by Robin Wells
“I should have thought you’d be happy for me.”
“I thought that, too. That I should be glad you’d gotten what you wanted.” He looked at her, and his voice dropped. “I wasn’t.”
Her chest suddenly hurt, as if her heart was having to work too hard. “Why not? You had what you wanted, too.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
The ache in her chest grew stronger. Zack turned the vase upside down and looked at the bottom. “Was your marriage?”
She tried to remember what, exactly, she’d thought marriage would be like when she was a girl. “Yeah. In a lot of ways, it was even better. Maybe not in the candlelight-every-night way, but in a real, we-can-have-fun-even-though-we’re-just-doing-laundry way. We—”
The door down the hall banged open, startling Katie. She heard footsteps in the hallway, then Gracie appeared in the doorway.
“Hey.” She looked from Katie to Zack. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Katie said, feeling oddly guilty.
“Just showing Katie her room,” Zack said.
Gracie made a face. “I told you it was lame.”
“I think it’s beautiful.” Katie smiled at Zack. She couldn’t believe he’d remembered that magazine picture. If she wasn’t careful, she might just begin to think that he’d really cared about her, that their time together had meant something, that he’d felt that gut-deep connection, that he felt it still. And if she allowed herself to think that, she might begin to hope for something more.
And she didn’t want more. She twisted her wedding ring. She didn’t want to open her heart again. She’d already had more than most people ever got. She wanted to just be content with what she’d had.
So why wasn’t she?
“What was it like when that tree fell on the house?” Gracie sauntered into the room and sat down on the bed beside Katie.
A bolt of joy struck Katie’s heart. It was the first time Gracie had made any kind of move to seek out her company. Maybe Gracie was starting to thaw.
“It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to think. I heard this deafening crash and felt the floor shake, and then the electricity went out, and since I was in the closet, it was dark. I opened the door, and half the bedroom wasn’t there, and I smelled smoke. I think I kinda went into shock, because the next thing I knew, you all were there.”
“Good thing, huh?”
“Absolutely.” She smiled at the girl. “Did your photos get wet?”
“No. Just the outside of the album.”
“Good.”
Gracie gestured to the urn on the dresser. “Looks like your husband made it out okay.”
“Yeah,” Katie said. Funny how she and Gracie were bonding over the things they’d saved from the house. Paul and Gracie’s parents were bringing them together.
Across the room, Zack’s jaw tightened and his lips pressed hard together.
“Do we have any chocolate?” Gracie asked. “I’ve got a really strong craving.”
“Lulu brought over a chocolate cream pie. Let’s go see if it’s as good as it looks.”
Gracie popped up from the bed, and Katie followed her down the stairs. Zack took his time following behind.
“Want some pie?” Gracie asked him when he finally arrived in the kitchen.
“No, thanks. I think I’ll turn in.” He headed for the kitchen door.
“Where are you going?” Gracie asked.
“I’m going to sleep in the garage apartment.”
“Why?”
Zack cut a quick glance at Katie, then rubbed his jaw. “Well, Annette will be moving into the downstairs bedroom.”
“Not tonight.”
Zack shrugged. “Might as well go ahead and get used to it.” Without looking at Katie, he walked out the door.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The morning after the storm, the world seemed wiped with Windex. The air smelled fresh, the grass was a perkier shade of green, and the sky was a dazzling azure. The beauty of the day was a stark contrast to the wreckage of Katie’s house.
Katie surveyed the damage, her chest tight, as she climbed out of the U-Haul Zack had rented in Hammond earlier in the morning. “Good heavens,” she breathed. The trunk of a pine tree stood like a giant scorched matchstick, the victim of a lightning strike. The top half of the seventy-five-foot-tall pine had fallen on the enormous water oak in her backyard, knocking it over. The oak lay through the center of the house, its branches an incongruous fresh green, its root-ball twice as tall as Katie.
“It’s even worse than I thought,” Katie said.
“Well, let’s see what we can salvage,” Zack said.
Instead of wading through the debris, they went to the kitchen door, which was, ironically, locked. Katie’s hand shook as she inserted the key. “My insurance agent said the kitchen was a total loss.”
She pushed the door open and gasped. It was beyond a loss; it was gone. Sunshine streamed onto the floor, which was covered with splintered beams, crumbled drywall, and broken furniture. The back and side walls lay flattened beneath the trunk of the enormous tree.
Katie tried to draw a deep breath, but her rib cage seemed to have shrunk. She bent and picked up part of a photo from under the tree. It was one of her favorites—a picture of her and Paul on their wedding day, the one where he was feeding her a piece of cake. The picture had been cut by the broken glass of the frame, and what was left was wet and warped.
Tears formed in her eyes. “All the pictures on this wall…” Her voice choked. The pictures were now under the trunk of the tree. All the mementos of her life with Paul—their vacations, their holidays, their wedding—were gone.
Zack put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Hey—I’m sorry.” She smelled his shaving cream on his neck. His chest was hard and firm, and she could feel the bulge of his biceps as his arm curled around her. She knew he meant to comfort her, but being consoled by Zack right now made her feel disloyal to Paul.
She pulled away. “Let’s see what the bedrooms are like.”
