Now and Then and Always

by Melissa Tagg

  Marshall started to turn away but she reached for his arm. He paused. The thought snuck up on her—a surprising one—that he must’ve been an amazing father. If he’d do something like this for a friend he’d barely known for a week, think of how much he must’ve poured out his love for his daughter.

  And . . . Penny?

  She cast the thought away, focusing instead on the way Marshall’s gray eyes danced in the dim light of the dining room sconces. A shadow of stubble covered his cheeks and chin. And oh, she might want to do a whole lot more than give him a grateful hug right at this moment.

  And yes, yes she’d definitely warmed up.

  “Merry Christmas,” she finally squeaked.

  He reached down to slowly unwind her scarf from her neck until it dropped to the floor. “Merry Christmas, Mara.”

  Everything—everything was perfect. The crackling fire. The pizza they’d almost finished. The laughter that filled the den.

  Mara’s delight. It was everything he’d wanted when he’d found those boxes of ornaments in the attic this afternoon, when the idea had first taken hold.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire, with the cat she supposedly didn’t like curled in her lap. She was intent on the black-and-white Christmas movie on the TV, their second in a row. This wasn’t one he recognized—something about a lady who was pretending to be married and a soldier and a baby and he didn’t even know what else.

  Because he couldn’t pay attention. Because all he could keep thinking about was earlier, in the den doorway. About the very real possibility that if Mara had waited one more drawn-out second to eke out that “Merry Christmas,” he would’ve done something crazy. Or maybe stupid.

  But possibly awesome.

  He would’ve kissed her.

  Definitely crazy.

  He glanced around the room. Jen and Lucas were crowded onto the faded blue loveseat and a sprawling Sam took up half the couch next to Marshall. They realized they were good and snowed in for the night, right?

  I wonder if Mara will make Jen and Sam pay for their rooms.

  The thought made him laugh and Mara shot him a glance with her eyebrows slanted. Oops, guess it wasn’t a funny part of the movie. But he grinned all the same and she grinned back and . . .

  And apparently thirty-five wasn’t so old a man couldn’t feel like a dopey teenager again. He turned his eyes back to the TV, but a moment later, a knock echoed. Someone was at the front door? In a blizzard?

  Mara started to rise but he beat her to it. After all, he was the only one not paying a speck of attention to the movie. “I’ve got it.”

  He trekked through the house toward the lobby with long strides, tarp crinkling underfoot in the dining room and sitting room. They could roll that up now that the first-floor painting was done. It’d probably take most of the day tomorrow to haul furniture out of the guestrooms so they could start painting upstairs.

  A mess of boots and shoes littered the floor around a coat tree loaded with winter wear. He reached for the front door.

  And the cold yanked the breath from his lungs as the woman waiting on the porch lifted her gaze. “I guess I found the right place.”

  Penny.

  Everything was not perfect.

  12

  He was being a coward.

  Marshall paced from one end of his bedroom to the other, the shock from last night nowhere even close to having worn off. Had he slept more than an hour? Two?

  He’d heard everyone else—minus Penny, of course—leave earlier this morning. Guess the roads had been plowed. Someone had said something last night about church. He’d barely listened. While the guys had cleaned up the kitchen and Mara and Jen had gone upstairs to prepare rooms for their guests, he’d just stood there in the lobby, staring at his ex-wife.

  Glaring, according to her.

  “I drove six hours to get here, Marshall. The last two of them in a blizzard. The least you could do is stop glaring at me.”

  “What. Were. You. Thinking?” Each word had been its own bullet.

  “You know I’m a good winter driver—”

  “You know what I mean, Penn. What the heck are you doing here?”

  She’d just plain refused to give an answer. It was late, she’d said. She was exhausted, he was clearly agitated, and they might as well wait to talk until morning.

  Agitated, though? That didn’t even begin to cover his state of mind last night. Or this morning.

  Or when he heard her knock on his door just now. She didn’t wait for permission to enter. If she thought that extra cup of coffee she carried was enough to smooth things over—

  “Still a bear this morning, huh, Marsh?”

