by Emily March
She drew away. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m ordinarily the suave and debonair McBride. With you, I’m an awkward, stumbling snooze.”
“Ah.” The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, rewarding him. “I won’t argue the snooze, but you have an excuse in Bree.”
“Sleep deprivation is a killer. How long does this part of parenting last?”
“Depends on the baby, but as a rule, the first three months are the most challenging.”
“I still have a way to go then.”
“I think it’s probably good for you to work naps into your daily schedule.”
“Naps? Plural? So I’ve had my morning nap. Are you suggesting an afternoon nap, maybe? Following some strenuous and satisfying physical activity, perhaps?” He waggled his eyebrows.
Her smile broadened, and she shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Dang, woman.” He slapped his thigh. “Okay, that’s it. There’s only one thing to do. Will you marry me?”
At that, she laughed, and the last of her melancholy appeared to fade away. Humor sparkled in the gorgeous blue eyes she turned toward him. “I don’t think I’m ready for six feet and two hundred hard-body pounds of charisma, but thanks for the offer.”
Well, now, that comment made Boone want to preen. He said, “I’m heartbroken, but fair warning. I’ll likely ask again. Also, I’m six two and a half. The half matters because it makes me taller than Tucker and Jackson. And I maintain around one ninety, depending on how often I drive to Gunnison for Mexican food.”
“I apologize, and I stand forewarned.”
“Actually, you’re sitting forewarned.” He nuzzled her hair and murmured against her ear. “I’d suggest an early-afternoon nap, but our lunch is due to be delivered soon. Want to go for a walk? There’s a meadow not far away. Brick told me the wildflowers are spectacular right now.”
“I’d love that.”
They detoured by the tent to drop off the journal, and then Boone led the way into the forest. “Smell that,” Hannah said once trees surrounded them. “There’s a reason air fresheners and household cleaners are given a ‘pine-fresh scent.’ I do love the fragrance of a forest.”
“I know. It’s almost as good as the aroma of brisket on the Green Egg.”
“The what?”
“Not a barbecue woman?”
“Oh, the smoker. My mind went to Dr. Seuss. However, you shouldn’t compare the fragrances of nature with food aromas. It’s apples to oranges.”
“You have a point.” Boone grabbed her hand, pulled her toward him, and kissed her. “You smell better than pine forest and brisket put together.”
Her laugh was a little breathless. “Now, there’s a compliment I’ve never heard before.”
“Stick with me, Hollywood. I’ve got a million of ’em.”
“I’ll just bet you do.”
A few minutes later, they broke from the forest at the edge of an alpine meadow. Hannah abruptly stopped. “Oh, wow. It’s even more gorgeous than the last meadow we saw.”
“It’s a little early in the season to see so much color. Conditions have been perfect this year. Makes you want to don a wimple and twirl like a nun, doesn’t it?”
“‘The hills are alive,’” Hannah sang, picking up on the reference to The Sound of Music.
Before them, wildflowers painted a carpet of color across the land, mostly orange, yellow, and blue, with a few pinks scattered about. Above them, puffy white clouds floated lazily across a summer-blue sky, their gray-tinted bottoms teasing afternoon showers. Craggy mountain peaks with patches of snow clinging to the crevices rose in the distance. “It’s a postcard, isn’t it?”
“It’s a beautiful spot.” Boone scanned the meadow for wildlife. While he’d love to be able to point out an elk or antelope to Hannah, he hoped not to deal with bears.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” Hannah said suddenly. “It’s perfect. It’s exactly what I needed. The hills are alive—and so am I.”
He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “You’re welcome, and you are. Very much so.”
“My heart is full of emotion. I think that’s why reading your journal brought on the waterworks.”
The journal. I did my best with damage control distraction, and now she brings it up? Well, okay. Maybe the book’s juju was meant for this moment after all.
Nevertheless, Boone had the sense of stepping out into a minefield as he observed, “The story didn’t strike me as heartbreaking. I thought it was triumphant.”
