Maggie silently agreed. New ornaments, new future. Exactly what they all needed.
If only the past could be changed as easily. Though Luke’s betrayal had happened years ago, she couldn’t forget it. Or forgive. She was afraid forgiveness was something she wasn’t capable of.
The next afternoon, Luke left the lodge shortly before one. He wanted to visit his mother before she got too tired, but he also wanted to talk to her in private, before Reese came home. Luke had some questions that needed answers, and he didn’t want an audience.
He let himself into his mother’s house and found her in her favorite armchair, wrapped in a couple of colorful blankets.
“Hi, honey. I was hoping to see you today.”
“I need to talk to you.”
Abby tilted her head. “That sounds serious. What did you want to talk about?”
“Reese. Why didn’t you tell me he’s in AA? Didn’t you think it was important to tell me your husband is an alcoholic?”
“A recovering alcoholic. He’s been sober a long time.” She expelled a long breath, then leaned her head against the back of the chair. “You’re right. I should have told you. In the beginning, I didn’t want you to form any judgements about him before you got to know him.”
“Okay, I get that, but you’ve been together for years and I know Reese now. Why couldn’t you have trusted me enough to tell me the truth?”
“He wanted to tell you. He doesn’t like secrets in any form. But I wanted you to respect him, and I didn’t know if you would if you’d known his history. The alcohol is in his past. It has no bearing on the man he is today.”
“You didn’t think I could respect him if I’d known he was a recovering alcoholic? Come on, Mom. You raised me better than that.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have kept this from you, just as I shouldn’t have kept the information about your father from you. You’re not a child I have to protect. You’re a grown man. A wonderful man. I’m so proud of you, Luke.”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Abby grasped his hand. “I’m very…protective of Reese. He means the world to me.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do. He’s had a lot of adversity in his life. What I want most of all is for him to be happy. Promise me you’ll support Reese and be his friend after I’m gone, that you won’t abandon him.”
“Mom, you’re going to get better.”
She gripped his hand. “Luke, promise me.”
Luke closed his eyes against the pain. It hurt too much to imagine a world without his mother. But she needed his promise. “I promise I’ll always be Reese’s friend.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Hey.”
Maggie glanced over her shoulder, tensing as Luke walked into the kitchen. “Hey.”
“Do you have a few minutes? I’d like to talk to you about the dessert menu.”
Maggie couldn’t look at him. They’d barely spoken since he kissed her two days ago and despite telling herself his rejection didn’t matter, anger continued to swirl in her gut. Like ten years ago, he kissed her and then tossed her aside.
What made her even angrier was that she kept falling for it.
“What’s wrong with the dessert menu?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it. But it’s limited. Why only three items? And why did you choose the ones you did?”
“Because we’re trying to use locally grown products, remember? I chose the rhubarb crumble, the blueberry cobbler and the strawberry trifle because they’re locally grown fruits that I can freeze and use all winter. In the summer, I can create a new menu using fresh fruit.”
He leaned one hip against the counter next to the sink and folded his arms across his chest. “Okay, I get that, but why only three? There are dozens of other things you can make with those fruits. Why limit yourself? And surely we can offer at least one dessert with ingredients that come from more than a hundred miles away. Our guests will expect it.” Maggie’s hands shook as she peeled potatoes. “I’m trying to stay true to Harper’s vision.”
“I know you are, and you’re doing a good job, but I feel like you’re holding back.” He touched her arm and though his voice was barely above a whisper, she heard the pleading note in it. “I know you have a lot more creativity in you. Come on, Maggie Cat. Don’t settle. I know you can do better.”
Her whole body vibrated with anger. She pushed his hand away. “Don’t ever call me that again. You lost the right a long time ago.”
“Maggie—”
“Don’t Maggie me. Don’t think you can kiss me and I’ll do exactly what you want. Don’t assume you can manipulate me like you did when I was a kid. I’ve grown up, but you haven’t changed a bit in ten years. You’re the same self-centered user you were back then.”
His eyes turned a stormy, Arctic gray. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” She whirled to face him, the potato peeler clutched in her right hand. “Why are you even here, Luke? Why have you bothered to come back?”
“You know why. For my mother.”
“If you were such a good son, why did you wait until your mother was dying before you came home to see her?” Even as the words spewed from her mouth she knew she’d gone too far.
Luke flinched as if she’d hit him.
“Luke, I’m—”
He held up his hands. “You’re right. A good son wouldn’t have let old fears keep him from doing right by his family. I should have been here when my mother and my grandmother needed me. But I wasn’t and that’s inexcusable.”
He turned and left the kitchen. Maggie swore and banged her fist on her stainless-steel counter, flinching as pain shot up her arm. She’d let her insecurities get the better of her. What she’d said to Luke…
She squeezed her eyes shut and let the shame wash over her.
She had to apologize. Maggie ripped off her apron and hurried out the door.
She found him in the dining room, standing near one of the French doors, staring out at the frozen lake. His despondency reached out to her from across the room, and she knew she was responsible.
He turned to her as she approached, his expression unreadable. “Coming back for round two?”