  Her tight curls were held back from her face by a headband. She always wore headbands—all different colors and sizes and patterns. She still had that old University of Wisconsin sweatshirt, too. It was so faded its letters were barely readable anymore despite the morning light filling the room.

  “Most people wait after knocking to enter a room.”

  “Well, you’re up and dressed, aren’t you?” She plunked the extra mug on the dresser, then wrapped both hands around hers.

  He turned away, facing the window where waves of cold rolled off the glass. “I don’t know why you’re here, Penn. I don’t know what wasn’t clear in me not answering any of your calls or texts.”

  “Oh, you were plenty clear.” He heard the mattress creak as she sat. “But I can be stubborn too. And by the way, because I know you’re going to ask—yes, I got your whereabouts from Beth. Don’t get mad at her for it. You know how good I was at my job.”

  An expert interrogator, his ex-wife. It was how they’d met a decade and a half ago. Penny had been a couple of years ahead of him on the force. Stunned the whole precinct when she’d agreed to a first date with a rookie as green as grass.

  She’d given up her job after Laney was born, but apparently she still had her interrogation skills and she’d turned them on his sister. But no, he wouldn’t get mad at Beth. Because he was darn sure his anger was all used up on the woman now sipping coffee on his bed.

  He spun around. “Fine, let’s just get it over with. What do you want? Why the phone calls? And why are you here?” He stalked to the dresser, grabbed the mug, didn’t even sputter when the brew burned his throat.

  “Because no matter how obstinate you are, I care about you. We were married for ten years, Marshall. We went through . . .” Her voice shook but he refused to look at her. “We went through one of the hardest things a couple can ever go through. So go ahead and be as irritated as you want, but I was worried when I heard you’d been put on leave. An arrest without an ounce of evidence? That’s not like you.”

  Except it was exactly like him. Looking back, he’d grown so reckless on the job that he was surprised Captain Wagner hadn’t cut him loose months ago. Missed court dates. Unfiled paperwork. Stakeouts when he’d been so distracted—or worse, overmedicated to the point of dazed—he was next to useless.

  “How would you know what I’m like?” He heard the darkness in his tone. More bitter than the coffee he continued to choke down. He’d forgotten how strong Penny always made it.

  “Marshall—”

  “It’s not your place to worry about me anymore. I’m fine. Actually, I’m great. Or was until you barged in.”

  “Wow. Harsh.”

  Well, sometimes that’s exactly what the truth was—harsh. Laney’s diagnosis—harsh. All those months in the hospital—horribly, horribly harsh. The day Laney had closed her eyes and he’d known, even before her chest stilled and the machine buzzed and Penny wept, that they wouldn’t open again—a kind of harsh he still didn’t know how he’d lived through.

  He gripped the handle of his coffee mug so tightly that the muscles in his hand cramped. When had Penny come up behind him? Her reflection felt like a taunting.

  “You were supposed to be my partner.” He said it murky and low. “Partners don’t abandon each oth
er. When one of them is at his lowest, the other stays and fights and honors the commitment.”

  She didn’t so much as flinch. “You can tell yourself all you want that I’m the one who abandoned you. But you weren’t there for me either. It’s like you disappeared into yourself, Marsh. You were drowning yourself in sleeping pills. You wouldn’t talk to anybody, not even me. And even before Laney died, you spent more time treating her illness like one of your cases than—”

  He lost it. Lost his grip on his anger. Lost any ability to hold himself back. He flung the coffee mug across the room. It slammed into the wall, coffee splattering, running in streams down to the floor. “Get out.”

  Penny stood her ground. “No.”

  Surely any minute now a headache would begin throbbing. His lungs heaved and his eyes stung. No, no he would not give her the satisfaction. “Why are you here?” he asked again, hating the desperation he heard in every forced syllable.

  Penny stared at him, hard and unbending.