“Really? Adelaide Throckmorton was mourning her husband’s untimely death when her house caught fire, and she was unable to save her invalid son. She almost threw herself in front of a stagecoach! That’s not heartbreaking?”
“But she didn’t fling her life away. She didn’t quit. She chose to go to Texas and start over. Lots of people did. That’s why Texas came to be called the land of beginning again.”
“She went to Texas only to suffer more tragedy,” Hannah argued. “Diphtheria and tornadoes and rattlesnakes. Comanche raids and crop failures.”
“Yes, and she also taught school for forty years before dying at the age of ninety-two surrounded by her eight living children and nineteen of her thirty-six grandchildren. That woman lived. Life gave her lemons, and she made—”
Hannah interrupted. “Lemonade. It’s not that simple.”
“I know that. That’s why I had no intention of saying lemonade. I like to think I’m better than clichés. I was going to say limoncello. Sweet, but intoxicating. The way I see it, Adelaide created for herself a limoncello life.”
Hannah sniffed.
Boone added, “She was strong, Hannah. Just like you are.”
He could tell in that instant that he’d said the wrong thing. Her spine snapped straight. Her mouth set in a grim line.
“Strength is exhausting,” she said. “I might be ready to live again, but I’m done with being strong. I intend to embrace my inner wuss and emote whenever the hell I want to emote and fold like an origami figure if the spirit moves me. From here on out, I will live life in all my wussified glory.”
“Whoa,” Boone said. “Where did that come from?”
For a long moment, she didn’t respond, and a momentous tension hovered in the air. Boone wasn’t at all sure he wanted to hear the answer to his question, but he knew she needed to tell him. This was the journal kismet at work.
Finally, he pressed a kiss against her hair and surrendered to the inevitable by softly encouraging, “Tell me.”
She exhaled a shuddering sigh. “Yes, I think I need to do that. I think it’s time. But let’s walk. I can’t do this standing still.”
She bent and picked a trio of Indian paintbrush wildflowers before continuing along the path. They walked half a minute more before she plucked an orange petal from one of the flowers and tossed it. “Adelaide’s story struck a nerve because I too had a sick child I was unable to save. Only, my house fire was my husband. Andrew was brilliant, a chemical engineer. He loved his work. He loved our children, and he loved me.”
Boone told himself he wanted to hear this. Nevertheless, jealousy stirred in his blood, which only made him feel stupid. Andrew was dead. Boone was here, walking beside Hannah. Loving Hannah.
“Andrew was a good man.” She plucked another petal off of the flower. “We had a good marriage and a happy, comfortable life. We were thrilled to find out we were expecting. I closed my practice when Sophia came along. I loved being a stay-at-home mom. Two years later, we got pregnant with Zoe, and life was even better.”
Practice? What practice? What sort of work had she been doing?
“When we went in for the anatomy scan at twenty weeks, we didn’t anticipate any problems. Oh, you always worry, but we already had one healthy child.” She denuded the Indian paintbrush of its remaining petals and tossed the stem away. “They saw a blockage in Zoe’s intestines, which led to further testing and eventually a diagnosis. Zoe was bor
n with cystic fibrosis.”
Boone winced. He was familiar with the genetic disease, having assisted in local fundraising efforts for the CF Foundation in Fort Worth. Though cystic fibrosis remained a serious, life-threatening disease, recent medical advancements had taken the word fatal out of the diagnosis. Progress in ongoing research offered real hope that a cure would come in the not-too-distant future.
Nevertheless, learning that your child would carry that burden had to have been a blow. “That must have been scary.”
“It was terrifying.” Hannah twirled a second wildflower stem between her thumb and index finger. “We couldn’t do anything but power on. We were careful with Zoe. Followed the guidelines our doctors gave us to a T. For the first year, things went fairly smoothly. Still, every little hiccup in her health put Andrew, especially, on edge. Being an engineer, he approached everything with logic and reasoning. He wanted to find a ‘fix.’ But you can’t do that with this disease. Medicine is headed there, but it isn’t there yet. Zoe was eighteen months old the first time she was hospitalized. That was the first time her father fell to pieces. He didn’t deal.”
