Miracle Road es-7

by Emily March

  He sighed heavily but had no answer. When Hope reached over and rested her hand on his leg, he laced his fingers through hers. “I don’t think we do anything, Gabi. Hope is right. It’s not really our business. That’s obviously what Mom thinks. Remember how she looked at us, the way she lifted her chin? You know that look as well as I do.”

  “Proceed at your own risk,” his sister grumbled.

  “Exactly.”

  “She’s been acting so weird for months. Do you think that maybe she’s sick? Maybe she has cancer or some other dreadful disease and that’s why she’s acting so … crazy?”

  “Crazy?” Hope repeated. “Again, Gabi, have you looked at Richard Steele lately? He’s gorgeous, too.”

  Lucca shot her a scowl, but his thoughts drifted back to that day at the scenic overlook and Celeste Blessing’s advice. “The road of life,” he murmured before saying, “I don’t think Mom is sick, Gabi. I think she’s trying to figure out her way forward. It was her bad luck—and ours—that our paths had to cross while she was doing it.”

  “I wished I’d stayed on the Riviera. What is happening to our family?”

  Lucca leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. “We’re a new constellation and we have to reorient. One of our major stars exploded, but it’s refusing to fade away peacefully, and we’re left with a nebula that’s spewing out massive amounts of gas and radiation.”

  Gabi shook her head. “You are so weird, Lucca.”

  “I’m tired. I’m short on sleep.”

  “Please. I don’t want to hear about your sex life,” Gabi said. “I’m over my limit.”

  “Sleep,” Hope suggested. “Both of you. I’m a big believer in the healing power of naps. You’re not going to solve anything in the next hour of this trip, and you’ll feel better if you get some rest. I’ll get us home safe and sound.”

  Gabi balled up her sweater and used it as a pillow. “Good idea. Maybe I’ll wake up, and this will all have been a dream.”

  Without opening his eyes, Lucca brought Hope’s hand to his mouth for a kiss. “I’m glad you’re with me, Hope.”

  “So am I.”

  He didn’t speak again for almost ten minutes, and then he asked, “Do you own any black boots?”

  THIRTEEN

  Monday morning, Hope had to drag herself out of bed. A hangover from Romano family drama, she decided. For once she was glad she didn’t have parents and siblings to complicate her life.

  Not that she hadn’t felt bad for Lucca, Gabi, and Maggie. It wasn’t a comfortable situation for any of them, though she did believe that the Romano children would come around once their emotions settled. She just hoped their reactions didn’t hurt Maggie too much in the meantime. Maggie was a nice woman who deserved the opportunity to find love again.

  A voice inside her whispered, What about you? Don’t you deserve the same? Love, marriage … family?

  “No,” she said aloud even as the image of Lucca rising naked from her bed flashed through her mind. She’d had family; she’d lost it. She could not—she would not—take that risk again. She wouldn’t survive losing it twice.

  As usual, a morning spent with kindergarten students revived her. There was nothing like bright minds and inquisitive natures to make her feel like all was right with the world. And it kept her busy enough to shove the memories of caveman sex from her mind.

  Then her conference period arrived along with an unexpected visitor. At the sound of a knock, she looked up to see Maggie Romano standing at the threshold of her classroom door wearing jeans, a forest green pullover sweater, and a worried frown. “Maggie? This is a surprise. Come on in.”

  “Hello, Hope. I’m sorry to bother you at school, and I hate to put you in the middle of a family problem, but I just don’t know what else to do. My stubborn, thickheaded children saw me out on a date in an ice cream shop with a nice man, and from the way they’ve reacted, you’d think they’d caught me robbing a bank.”

  So much for not being pulled into the middle. Busy with church youth group activities, Hope hadn’t seen Lucca or Gabi in more than a day. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing! Gabi refuses to answer my calls. Lucca has apparently decided to go fishing today rather than come to work. Even Zach has made himself scarce. He and Savannah picked a heck of a time to go to Carolina to visit her nephew. But Richard and I must leave in an hour in order to make our plane, and I want to make one more effort to reach them before I go. You were there Saturday. I’m hoping if you will share what they said it will explain to me exactly why they’re acting like five-year-olds. Then I’ll know what to say in the messages I leave for them before I go.”