“I don’t want to fight with you anymore. Those things I said—”
“You don’t have to apologize for pointing out the truth.”
He turned toward the lake once more, his jaw clenched. His pain hit Maggie like a physical blow. She reached for his hand and squeezed it between hers, needing to soothe, to make up for the terrible things she’d said in anger and fear. “Luke, I—”
“Don’t, Maggie, please. Don’t apologize. I should have been here for them. I’ve let them down. I’ve always let them down.”
“That’s not true! You know that’s not true.”
He simply shook his head and closed his eyes. Maggie looked at their joined hands, her much smaller one dwarfed by his. The summer they were together, she’d loved holding hands with him. Though his fingers had been callused from work, he had always touched her with tenderness.
His cell phone rang, jarring her out of her memories.
Luke reached for his phone. “It’s the cancer specialist from California. I have to take this.”
“Of course.”
Maggie backed away, intending to give him privacy to take his call, but he held firmly to her hand. In a flash of understanding, she recognized he was afraid of what the doctor was about to tell him.
“Dr. Healey, hello. Do you have some news?”
Luke bent his head, listening intently, his gaze averted. Then, his body stiffened and he threw back his head in an anguished gesture, his eyes shut tightly. A sick feeling formed in Maggie’s stomach. The news wasn’t good.
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” he asked.
His fingers tightened their hold on hers and she knew the answer was no.
Luke let out a breath. “I appreciate your t
ime, Dr. Healey. Yes, I’m sorry, too.”
He hit the off button and stuck his phone back in his pocket. “My mother’s cancer isn’t one that responds well to his new treatment. He says that even if it would respond, the cancer is too advanced.”
“I’m sorry, Luke.”
“Mom humored me. She knew I wouldn’t accept her diagnosis until I had no choice.”
Even though she’d seen for herself how sick Abby was, Maggie had been holding out hope for the new treatment almost as much as Luke. But now that last, faint hope was extinguished.
He dropped her hand, his gaze aimed at a point over her left shoulder. “I have to go. I have to talk to Mom.”
“Yeah.”
He lifted his gaze to hers and she read the pain in his eyes. “I haven’t been here for her the last ten years, but I’m here now. I’ll be here till…until she doesn’t need me anymore.”
Maggie nodded, unable to speak. Luke hurried out of the dining room, and she heard the front door open and close.
She bowed her head and wept.
Luke hadn’t taken off his jacket before his mother spoke.
“You heard from the cancer specialist in California, didn’t you?”
He imagined his face told the whole story. He couldn’t think. Sorrow and grief filled his heart and his thoughts. A leaden weight had settled on his chest, robbing him of breath and making it nearly impossible to speak. “Yeah.”
“I’m guessing he said there was nothing he could do, that the cancer was too advanced.”
Luke nodded, no longer able to form words.
Abby held out her arms. Luke went to her chair and dropped to the floor beside her, laying his head in her lap. Tears came hard and fast, the grief raw and unbearable. She smoothed her hand over his hair and whispered soothing words.
Later, exhausted and spent, he lifted his head. Abby brushed his hair from his face. “It’s going to be all right, Luke. It really is.”
He shook his head. How could anything be all right if she was gone?
She put her hand on his shoulder. “I can only imagine how you feel. I know I’d be devastated if my mother was dying. But I’ve made my peace with death, and I know it’s my time to go. My only concern is for the people I’m leaving behind. I need you to promise me you’ll live the rest of your life with love and forgiveness. Don’t waste a minute on regret or guilt or anger. Be happy, Luke.”
He nodded, though he wasn’t certain he could keep his promise.
CHAPTER NINE
Maggie was surprised by Luke’s arrival at the lodge the next morning while they were having breakfast. After the news he’d received, she thought he might take the day off to be with Abby.
Harper approached him first, wordlessly putting her arms around him. Maggie had told her sisters about the specialist’s diagnosis. She couldn’t get her head around the idea that Abby would soon be gone.
But Luke didn’t need her tears or her regrets right now.
“Have you eaten?” she asked.
He shook his head, and she nodded. “I’ll make you a couple of eggs. Over easy with whole wheat toast, right?”
He gave her a small grin. “Right. You have an amazing memory, Mags.”
She hurried to the safety of the kitchen and grabbed a carton of eggs from the cooler. Her memory was indeed amazing. She remembered every detail of their ill-fated summer together. How he’d raved over the eggs she’d made for him as if they were some sort of exotic dish. She remembered the heat of his skin and way the sun shone on his dark hair, bringing out the auburn highlights. She remembered the first time he entered her body, both the pain and the ecstasy. And she remembered his tenderness and how he held her like she was precious to him.
She wished she could forget.
For months following Luke’s departure, she thought about him every minute of every day. She remembered the magic of the summer, but mostly she agonized over why he’d left her so abruptly and so cruelly. Fretted over what she’d done wrong. Eventually, she came to believe he grew tired of her and that her grandmother had been right in saying he’d used her.
But that hadn’t stopped her from thinking about him, or comparing every man she met to him despite her best efforts to forget.