“So you had to,” Boone said.
She shrugged. “Having to be the strong one all the time gets tiresome.”
“I imagine so.”
They walked on for another full minute before Hannah resumed her tale. “Zoe was a tiny little thing. Getting her to eat was always a battle. She was stubborn. Oh, the girl was hardheaded. I always thought that was a good thing, though, because she needed to be a fighter. She was going to face many challenges. We tried to give her as normal a life as was possible, but certain things weren’t safe for her to do. She didn’t understand. She was still too young.”
Boone ached to take Hannah into his arms. She had a fragile air about her now, a brittle note to her voice. He wanted to touch her, hold her, rock her in his arms, and murmur words of comfort against her ear. But because the story was not yet completed, he settled for resting his hand at the small of her back.
Hannah briefly leaned her head against his shoulder before saying, “Sophia, on the other hand, was the most biddable girl. Sweet as sugar and had a heart as big as the sun. She was a little mother who sang lullabies to her baby dolls every night while rocking them to sleep. She’d tuck them into their bed with a kiss. When Zoe had coughing fits, Sophia would go sit beside her and pat her foot.”
“What a sweetheart,” Boone said.
“She was. When she wasn’t comforting her sister, she was comforting her dad. The year Zoe turned four was tough. As careful as we were, we made three trips to the hospital in the first six months. The third time, Andrew quit coming along to the ER. He didn’t even visit once she was admitted. He just couldn’t do it. Seeing her lying in a hospital bed hooked up to machines was more than he could manage.”
Prick, Boone thought.
Hannah started tugging petals from the third flower. “He, um, pulled away from us. From me. He took on a new research project and all but lived in his lab. Not that he disappeared from the girls. He didn’t. He was still a good daddy who read bedtime stories and played hide-and-go-seek with the girls in the backyard. But every time Zoe had a setback, he fell apart. It was up to me to put him back together each time. But that was just a Band-Aid, and he was hemorrhaging.”
Boone didn’t think he’d ever felt as much animosity toward a dead person in his life. Andrew Dupree had left Hannah to do all the dirty work by herself.
“Shortly before Zoe’s fifth birthday, we had a particularly scary incident. She had RSV, which is a serious viral respiratory infection. For two days, it was touch and go. I seriously thought we might lose her. But like I said, she was a fighter. She pulled through, and I brought her home. Andrew was there, waiting with ice cream.”
Isn’t that special.
“It’s the days and weeks that followed that haunt me still today. I knew something was wrong with Andrew. I thought he was having an affair. I thought he’d needed someone to lean on, and I hadn’t been there for him, so he found someone else.”
Yep. Definitely a prick.
“I didn’t call him on it. I didn’t have the energy. I had my hands full trying to help Zoe. She was weak as a kitten, and she desperately needed to put some weight back on. Also, Sophia was extra needy during that time. I think she sensed things weren’t right between her dad and me.”
Boone was pissed and trying not to show it. Who was there for you to lean on, Hannah? Damn Andrew Dupree.
“I let it ride. I was exhausted, and I didn’t have the energy to confront what I thought was wrong in my marriage.” Hannah dropped the wildflower remnant and clasped her hands. Her knuckles went white. “Then I caught the flu. It knocked me flat. I checked into a hotel to quarantine myself from the girls, and Andrew stayed home with them.”
Well, I should hope so.
Boone sensed she was coming to the apex of her tale. He wanted to shush her, to tell her she need not say the words out loud, that he didn’t need to hear them. He didn’t want to hear them.
He knew he had to hear them.
“I was dead asleep when he called. I think he’d called more than once before I woke up enough to answer. He was babbling. Panicked.” She closed her eyes and repeated. “Panicked.”
Boone gave into his desire to drape his arm around her shoulders.
