dirt trail.

Willow’s mind turned back to the routine they’d slogged through for what felt like forever; even though their work time with one another was always short and stressful, no time to even sit and chat, there had been a day when Shep had managed to get a few private minutes with her before she had to fly. She could see it now:

Men in small tractors were carrying continuous loads of construction equipment to and from their plane.

She and Dev had had time to go to the bathroom, grab a cold drink and snack at Operations, the control tower area at Bahir Dar airport, and then trot out to the revetment where their Otter sat. It was being loaded to the gills with equipment, concertina wire and a variety of tools needed for the different trades. But Shep had made time out of his impossibly busy schedule to be there and take her aside for a moment just to them. Yes, that day was still wonderful to her in so many ways.

She snapped back to the present: They were climbing one of the peninsula’s many hills, and, as she rounded the trail, she saw the remains of the abandoned monastery. She halted, waiting for Shep to join her. He was sweating, too. The humidity around the lake was always higher than the surrounding areas.

From where she stood, she realized that what she had thought was an island they were on, was actually a peninsular arm jutting out along the shore of Lake Tana after taking out her map to get a closer look at the landscape.

Turning, she explained to Shep that they were still on the shore of Lake Tana and not an island within it.

He shrugged., “It’s a beautiful area whether it’s an island or not,” he murmured, taking a bottle of water out of his pack, drinking half of it, and handing the rest to her.

Willow took it, thanking him. She was beginning to think that Shep really had been making some life changes since their divorce. Even out at the villages, she had sometimes been able to meet him at their dusty airports and see how he worked with the laborers unloading the Otter and with some of his construction team who had driven up in a couple of Toyota pick-up trucks. He was so much more open then, smiling more, sometimes laughing, which wasn’t like him at all back in Afghanistan with his men and the Afghan soldiers. She drank deeply, then capped the bottle and handed it back to him, their fingers meeting. Her need for him was always present. And her pain over the way he had hurt her before had been dissolving during these months of working together. “Thanks,” she said, wiping her mouth and then sliding her hands down her olive-green khaki trousers to dry them.

“Tell me about this place?” he urged, looking around.

“This was a fourteenth-century Christian church built by the local religious group here around Lake Tana,” she said, gesturing to the piles of rubble. “They made bricks from the mud, collected gravel and rocks and put them in a patchwork to create the building.” Taking her hat off and wiping her brow, she saw Shep’s immediate interest in the disheveled monastery. He was an engineer. A structure like this, although long ago destroyed and left in ruins, got his immediate interest. “The early Christians built monasteries and nunneries all around Lake Tana,” she added, walking forward toward the heaps of rubble that had once been a standing church. “There’s a lot of monasteries still working on the islands of Lake Tana.” She wrinkled her nose. “The only issue I have with them is that women are not allowed to go through and tour them, but a man can.”

“Not very fair at all. I guess they are Christians who still think women are unworthy in the eyes of a male god. Yes?” Shep replied drily and he shook his head.

She snorted and settled her hat back on her head. “To say the least. But here? Since it is a destroyed monastery and no one lives here or takes care of it anymore? Men and women can come here and look at what’s left of it.”

Shep walked slowly, stopping often around the top of the hill, studying the bricks, the wood that lay dry rotting here and there. At one point he knelt down, sifting his fingers through the dry dirt, picking up hardened yellow reeds that had once been the thatched roof over the main building. “It’s a shame that this was let go… to come to this.”

Willow joined him, standing by his shoulder, looking around the shady hill, appreciating the light breeze through the eucalyptus limbs. “UNESCO has been working here for decades to help save the forty or so churches and monasteries that are still being used around the lake. One’s like this; they were built in a circular style with brick, mud and wood. A thatched roof was put on top of it. All the structures, even the ones that are still operating, need constant maintenance. UNESCO is helping to save them and that’s good. At one time, though? I’m sure this monastery held beautiful, sacred religious objects and art, but it’s all gone, now. Either stolen… or the priests took what was here and transferred it to another church or monastery.”

Shep moved his fingers over a brick that had broken, looking at the stones, reeds and mud that had originally created it. He stood, holding it between his hands. “This is a beautiful place for all this to have been built on.” He turned and he could see Lake Tana shimmering in the distance, a pale blue, a number of reed boats out on its smooth, glasslike surface. “It would take an archeology team of specialized experts to reassemble it at all.” He walked over to a once-dark wooden archway that had cracked, peeled and broken into several pieces. Leaning down, he moved his hands over the roughened, sun-bleached wood.

Willow couldn’t help but remember the same feeling, as if his fingers, as they trailed down the wooden archway’s roughened, splintered surface, were skimming over her body instead. She placed her hands on her hips, appreciating the quiet beauty of the place, ignoring her building need for Shep, and said, “I came here quite often the first year we were here. Usually, Dev came with me. We’d hike up here, have lunch and just be. I love the energy in this place, it’s very calming and sacred feeling.”

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