“I told you.” She returned wearily to the chair beside Sam. “I had a board meeting tonight, the boys are out with friends, and I’m too tired to cook something for just the two of us.”
Julia admitting she wasn’t up to cooking something homemade for her husband was like Martha Stewart suggesting that they all eat on paper plates, because she didn’t see the point in using china and silver when it meant you were going to have to wash everything when you were finished.
“Another meeting for what?” Walter held out the frozen box of what looked like fried chicken and mashed potatoes. “What’s this crap?”
Sam’s friend flinched.
No one used curse words in the Davises’ home. Certainly not Walter. It was one of his pet peeves. At least, it had been, until his drinking had become a problem.
Sam remembered the hurtful, judgmental things she’d said to her friend earlier, to distract herself from her own mistakes with her own family. She took Julia’s hand now in silent apology, wishing she knew what to do to make what Julia was going through easier. She suspected that at least at some point tonight, Walter had remembered that his sons and wife weren’t going to be home for dinner, or he wouldn’t have started cocktail hour so early. Which meant he’d gone out of his way to make sure he was good and drunk enough to worry Julia once she returned home.
Julia’s emotionless glance, her eye roll, said she’d arrived at the same conclusion. She slammed her palms down on the table with enough force to make Sam jump. Her ceramic napkin holder crashed to the floor, the cute little kitten making the saddest, dull tinkle and breaking into too many pieces to be repaired. Julia pushed to her feet and rounded on her husband.
“The meeting was about the Chandler shooting,” she said, “and the whole town was there. You should have been, too, instead of hunkering down here pickling your brain. You were Troy and Cade and Nate and Bubba’s football and baseball coach for how many years? But you couldn’t show up to support their families tonight, and maybe help the town figure out what to do to make sure that no more kids like Bubba and Nate get hurt.”
She was as close to losing it as Sam had ever heard her.
“And that”—Julia pointed at the frozen dinner—“is all there is for dinner tonight, unless you forage in the fridge I made sure was fully stocked before I left, and make yourself something else.”
Walter was breathing even harder than Julia, his glassy gaze growing more shocked with each hostile word his normally adoring wife shouted.
He turned and slammed the frozen box of food into their sink, the crash lifting Sam out of her chair and sending her edging toward the door to the backyard. It was way too early for the kind of night walking she liked to do. But Julia wouldn’t want her there to witness her long-overdue confrontation with her husband. And Sam’s nerves were too frayed to endure it.
“Well, maybe if you spent more of your time taking care of your own damn family,” Walter raged, “instead of worrying about the whole damn town, thinking you can solve everybody else’s problems at your stupid meetings, I wouldn’t be left here, rattling around this place by myself, pickling my brain the way you hate.”
“The meetings are important, not stupid,” Julia fired back. “Thanks to Brian and Sam and Kristen Hemmings, we made real progress tonight. You’d have known that, if—”
“Progress?” Walter raged, a stranger to Sam and, she suspected, his wife. “You mean someone figured out how to go back and stop Dillon Wilmington from whaling on his wife and kid? Someone got to Troy and Bubba in time to help them and keep us all from becoming another national news exposé on how small towns like ours don’t know jack about taking care of our own, any more than people in big cities do? Is that the kind of progress you’re making? No? Then you’re not doing shit, Julia. There’s nothing anyone can do now to save either of those two boys or any of the rest of us from the mess we’ve made!”
Sam escaped into Julia’s professionally landscaped, immaculately maintained backyard, horrified by what she’d just overheard, knowing Julia would be mortified, too—and likely Walter, if he remembered any of it tomorrow, or that Sam had even been there.
It was beautiful outside. Julia and Walter had lovingly cared for every part of their home and their boys. That was what made what was happening to the Davises’ marriage now even harder to watch. If Julia and Walter couldn’t make it after everything they’d done for Chandlerville and so many families like Sam and Brian’s, it was easy to think that none of the rest of them had much of a chance, either.
She headed off, walking into the deepening twilight, thinking of Mallory and Pete’s upcoming wedding this summer, and the new journey they were beginning together. When Sam and Brian had moved to the lane, Walter and Julia Davis and Pete and Emma Lombard had welcomed them with so much southern hospitality and charm, it had been more than a little overwhelming. But their neighbors hadn’t batted an eyelash at Sam’s peculiar need to keep mostly to herself and avoid group gatherings.
They’d made her feel at home. The Davis and Lombard families had become extensions of her own. Now so much had changed, with Emma’s death and Julia’s issues with Walter, and the hit the entire community had taken with the shooting. It felt as if it were all slipping away, a world that Sam had come to rely on more than she’d realized. A community that had strengthened her over the years, even when she wasn’t aware of it, helping her to be ready when it was time to take her stand with Brian. Even going to Kristen’s condo today, fueled by the determination to do something to help her son, had been partly because of the kick in the pants Julia had given her when they’d argued earlier that afternoon. And she and Brian had both found their separate ways to the meeting tonight, so they could stand in front of their town together and try to help.