  Go? Go where? Please, don’t tell me you are going to elope. Warily, she asked, “Where are you and Richard going, Maggie?”

  “Austin. There’s an Innkeepers Association meeting.”

  Oh. Thank goodness.

  Hope had no desire to involve herself in the Romano family drama any more than she already was, but she considered Maggie a friend. Maybe a little communication could help. “Sit down, Maggie.”

  “Thank you, but I can’t. I like to pace when I’m angry and disappointed in my kids.” She picked up the apple little Whitney Wilson had brought Hope and absently polished it against the sleeve of her sweater. “Honestly, they freeze me out because they caught me having an ice cream cone with my contractor? Can a woman not have any privacy in this town? Shoot, we went to the next town. You’d think I was a teenager looking for someplace to park instead of indulging in a double scoop of rocky road.”

  Except, it had been more than rocky road, hadn’t it?

  Hope drew a deep breath and debated how best to answer. She didn’t like telling tales, but Maggie probably needed to know the facts to prevent further misunderstanding. “Actually, it wasn’t simply the ice cream that caused the deep freeze, Maggie. Lucca noticed the motorcycle parked in front of the Matterhorn.”

  Maggie halted midpace. “The motorcycle?”

  “In front of the motel. He put two and two together.” For the second time in two days, Hope watched the color drain from Maggie Romano’s face.

  “Oh.” The starch drained out of Maggie and she sank into the seat opposite Hope. “Oh. So they know that I … that we …”

  Climbed the Matterhorn? “Yeah.”

  “I see. Now I understand.” Maggie closed her eyes. “No wonder they won’t talk to me. That’s not what I … oh, no. They shouldn’t have found out. Not like that.”

  Seeing her friend’s devastation, Hope felt a stirring of frustration with Lucca and Gabi. “I think everyone just needs a little time to process, Maggie. Your children love you, and they’ll come around.”

  “Excuse me. I need to call …” Appearing scattered, she fumbled in her purse for her phone, dialed a number, then said, “Richard, I can’t go to Austin. I’ll call later and explain. You go on without me and please, take good notes at all the workshops.”

  When she hung up, tears overflowed Maggie’s eyes and trailed slowly down her cheek. If Lucca had been there in that moment, Hope would have balled up her fist and popped his jaw.

  “I’m a terrible widow. I don’t follow the rules.” Maggie lifted her hands to wipe her cheeks.

  Hope gave her a sympathetic smile and handed her a tissue from the box she kept in her drawer. “I didn’t know there were rules.”

  “Oh, there are always rules for everything. I broke a big rule when I was fifteen, and it changed my whole life. I told you about Zach. The little boy I named Giovanni. When it comes to rules, I always find out the hard way.” She delicately blew her nose into the tissue.

  “Oh, Maggie.” Hope removed the tissue box from her drawer and set it within Maggie’s reach.

  “I returned to my hometown after I recovered from the pregnancy and its consequences. Marcello arranged to meet me. I decided then not to tell him about the baby.” Maggie reached for another tissue. “On my eighteenth birthday, we married
. Eloped.”

  “Your parents didn’t approve?”

  “Oh, no. They forbade me from seeing him, but that was another rule I ignored. I was young and in love. Deeply, madly in love. He was so handsome, and I know that he loved me then, too. We were happy. And when the twins came along, our parents came around, and all was right with the world … except, of course, we didn’t have Giovanni. I almost told Marcello about him when the twins were born, but I knew it would be a mistake. Marcello would have caused trouble. He wouldn’t have let it go. He would have found a way to destroy our son’s happy adoptive family. I couldn’t let that happen. I put our son’s happiness first.”

  “That’s what mothers do,” Hope said.