  “It’s not because you’re worried about me. Beth knew I was fine. That’s what she would’ve told you. So what do you want?”

  He thought she would argue, but instead her shoulders dropped. “Jason and I are getting married. Soon.”

  He swallowed, still trying to breathe like he hadn’t just run a sprint through a dark tunnel of his worst memories. “What does that have to do with me? Don’t tell me you want my blessing.”

  She released an exasperated breath. “No, I don’t want your blessing. I want . . . I just want to tell you how sorry I am. For everything. I can’t go into a new marriage without saying that.” The hard edge in her voice was gone, replaced with a shaky vulnerability.

  Almost worse.

  “Fine. You said it. We’re good.” He couldn’t look at her. Or himself. He turned away from the mirror atop the dresser, moved to the closet, reached for a different shirt and changed into it just to have something to do.

  “We’re nowhere close to good and you know it. Jason said it would be like this. He wasn’t excited about me coming here. Noah’s only been taking bottles for a few weeks now and . . .”

  Noah. A boy. In a fit of self-torture awhile back, he’d figured out that the baby had probably been born about seven months ago. Two months after the divorce was finalized. But he’d stopped himself from going so far as to find out the gender, the name, anything else.

  Penny sat on the bed again. Head down, coffee cup propped on her knee, her remorse so vivid he could almost taste it.

  Somewhere under the weighted cloak of his resentment, he felt the barest prick of understanding. “Jason . . . he’s a good guy?” A good father?

  She looked up but didn’t answer the question. “I was so angry, Marsh. When I left you, I was such a mess. And when I started seeing Jason . . . you had the pills, I had him. I was self-medicating too.” She shook her head. “I want you to know that even when I was first seeing him, I knew what I was doing was wrong. It was only making things worse. I thought about coming back so many times.”

  But she hadn’t.

  Nor had he gone after her. A better man would’ve tried. A better man would’ve at least attempted to claw his way out of the grief and anger, for the sake of his wife if not himself. But even if he had, in the end, would it have mattered? She’d wound up pregnant. If the deal hadn’t been sealed before, it had been then.

  She lifted her eyes to his now. “Marsh, I am truly, truly sorry for the way I walked away from our marriage. I was unfaithful. I was rebellious. Thankfully, the pregnancy ended up being a reality check—emotionally, spiritually, all the way around. God has given me a second chance at life and I’m so grateful, but that doesn’t change the fact that I hurt you. Deeply. I hope someday you can forgive me. That’s what I came here to say.”

  Marshall didn’t know why but he sat. With plenty of distance between them, he sat and he actually looked at her and he tried to listen. Forgive her? He wasn’t ready for that. Wasn’t even sure what it looked like. But maybe he could at least try . . . talking.

  He could try to hear what she said not as words spoken by his ex-wife, the woman he used to think would be by his side forever, but words spoken by the one person in the world who’d loved and lost the same treasure as he.

  “Do you ever still . . .” It took everything in him to breathe out the question. “Don’t you ever just break down about losing her?”

  “Of course I do.” She inched closer. “I still fall apart sometimes. Now and then, yes, of course.”

  He finally met her eyes. “It’s not now and then for me, Penn. It’s always. It’s always with me. I’m always broken.” That’s what he’d believed, anyway, before coming to Iowa. He’d started to think differently yesterday.

  But then the past had elbowed in.

  It would always elbow in. There might be a good day from time to time. A day when the memories comforted instead of tormented. But there’d always be another bad day around the corner. Another crash of grief and heartache and helplessness and . . .

  And this was why he’d needed the pills. He had to find something to take their place. A new numbing. Something.

  He wrenched to his feet. “Got work to do.”

  “Marsh—”

  “Sorry about throwing the cup.”

  She stood and moved across the room as if to finally leave him be. But he knew her well enough to know she had more to say. Which is why he wasn’t surprised when she stopped and turned near the doorway.

  “For the record, Marshall, I didn’t leave you because you were broken. I left because I was. I had to find a way out of the darkness.”