She led the way through the hallway to Gracie’s room, which looked just the same as before the storm, except for the view out the window of the overturned tree’s roots. “Thank God,” she breathed. Gracie’s things, at least, were intact.
She made her way down the hall to her room. Half of it was gone. The wall on her side of the bed was missing, smashed by the tree. The other half of the room looked weirdly normal.
Zack stepped in behind her. “Jesus.” He wasn’t looking at the leveled wall. He was looking at the things on Paul’s nightstand—a baseball cap, a key chain, a book about the NFL. A trouser press holding a man’s jacket rested beside it.
Her face heated. She suddenly saw the room from a fresh perspective, the way Zack must see it. She could only imagine what he thought—that she was pitiful, that she was weird, that she was stuck, that she couldn’t move on. All of which might be a little true, but mostly—at least, lately—she simply didn’t notice the stuff on Paul’s nightstand, because she was so used to it being there. At first she’d agonized about what to do with it. When she cleaned house, she’d just dusted around it. And then, after a while, it was a habit, and she didn’t even really see it.
One thing she knew for sure: She didn’t want Zack standing there, looking at it.
Apparently he didn’t want to be there, either. “I’ll go bring in some more boxes.”
He turned on his heel and left the room.
His stomach wadded into a giant spitball as he headed out to the truck. He’d known Katie kept pictures of her husband all over the house, but keeping his things on the nightstand, as if he still slept with her…
Well, it was pathetic. Downright pathetic. He knew she’d loved the guy—he could see it in the way her eyes went all soft when she talked about him, and the way she still wore her wedding ring—but something about seeing Paul’s stuff on the nightstand had hit him right in the gut. Did she look over at that stuff b
efore she turned out the light and pretend he was in the other room, about to come to bed? Did she lie there and fantasize about how they would make love when he joined her in the queen-sized four-poster? Did she touch herself and pretend it was her husband doing the touching—the way Zack thought about Katie?
Yearning, sharp and intense, hit like a hunger pang. What would it be like to be loved like that? To know that a woman like Katie cared about you so thoroughly and completely, to know that she carried you in her heart and soul? The thought bounced around an empty place inside him like an echo in the Grand Canyon.
He muttered a curse, grabbed a box, and stalked into Gracie’s room, where he packed up her things in record time, then carried them to the U-Haul.
A few minutes later, he stepped back into Katie’s room to see how she was progressing.
She’d cleared off that shrine of a nightstand, thank God—along with the top of the dresser across the room. But he found her in the walk-in closet, holding a man’s shirt as if it were a religious artifact. One entire side of the closet was filled with men’s clothing. Apparently she hadn’t gotten rid of any of her husband’s belongings.
His muscles tensed. He cleared his throat to alert her to his presence.
She whipped toward him, her face alarmed. He felt like he’d interrupted her in the middle of a prayer or meditation or something.
He put a hand on the closet doorjamb, trying to look casual, and forced his voice into what he hoped was a normal tone. “Want some help?”
“No.” She folded the shirt as if that was what she’d been doing all along, instead of gazing at it like it was the Shroud of Turin. “I’ve got this covered.”
“Okay. Let me know if you need more boxes.”
He stalked toward the living room, trying not to think about her in that closet, trying not to think about the look on her face or the way she’d held that shirt. That empty spot inside him stretched wider and deeper. He tried to reason it away. Why did he care, anyway? It wasn’t any of his business.
But it felt like his business, and he couldn’t get it off his mind.
He waited half an hour, then went back in to check on her. A stack of boxes stood outside the closet. He gestured toward them. “Want me to take these to Goodwill or something?”
“No.”
“Okay. I’ll take them to the storage unit, then.” He’d rented one for her furniture when he’d picked up the U-Haul.
“No. I want to keep them with me.”
“All of them? Everything that was in this closet?”
She tilted her chin up, as if daring him to argue. “Yes.”
She wasn’t ready to let go. A lump the size of the moon lodged in his throat. Okay, it was no skin off his nose. Why should he care? And yet, part of him wanted to punch his fist through the wall.
Which made no sense. He was crazy about Katie, but he wasn’t planning on doing anything drastic or permanent. It wasn’t like he seriously wanted to take her husband’s place.
He needed to get a grip. If she wanted Paul’s stuff at his house—why the hell did she want to bring her dead husband’s stuff to his house?—then that was where he’d put it.
He ran a hand down his face. “Okay. I’ll load these boxes with Gracie’s stuff.”
Zack picked up one of the four boxes carefully labeled “Paul”—not “Paul’s Pants” or “Paul’s crappy suits.” Just “Paul,” as if the man himself were in there—and carried it out to the curb.
Thirty minutes later, a blue Toyota parked in front of the house as Zack started to load the pile of boxes into the bed of the truck. A familiar lanky man climbed out. “Thought maybe you and Katie could use some help.”
“Dave—hello!” Zack climbed down from the back of the truck and shook his hand. Dave had come by yesterday afternoon to check on Katie and Gracie, and he’d offered to come back today to help clean things up.
The older man surveyed the house, then shook his head and let out a low whistle. “Looks even worse in the light of day.”