  Maggie swiped a tissue across the trail of her tears and gave Hope a tremulous smile. “Giving him up was a scar on my heart. I thought our other babies would help it heal, but they didn’t.”

  “I understand, Maggie.”

  Hope didn’t know if the note of sincerity in her own voice tipped Maggie Romano off, or if the woman just had a sixth sense about lost children, but she gave Hope a sudden, sharp look. “Do you? Have you given up a child, Hope?”

  Hope’s mouth went dry. Up until now, the only person in Eternity Springs with whom she’d shared her story was Lucca. “This conversation isn’t about me. Continue with your story, Maggie. I will tell you mine another time.”

  “All right. I just … you are a mother?”

  Her heart twisted. “I am.”

  Maggie nodded. “Then maybe you’ll understand that as much as I loved my husband, I resented him. I carried the burden all by myself, and even though it was my choice, I held it against him. It was always there, a constant, low-level hum beneath the surface, and it was destructive. So when the twins were eight and I discovered that he was cheating, my bitterness had a foundation.”

  Hope actually gasped. Lucca’s father had cheated on Maggie? Whoa. From everything she’d seen, the Romanos worshipped their father.

  “I couldn’t leave him. I had four children at home. I believed in my marriage vows … for better, for worse—forever. He said he’d ended the affair, swore he’d never do it again. Stupid me, I believed him.”

  “He didn’t end it?”

  “He ended that one, but a year or so later, I discovered he had a new mistress. And then another. He wasn’t faithful to them, either. He was a faithless husband, a serial philanderer, a cheat. But I loved him. And I despised him.”

  “I’m so sorry, Maggie. Men can be such jerks.”

  “That they can. Marcello Frances Romano was such a handsome jerk, so charismatic. His children thought he walked on water. I think he thought so, too.”

  “Your kids never knew about his infidelities?”

  “No. I couldn’t do that to them. He was a lousy husband, but he was an excellent father. He certainly didn’t want them to know. It would have devastated them. Why destroy their opinion of him? I’d had all the destruction I could handle. Marcello did a number on my self-esteem. My forties were especially hard because he never took a mistress over the age of thirty-five. And by then he’d stopped trying to hide the affairs.”

  “The bastard.”

  “I did have some pride. I quit sharing his bed. I was seriously thinking about leaving him when we received word about Lucca’s accident. After that, well, it wasn’t the right time. Marcello and I actually got along better during those months than we had in years. A crisis with their children can bring a couple together.”

  Or drive them apart, Hope thought.

  “Yet, when he died …” Maggie’s voice cracked a little, and Hope reached across the desk and took her hand. “Part of me was glad. It shames me to admit that, but it’s true. I was happy to be free of him and our sham of a marriage. Yet, I ached for my children, so I did mourn him. I mourned the loss of our family, and the young love we’d shared. But at the same time I felt reborn. Of course, that made me feel guilty as sin.”

  “We know that life is complicated, Maggie. It’s pretty silly to think that death won’t be complicated, too.”

  “That’s a good way to put it. It was complicated. My children were suffering, and I was angry. He’d been so disrespectful of me and of the vows we’d made to each other. Disrespectful of our family. And he never had to pay for it. He never had his comeuppance. He died and dodged that bullet, and I was pissed. And, I had to pretend to mourn him.”

  “Complicated,” Hope repeated.

  “I was so tired of pretending. They thought I was depressed and maybe I was. More than that, I think I was lost. My sister took me on a cruise, and you know what I did? I had a fling! I had sex with someone other than Marcello Romano for the first time in my life. It was exciting and thrilling and fulfilling—and those wounded pieces of me began to heal. I didn’t want to come home.”

  Oh, wow. TMI, Maggie.

  “But I did come home and my kiddos brought me here; they brought me Zach, the missing piece of my heart. It was the greatest gift ever. I started feeling better. Life took on a new vibrancy for me.”

  “Eternity Springs has a way of doing that for people.”