“He said that Sophia had a fever of a hundred and five, that he needed me to come home and help. But I was running a hundred-and-two temp myself, so … I … I … told him to take her to the ER.”
She looked up at Boone, her eyes hollow and watery with grief. “The hospital was on the other side of the lake. Andrew drove off the bridge.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Oh, honey. No,” Boone murmured, his voice rough.
“The girls were strapped in their car seats. The autopsy showed that at some point before her death, Sophia had a seizure. The police theorize it happened during the drive, and that’s why he lost control.”
He wrapped both arms around her then and held her tight. His face buried in hair, he said, “What a horrible, tragic accident”
She pulled away, and met his gaze. Fiercely, she declared, “One that never should have happened! The man was in the midst of a full-blown panic attack. I should have told him to call nine-one-one. He had no business driving. Actually, he had no business caring for the girls at all that night. I should have called a sitter.”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Hannah, you were ill. Your plate wasn’t full; it was overflowing. He could have called a sitter. He could have called nine-one-one.”
“No, I don’t think he could have. That’s what keeps me up at night. It’s so easy to see in hindsight. There was no affair. Andrew was depressed. He had an anxiety disorder. Boone, I should have caught it. Before I quit working to raise my babies, I was a therapist.”
“Ah, Hannah.”
“I was a professional, and I didn’t pick up on the clues. My babies died. Their father, who truly was a good man, died. I failed my family.”
“That’s not fair, Hannah. You’re being way too hard on yourself.”
“Maybe so, but for the past three years, it’s been my reality. I’m no Adelaide McBride, pioneer wonder woman. I’m Hannah Dupree, screwup.”
“I repeat, bullshit. You are Hannah Dupree, modern wonder woman. The fact that you are here with me right now proves that. Look at what you went through. Look at what you survived. You are strong, Hannah. You’re strong and resilient and courageous, and I wish you would recognize that. What you are not is omniscient. Andrew wasn’t your patient. He was your husband. It seems to me that you did the best you could in a trying situation, and you need to cut yourself some slack.”
Boone shoved his fingers through his hair, betraying his frustration. “This has gone off the rails. It’s not how I planned today. Today was supposed to be romance and relaxation. Instead, it’s revelations and recriminations. I wish I’d taken that journal and thrown it off Lover’s
Leap!”
“No. I’m glad you brought the journal.”
Recognizing the truth of the statement, Hannah took his hands in hers. These next words were important. She wanted him to know that, so she squeezed his fingers as she said, “This was the right time for me to read it. Adelaide’s story opened a door for me, Boone. I needed to show you my wounds. I needed to confess my mistakes and share regrets. Confession is good for the soul.”
Frowning, he asked, “So you feel better?”
“I do. My heart is still heavy, but the burden is lighter now. The darkness isn’t so dark.”
“Be a light,” he softly murmured.
“This is the first time I’ve told the story. You are the first person I’ve wanted to hear it. How you responded, what you said, it was exactly right. It’s what I needed to hear. Here and now. Today.”
“Good. Because everything I said is true.”
“The problem is that what I know in my mind doesn’t always jive with what’s in my heart. I know I did my best, but nothing can change the fact that if I’d done better, I might have saved Sophia and Zoe. That’s my harsh reality. I haven’t been able to forgive myself for that.”
“Well, it’s time you did.”
“I think you’re right. I think I’m ready to cut myself the slack you mentioned. Accident or not, what happened was tragic. I had a part in it, but so did Andrew. So did fate. It’s not all on me.”
“Exactly.”
She showed him a bittersweet smile. “It’s been a long time coming, Boone, but I think I can do it. I think I’m finally ready to forgive myself.”
He looked at her, studied her hard. After a long moment, he nodded. “Good. That’s good. I’m glad.”
“Me too.” She went up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “It’s because of you, Boone. My world was black. You changed that. You brought color back to my world. You brought light into my life and led me to this good place, this bright, colorful world where I’m alive.”