Sam stopped in the middle of the road. The truth settled around her as softly and perfectly as the night. She’d be nowhere without these people, or this place. She and Brian owed them all so much for giving them the time and space to fall apart the way they had since moving here. And maybe, just maybe, to knit themselves back together again.
“A penny for them…” a deep voice said from the gathering shadows around her.
“Brian!”
Her heart beat faster at the sight of her husband, and it had absolutely nothing to do with him surprising her. She was remembering the feel of his lips against her fingers in the auditorium, his kiss on her cheek when he’d stopped to check on her before the meeting, and the raw urgency of his embrace during their walk earlier.
Her entire body felt alive as she watched the man of her dreams step closer to where she’d stopped at the curve in Mimosa Lane that ended their cul-de-sac and curled back onto the main road. She felt herself smiling at him, especially the shiner he was going to have tomorrow from Dan’s punch.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” His fingers curled into hers, where they’d always, always belonged, no matter how bad things got between them.
“You didn’t,” she assured him. “What are you doing here?”
“Stalking you.” His grin turned sexy as hell. “It took Pete and me a while to get away from the meeting. I got home a few minutes ago and was on my way over to Mallory’s to get the kids. I saw you slip out of Julia’s, and I… I needed to see you. I got your note.”
He held up the Post-it she’d left in the kitchen when she’d stopped by the house on her own way home.
I’m so proud of you!
And she was, for so many things. For everything he’d done today, opening himself up to Cade. For saying what he’d said at the meeting tonight, baring his heart to their friends and neighbors. And for helping Sam to be able to stand there with him.
“I’m proud of you,” her husband said. “You’ve been a warrior all day, even when I was so angry at you early this morning. I… I needed to see you again tonight, Sam, for me. Not to check up on you, or to worry about you. I mean, I know how frazzled all this has left you, and you have every reason to feel whatever
you need to. But it’s been a hell of a day for me, too, and I…”
He sounded lost suddenly. Alone. Searching. Her unstoppable, unflappable husband. Empathy flooded her, and gratitude.
We’re broken, he’d said in front of the school board.
And when he’d needed something he couldn’t find for himself, he’d come searching for her.
“I hope you don’t mind…” His smile was gone. He sounded so unsure of her, and himself. “But I was wondering if I could just walk with you a little tonight.”
“No.” She caught the flicker of regret in his eyes, the flinch of the muscles along his jawline. “No, I mean, it’s fine. I don’t mind. In fact…”
She brought his fingers to her lips, returning his earlier kiss goodbye, making it her welcome.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I’ll walk with you as long as you want to.”
Brian strolled with his wife down the lane that had become their home in ways Manhattan never had been.
They’d escaped to Georgia, yes. But they’d raised their boys in Chandlerville. Most of their memories with Cade, all of them with Joshua, were wrapped up in this place. In New York, he and Sam had been little more than kids themselves. Their circle of friends had been about fun and exploring the city and letting off steam on the weekends. On Mimosa Lane, they’d put down roots and nurtured deeper ties and found other families that, even if they hadn’t shared the same beginnings, had been moving in the same direction with their lives and wanting the same things for their futures.
“I used to blame you, you know.” He’d promised himself that the next chance he got to speak with Sam privately, he’d make it count. He wouldn’t flub things the way he had when they’d walked this same road just a few hours ago.
Sam didn’t answer at first. She didn’t let go of his hand, but he could feel an invisible part of her move away from him—the trusting part that he’d won back, at least for a moment, during the board meeting. Then she nodded.
“About having to move here?” she asked.
“Yeah…” He’d been so blind. “It was stupid.”
“You were entitled. You gave up a lot when we left the city.”
“But I gained a lot more. An entirely new life. With you. I think maybe…” He’d gone over and over it in his head on the way to city hall, and when he’d been half listening to the first part of the meeting, and then on the drive back to the lane. “I think maybe I was pushing you so hard to get better sometimes, because…”
“You thought that if I did, then maybe we could go back to New York and start our lives over where we left off?”
She’d known. Of course she’d known. His wife was, bar none, the smartest, most intuitive person he’d ever met. She’d known all along that he’d been giving the second chance they’d found in Chandlerville only half his attention. Half his passion. As if he’d somehow left the better part of himself behind in Manhattan.
“I’ve realized something else,” he said, “after I listened to you talk with Cade and Nate. You helped them through what was happening, because you’ve been exactly where they are, and you’ve found your way back. And that’s when I finally got it.”
His wife looked at him for the first time since they’d started walking, a little startled, it seemed, by his shift in topics.
“What?” she asked. “What did you realize?”
“That you started getting better three months ago.” It had floored him, even though it had taken his meltdown at work for the truth to finally penetrate his thick skull. “The moment you stood up for yourself and stopped letting me put words in your mouth that weren’t true—that everything was fine or okay or whatever you hate so much when you hear me say it. That was the moment when you finally started getting better.”
And at that point, the life in Chandlerville he’d taken so for granted had begun to unravel. Because Sam had pulled away from him in order to get better herself, and he’d lost the very best part of him. Without Sam beside him, for the first time since 9/11, he’d had only his own broken pieces to focus on.