  “And I’m so thankful my children loved me so much that they helped me find my way here. I have the best children in the world, and I never wanted to hurt them, but they are adults now, and they have their own lives. And I’m only fifty-four years old. I don’t want to live another twenty or thirty or even forty years alone, moving forward but gazing backward.” Her expression beseeching, Maggie asked, “Is that so terrible?”

  “Of course not.”

  She closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you.”

  “I’m your friend, Maggie. You can talk to me. That’s what friends are for.”

  “You are a dear, Hope Montgomery. I want you to know that I didn’t go looking for a man here in Eternity Springs. I came here to concentrate on my family. But one day, there was Richard. He made me realize how much I missed being sexy. How much I missed being teased and openly desired. How much I missed foreplay.”

  Hope smiled weakly. She really, really didn’t want to be discussing foreplay with her lover’s mother.

  “Richard is good for me,” Maggie continued, her gaze pleading for understanding. “I don’t know where our relationship is going, if we’re looking at something long-term or not. But I don’t need to know it yet. What I need—what we need—is to have a little time to figure us out.”

  She shook her head and sighed. “It’s hard to keep anything confidential in Eternity Springs.”

  Hard, but not impossible, apparently. Hope was now convinced that Maggie didn’t know that her relationship with Lucca had gone beyond friendship. No way would she be spilling all these personal beans if she knew that Hope and her son were more than co-basketball coaches.

  “Your children love you, Maggie.”

  “I know that. I know they want me to be happy, too. Just happy by their definition.”

  “They were caught off guard.”

  “To put it mildly, I suspect.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “I knew they wouldn’t be thrilled when they first learned that I was dating, so I had planned to introduce the subject slowly and carefully. So much for plans.” Maggie rubbed her eyes, wiping away the tears. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to go back and change things. What do I do now? I don’t know. These are my children, and I don’t have a clue what I should do.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  She laughed without amusement. “Run away.”

  “To Austin?”

  “Farther. Gabriella just returned from France. Maybe I should take the hint. Where exactly is Timbuktu?”

  “Actually, Maggie, I think a strategic retreat is just what you need right now.” When her friend looked at her in surprise, Hope elaborated. “Go to Austin. Give your children some time to digest the change in your circumstances. Then when you come home, they’ll be ready to listen.”

  “I’m not telling them about their father. That
would be selfish of me, and it would only hurt them.”

  “Then skip that part. Speak to them as adults and communicate your feelings.”

  “But what if they still won’t listen? What if they continue to dodge my calls and avoid me?”

  “Then pull the mom card. Call a family meeting and demand their presence. If you make attendance compulsory, they’ll show. Remember, they do love you.”

  “Yes. Okay. That sounds like a plan.” Having made her decision, Maggie nodded. “I’ll go to Austin, and I won’t try to contact them. Well, except, maybe I’ll send them an email with a date, time, and place for a family meeting and tell them they’re expected to attend. If they try to contact me, well, we’ll just be taking a break. Give everyone a chance to cool down.”

  “Sort of like kindergarten time-out.”

  Maggie laughed. “Yes. Every one of my children has had experience with time-outs. Lucca was the worst.”

  Hope glanced at her clock. Her conference period was almost over. “You’d better call Richard and tell him plans have changed again. What time is your flight?”

  “Four.”

  Hope winced. “You’ll be cutting it close, but I think you can still make it.”

  Maggie hopped up, full of energy and purpose, and went around the desk to give Hope a big hug. “Thank you. You are such a dear friend. I know you’re Gabi’s friend, too, and now that I’m thinking clearly again, I realize I’ve put you in the middle by burdening you with some sensitive information.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ve already forgotten seventy-five percent of what you told me.” Especially the part about foreplay. “I’m sure the rest will be gone by the time basketball practice begins. Selective dementia, don’t you know.”

  “God bless you, Hope Montgomery. I think you might have saved my family.” Maggie pulled her phone from her purse and hit redial.

  “No. The Romanos are strong. You’re just reorienting your stars.”

  “What?” But before Hope could explain, Maggie’s call connected. She waved good-bye and rushed from the classroom as she brought Richard Steele up to date.