“Yeah.” Zack nodded. “It’s a mess.”
“Let me give you a hand with those boxes,” Dave said.
Zack hesitated. “Are you supposed to be lifting things with your heart condition?”
“As long as they’re not too heavy, I should be fine. My doctor wants me to exercise.”
Dave bent to pick up a box, then froze when he saw the name “Paul” scrawled on the side in neat magic marker. “Is this the urn?”
“Oh, no. Katie wouldn’t leave the house without it last night. It’s at my place.”
His frown relaxed into relief, then his brow furrowed again. “So what’s in here?”
Zack waved a hand at the other boxes. “Paul’s clothes and stuff.”
“Wow. She’s still got all his things?”
“Looks like it.”
Dave blew out a sigh and shook his head. “She needs to let go and move on.” He ran a hand over his head. “Maybe this disaster is just what she needed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes we have to lose the things we’re attached to before we can see the stuff that really matters.”
“She already lost the only thing that ever mattered.” The words came out harsher than he’d intended. Hell, he hadn’t really intended for them to come out at all. He was talking to Paul’s father, for Christ’s sake. At least Dave didn’t seem to take offense.
“Katie’s stuck in the past,” Dave said. “She’s hiding behind it.”
“Hiding, how?”
“Well, when people are afraid of something, they divert their attention so they don’t have to face it. Some people hide behind booze or work or computer games. Others use hobbies or shopping or parties or a defeatist attitude, or staying busy all the time—or traveling and dating lots of beautiful women.”
Zack chose to ignore the obvious jab at his lifestyle. “What do you think Katie’s afraid of?”
“Of moving on. Of getting her heart broken again.”
Zack picked up a box and shoved it into the truck. “Do you think she’ll ever be able to feel about someone else the same way she felt about Paul?” He hadn’t meant to ask the question; it just kind of burst out. What was with him today? He climbed into the bed of the truck and pushed the box to the back.
“Oh, I think she’ll fall in love again. But I suspect every love is different.”
Meaning what? Any other love would be second-best?
“But I’m not really qualified to answer that,” Dave continued. His mouth pulled into a rueful smile. “I’ve only loved one woman my whole life. I just did a really bad job of letting her know it.” He lifted a box and shoved it into the truck, breathing hard.
Zack looked at him, worried about the older man’s heart. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just not in as great a shape as I used to be.”
“Tell you what—why don’t you go inside and give Katie a hand packing things up? I’ll handle these boxes.”
“Okay. Guess I’ll do that.” Dave clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks for being here for Katie.”
“Where else would I be?”
Wherever the hell you were between 1992 and now, Zack’s brain chided him. He watched the older man amble toward the house, his words replaying in Zack’s mind.
Apparently Dave thought Zack was afraid of something, too—probably commitment. He’d had plenty of women tell him he was a commitment-phobe.
And hell, he was, but that didn’t mean he was hiding from anything. Just because he chose not to get all tied up and emotionally entangled didn’t mean something was wrong with him; it just meant he was smart. He’d spent the first seventeen years of his life trying to get his parents’ affection, and all it had gotten him was pain.
He’d seen too many people carry neediness from a bad childhood over into adulthood, only to get hurt again and again. He refused to stay stuck on that hamster wheel.
But nearly losing Katie yesterday—well, it had scared him
to death. When it came to her and Gracie, he damn sure hadn’t felt detached and uninvolved. He felt involved up to his eyeballs.
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Lulu and a gangly man in cowboy garb. “Hey there, Zack!” Lulu waved as she stepped out of a red pickup truck, wearing pink jeans, pink sneakers, and an orange-and-pink shirt. “My husband and I came to help out.”
Rachel and Bev and their husbands drove up right behind them, and were promptly joined by eight of Katie’s neighbors and the youth group from the Methodist church.
By twelve-thirty, the tree had been sawed and removed, and all of the retrievable possessions had been boxed up, carted away, and stored. The volunteer effort had apparently been well coordinated, because someone had brought a tray of sandwiches, someone else provided a cooler of cold drinks, and yet another person had baked several dozen brownies. Lulu set the feast out on the tailgate of her red pickup and everyone ate their fill.
“Thank you so much,” Katie called as everyone trooped back to their homes or cars.
“Glad to help. Just a little payback for how you helped me out during Hurricane Katrina,” one of her neighbors said.
“And you’ve saved my sorry ass from more messes than you can shake a stick at,” Lulu said.
“You were a rock for me when Sydney got sick,” said another.
Katie’s eyes grew misty. “Aw. You guys are the best.”
“You have some great friends,” Zack said when they’d left.
“Yeah,” Katie said. “I’m really lucky.”
“There’s no such thing as luck. You’ve got good friends because you’re a really good friend yourself.”
She lifted her shoulders. “That’s what life’s all about, isn’t it? Caring for others.”
“It’s that simple, huh?”
“Pretty much.” The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled. “Just that simple, and just that complicated.”
She really believed that. To Katie, life wasn’t about achievement or challenge or winning or money or any of the things that drove most people—the things that had always driven him. To Katie, life was about caring for others.
The very thing he’d spent his whole life avoiding.