She hadn’t been the only one who’d been damaged by what had happened to them at either Ground Zero or Chandler Elementary. And it had been suddenly clear that Brian’s wife was leaps and bounds ahead of him, dealing with both her problems and his denial.
“I…” She shrugged, her reaction so much like Cade’s when their son couldn’t quite say what he was trying to, it grabbed at Brian’s heart. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, the way I’ve acted a lot of the time today. But I feel stronger. A lot stronger. It’s kind of sneaked up on me. I hadn’t realized it. I expected to fall apart again at the school. Then arguing with you. Confronting Cade. Dealing with tonight’s meeting. But—”
“You’re stronger than either one of us gave you credit for. Yeah. Go figure, huh? I’ve always said you were more of a hero than I’d ever been, for what you’ve overcome. But I had no idea, Sam, how much you were still hurting while you managed to live the life we have here. Now look at you, at what you’ve been able to accomplish in a single day, after just a few months of focusing on what you really needed to.”
They were approaching the playground, where Sam had met Nate so many times. She walked over to the swings where Brian had freaked after finding her pouring her heart out to their neighbor’s son instead of him. She sat, sadness and worry overshadowing the beautiful picture she made in her jeans and soft sweater.
“He won’t come tonight,” she said. “Will he?”
“It’s a good thing.” Brian took the swing beside her. “He has his parents’ attention now. Hopefully he won’t need to roam anymore. He and Cade finally had it out. I’m worried about both of them, after how rough things got in the kitchen. But it’s a good start. Today was a good start for a lot of people.”
“Us, too?” She pushed off, swinging.
His chest squeezed at the wistfulness of her question.
She was opening the door that she’d slammed in his face three months ago. And, Lord, he didn’t want to screw this up now that they seemed to have turned a corner. Which pretty much made it the worst possible time for him to come completely clean about everything that had happened to him today. But he was going to talk with his wife. No more holding back things he didn’t want to upset her with.
“I’ve taken a leave of absence from the firm,” he said. “Hell, I may have saved myself from getting canned. But for now, the partners have agreed to an indefinite leave while everyone reconsiders their options.”
She came to a halt beside him so quickly, the toes of her favorite Converse sneakers, the ones she wore for gardening, dug into the dirt.
“What?” she asked.
“I told the partners that I needed some time.” Nope. Strike that. No more dancing around the truth. “Actually, my memo said that you and the boys needed more of my time, and that I needed to be here with you, fully focused on you, for as long as it takes to sort out our problems. Which they’d pretty much figured out already, since I blew off another important meeting this morning to be at Chandler, and then stayed way too late talking with Kristen after you left with Julia.”
“You…” Hope bloomed across Sam’s features, transforming her into a vision of the beautiful, carefree girl who’d captured his attention at a long-ago dinner party he’d almost skipped. “You said that?”
“I meant it.” Whatever he had to do, he was going to do it. The right way. For the right reasons. “I’ve made a mess of things. Myself most of all. I’ve put all the responsibility to get better on you, while I’ve used my career as an excuse for not getting myself to a place where I can be what you and the boys need. That ends now, whatever the consequences at W&M. You and our family are my first priority from here on out, whatever…” He swallowed. The next part was harder to get out, but he’d promised himself he’d say it, too. “Whatever you decide you need to do about our marriage, I’ll always be here for you.”
Whatever you decide to do about our
marriage…
He watched it settle over her—the reality of him giving in to her need for them to take their time and realistically figure out what was best for them and their boys. She shook her head, something not quite fear in her gaze, and seemed to be grappling for something, anything, to say in response.
“Consequences?” she finally settled on. “What do you think the partners will do?”
Brian kicked off, swinging and not allowing himself to push her for a definite answer about their future. “Whatever happens, I’ll make it work. If it comes down to it, I’ve started over professionally before. I can do it again.”
Sam caught his swing’s chain, jerking him off balance. “But you can’t do that. You’ve worked so hard to get where you are at the firm.”
When he was once again sitting still beside her, he reached out and cupped her cheek, cherishing that one simple touch and her acceptance of it as much as he had the most intimate moments they’d known.
“It’s done,” he said. “I’m finished with everything I’ve been doing that’s been taking me away from working as hard as I need to on our family. And I’m not going back to W&M until we’ve figured out where we’re going next. Nothing’s more important to me, Sam, than doing things right this time.”
She launched herself into his arms, leaving him little time to react. He tumbled backward out of his swing, dragging his wife with him to the ground, cushioning her fall. And then he was staring up into her sparkling eyes, the full moon high in the April sky above them, setting her auburn hair on fire.
“Samantha…” he whispered, capturing her lips with his and praying he wasn’t rushing her again.
“Brian,” she whispered back, taking over the kiss, his heart, as she loved him with her mouth.
Her body settled against his, feeling better than every dream he’d had of her since she’d walked away. Letting his instincts lead, taking in all the incredible things Sam made him feel, he let his hands roam down her back, molding her lower belly to him as he massaged the base of her spine. She gasped, and then their tongues were dancing. They both groaned. They both held on tighter.
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