  And she hadn’t been able to do it with him. It hurt, even after all this time.

  “I made a mess of things along the way, but God met me there. He did. He forgave me and He’s been working on my heart ever since. I just want to make sure you find your way out too. Better yet, take God’s hand and let Him lead you out.”

  Mara never would’ve believed the state of Jenessa’s house if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. From the outside, it was clear the brick, two-story structure had once been a stately home. The yard, surrounded by a wrought-iron gate, was neatly kept. But inside?

  Inside the house could almost pass as a hoarder’s domain. Books, newspapers, and all manner of knickknacks cluttered the worn furniture in the entryway and living room. The hutch in the dining room was so overcrowded with dishes, picture frames, and who knew what else, it looked like it might collapse any minute. Mara had only peeked into the galley kitchen, but it appeared much the same as the other rooms.

  The disarray was nearly enough to distract her from the thought of Marshall back at the Everwood with the woman he’d introduced last night as his ex-wife. Or the lingering impact of that church service she’d just sat through.

  Actually, it wasn’t the service itself that had embedded itself into her anxious thoughts. It was Mayor Milton Briggs coming up to her afterward, his flock of friends all tittering with excitement over the Everwood and the upcoming open house. She’d envisioned a simple reception with refreshments, maybe a couple dozen guests. But now the mayor talked as if half the town might show up. He’d mentioned entertainment, tours, extra parking.

  And worse, he’d sprung a surprise on her.

  “I’m truly sorry about this, Miss Bristol,” he’d said, “but I should’ve consulted the calendar. We already have an event on the second Saturday in April. How does April sixth sound instead? I’d like to keep it on a weekend, but so many of our weekends later in the spring are already booked.”

  A whole week earlier? “I really don’t think we can have everything finished that quickly.”

  “Oh posh.” He’d waved his hand. “You don’t have to have the whole place fixed up. Just show us your business plan and give us a peek at the work you’ve done so far. We just need to see enough to have confidence in the Everwood’s future.”

  She’d have to start by building her own confidence. April sixth was onl
y two weeks from yesterday.

  Which meant she really should’ve hurried back to the Everwood after church rather than take up Jenessa’s invitation to join her, Sam, and Lucas for Sunday dinner. But Jenessa had insisted and Sam had assured her she wouldn’t want to miss Jen’s lasagna.

  Turned out to be the truth. Mara had polished off two helpings already.

  “I still can’t believe you came to church with us, Luke,” Jenessa said, lifting her water glass, ice clinking. “Kit was happy to see you there too.”

  Kit—Lucas’s sister. Married to Beckett Walker—brother to Logan, who Mara had met yesterday. That is, if Mara had correctly understood Jenessa as she’d whispered a whole recitation of “Who’s Who in Maple Valley” as church began.

  “It’s not a big deal, Jen. It’s not like I’ve never been to church before.” Lucas’s long hair was pulled back but not as haphazardly as usual. Unlike Sam, he didn’t wear a tie and starched shirt, but his dark jeans and sweater were the dressiest Mara had seen him wear.

  “It is so a big deal. Sam and I wish you’d come with us every week, don’t we, Sam?” Jenessa gave him a pointed look. “Maybe you could stick around town for more than a few months this time, too. I’m sure Kit would welcome the help through the summer and fall. What’s Mexico got that Maple Valley doesn’t?”

  “Lay off him, Jen.” Sam leaned back in his chair, arms folded over his chest.

  “I’m just saying—”

  Lucas pushed his plate away and stood. “You said something about dessert, right?” As quickly as that, he disappeared into the kitchen. Jenessa promptly followed.

  Whatever tension had begun to simmer just now apparently eased quickly. Within seconds their laughter drifted from the kitchen into the dining room. From her seat, Mara caught sight of the pair of them—Jen pulling dessert plates from a cupboard and Lucas lowering a stack of dirty dishes into the sink, sleeves pushed to his elbows. He must not mind if Jen saw his scars.