Maggie slid the eggs onto a plate and added the toast. Taking a deep breath, she picked up the plate and returned to the dining room. Luke gave her a grateful smile as she set it in front of him.
They finished eating in silence. Finally, Ethan spoke. “We heard about the specialist, Luke. If you want to take a few days—”
“No. I want to work. There’s plenty to do before the grand opening, and I…I need to keep busy.”
She should have known he’d want to bury himself in work because she used the same tactic. Whenever she didn’t want to deal with reality, she headed to her kitchen.
Ethan nodded. “Okay. Whatever you want.”
Luke got to his feet. “Thank you all for being so supportive. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some resumes to go through.”
Maggie watched him leave. There was a slump in his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. Despite the hurt that had simmered in her heart for the past ten years, she didn’t want to be angry with Luke any longer. Life was too short for anger, and she hated feeling that way.
But she wasn’t sure she could forgive. Or trust. At least, not the way she once had.
Luke gave the wrench a quarter turn to tighten the drainpipe before crawling out from beneath his grandmother’s kitchen sink. He turned the cold-water faucet on full and bent to see if the drain was still leaking. A steady stream of water told him he hadn’t fixed the problem.
He turned off the tap. “Damn.”
“I told you I could call the plumber. He lives right down the street.”
“I can do this, Grandma.”
“I’m sure you can,” Phyllis said with a nod. “But you don’t have to. You didn’t need to clean out my garage either. This busy work of yours isn’t going to change anything. Nothing will.”
He wriggled his shoulders into the tight confines of the wet sink cabinet once more. “I can’t sit around.”
“Your mother says you haven’t been to see her in a couple of days.”
The wrench slipped and clanked against the copper pipe. He had no answer for her. The truth was he’d been hiding, either at the lodge or with chores at his grandmother’s house. He couldn’t make himself go to her.
“I know it hurts. I know you feel powerless because I feel that way myself. And I’m angry, angrier than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m so angry that Abby is leaving me that I want to spit. I want to hit someone. I want to break something. It’s not supposed to be this way.”
Luke’s heart thumped painfully in his chest. He didn’t want to hear about his grandmother’s pain. His own grief tore at him like a wild animal, consuming him piece by piece. He couldn’t deal with her grief as well. He fitted the wrench carefully on the pipe once more.
“But you know what, Luke? Every day I put on my big girl panties, and I suck it up to walk the two blocks to my daughter’s house. I help her wash her hair or take a bath, and I make tea and chat. Whatever she needs. But I always make sure I share a laugh with her. Because right now, it’s not about me and my suffering. It’s about Abby.”
He twisted the wrench with both hands, using every ounce of his remaining strength. He was rewarded with a tiny movement. What he needed to do was to get his ass out of this cupboard, turn on the taps, and see if he’d fixed the leak. Instead, he closed his eyes and rested his head against the wet cupboard floor, too exhausted to move.
His grandmother must have lowered herself to the floor because a moment later she touched his knee. “Stop punishing yourself, Luke. It’s not your fault. It’s not anybody’s fault.”
Was that what he’d been doing the last couple of days? Punishing himself? Throwing himself a little pity party? His grandmother was right, none of that would help his mother.
“N
ow, if you’re finished under there, help me to my feet. I’m like a turtle who got flipped onto her back. I can’t get up.”
Luke scrambled up, then reached out his arms and gently helped her to her feet. He put his arms around her in a hug. “I’m sorry, Grandma.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
She patted his back with a soothing stroke, much like she’d done when he was a kid and he’d skinned his knees. He allowed himself a few moments of comfort before stepping back. “I’ll clean up this mess and then walk over to Mom and Reese’s place.”
Phyllis nodded. “That’s a good idea.”
What would happen to her once his mother was gone? She didn’t drive and had to depend on friends and Reese for rides to the grocery store or to her doctor. Phyllis was well into her seventies. She shouldn’t have to worry about mowing the grass in the summer and shoveling snow in winter. And he was too far away to be of any help.
Time he stepped up.
He turned on the faucet once more. To his relief, the leak had stopped. “Grandma, have you given any thought to where you’re going to go, when Mom…is gone?”
Her brow wrinkled. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here, of course. Where would I go?”
“You could come with me to California. I’ve got a decent-sized condo.”
“Condo?”
Her horrified expression made him laugh. “Come on. You’d think I threatened to send you out on an ice flow. California is a nice place.”
“Yes, it is, and it’s very kind of you to offer, but my life is here in Minnewasta. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself out there.”
“You can do whatever you like. You wouldn’t have to deal with the snow and cold, and I’ve got a patio where you can garden all year long. It would be good to have you with me.”
She reached for his hand and linked his fingers with hers. Her palm was soft and warm, and her smile sad. “It’s sweet of you to offer, but you’re a young man. You need your own space. Anyway, this is my home and it’s where I belong. All my friends are here. I know practically everyone in town. If I need something, a friend is only a phone call away.” She gave his hand a little squeeze. “Besides, after Abby is gone, Reese is going to need me.”
Truth and Solace (Love at Solace Lake Book 3) Page 8
