Someone To Watch Over Me

“And they’re about to serve breakfast. Romeo will want to know where his plate is, the beggar….”

Her voice finally trailed off. She looked to the bed, where the dog was still curled up next to their mother. Romeo whined and put his head down over her silent heart.

“But…we were going to take her home,” Katie said.

“I know.”

“She wanted to be home. We promised.”

“I know.”

Her expression shattered, mouth falling open, lips trembling, eyes blinking furiously at the tears overflowing, as she stepped back, away from Jax, and looked to the bed. He still hadn’t let anyone do anything to her, hadn’t been able to bear it.

Katie reached out and brushed her fingers over their mother’s forehead. “She was supposed to be home.”

As if their plans mattered in this. If they’d had any say in the matter, she wouldn’t be dead.

“Look, I offered to take her last night,” Jax said. “She said it was fine to stay, said the medication was better here, and she didn’t hurt as much. She was ready to go, Katie.”

“But we were all supposed to be here with her.” She sobbed once more.

Order was very, very important to Katie. If she broke things down into a checklist, she could handle anything, and their mother hadn’t died the way she was supposed to. This was a completely typical Katie response. Jax answered all her questions, accepted the blame for sending her and their other two sisters home to rest, for not calling immediately when their mother died, everything.

And when she started to cry harder, he held on to her until she got herself under control.

The middle one, Kathie, was the quietest of the three, and shy in the sweetest of ways. She had the same pretty, blond hair they all did, tended to wear hers long and loose. Her eyes were blue, and she dressed like a Gypsy, except without the bold colors. She liked pastels, long, gauzy skirts that blew in the wind like her hair and peasant tops. Everything about her was soft, including her heart.

She stepped into the room, realized what had happened and got very, very still, as if moving might break some spell, as if by freezing in place she could stop time and never move forward into the time when she had to accept what had happened and go on.

She sat by their mother’s bedside and fussed over the dog, who snuggled against her and buried his nose in her sweater, as if he was hurting as much as the rest of them, and Jax stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders, wishing he could do more.

The last to arrive was Kim, the baby, who bounced into the room with the same enthusiasm she did everything else, her arms full this morning with flowers and the newspaper and another book of crossword puzzles, which their mother loved but couldn’t concentrate enough to do anymore. Kim did them for her, talking through all the answers with her.

She was a tomboy, wore her hair in one, long braid, wore a comfortable pair of jeans and plain, cotton T-shirt. As a girl, she’d tagged along after Jax, trying to be as rough and tough as him or any of his friends, getting muddy, dusty and wet, with scraped knees, bruised shins and the occasional busted lip. A hockey puck had been the culprit, last time he remembered her bruised and bleeding.

“Kimmie, I’m so sorry,” he said, when she slowed down enough to realize what had happened.

She fought not to cry then, to be a true tough-girl. But there was nothing of the tough-girl that morning. Her entire body racked with sobs, and she went from Jax’s arms to Katie’s to Kathie’s and then back to Jax’s.

They were a mess. No two ways about it. All of them heartbroken and lost in a way Jax didn’t think grown-ups could ever be. He was thirty, after all. Surely a man knew who he was by then and knew that he could take care of himself and his family. Surely he didn’t panic at the loss of his mommy when he was thirty.

But she’d been one amazing woman. A rock. Funny, happy, even bubbly at times. Open, honest, trusting as could be. Generous, hardworking, a woman who would have done anything for them.

Life had been hard for her. She’d worked so hard once his father was gone, and she hadn’t had any particular job skills to fall back on, except a mountain of pride. Tons of people had offered to help, but she hadn’t taken a dime from anyone.

It had been him and her, trying to hold things together. Mostly her, he feared, although he’d done what he could.

And now it was just him.

Him and the girls.

They were still crying. One of them would stop and then two, and he’d think the worst was over. Then in trying to get the last one to stop, the other two would start. Or the dog would, and then everyone would get going again.

“Look, we’ve got to go,” he said, feeling like someone had kicked out every tooth he had, broken every bone in his face, in his entire body. He felt like a lump of putty about to fall, and he couldn’t look at the bed anymore, at the woman he loved so much who was in it. “We have to let the hospital do whatever it has to do, and we have all that stuff on Katie’s list to take care of. Staying here…it’s not going to change anything.”

“But I’m not ready to let her go,” Kim cried.

“She’s already gone, Kimmie.”

They hadn’t been able to hang on to her tightly enough to keep her. There was something so wrong in that idea. If you loved someone, and you hung on as tightly as you could, you should be able to keep her safely by your side.

Jax felt a stinging in his eyes, felt raw and weak and uneasy in a way he never had before. He felt alone, even with his sisters clustered around him, wasn’t feeling all that confident in his abilities to even take care of himself, much less them, something he’d never doubted before.

He drew in a deep breath, then another, reminded himself that he never, ever cried, and that it sure wouldn’t do any good even if he did. Look how much his sisters had cried. They didn’t feel any better.

“We have to go,” he said again, thinking that surely they did. There had to be a funeral. They had to put their mother in the ground.

His stomach churned.

The girls started talking about what they had to do, what their mother would want done, what she’d wear. He bit back a curse, along with something like, Who cared what she’d be buried in? They debated it with enough honest interest and concern that he knew what he’d hear if he said anything.

A woman thing.

He’d grown up outnumbered and badly misunderstood.

Fine. He let them debate her wardrobe, right down to earrings and shoes. Shoes? It wasn’t like she’d be walking anywhere.

They were almost together again. They had a plan, Katie’s, and her lists. Everyone had been assigned jobs to do.

His sisters fussed over their mother one more time. Touching her cheek, holding her cold, cold hand, straightening the quilt covering her body. Kim put her head over their mother’s chest, as if she had to make absolutely sure her heart had stopped beating.

They gave him forlorn looks like the ones they’d worn when stupid boys had broken their hearts over the years, or when they’d had a falling-out with each other and vowed never to speak to each other again. Like the ones they’d had when their mother was first diagnosed with cancer. When she heard that it had come back. When she and the doctors agreed it was pointless to fight anymore. When their father’s friend and partner had come to tell them their dad was gone.

They’d huddled around Jax then, little stair-step girls, all blond and blue-eyed and innocent. Kim had sucked her thumb. Kathie had taken to hiding in Jax’s closet at night until she thought he was asleep and then creeping over to sleep on the floor by his bed. Katie started making lists.

So this was all familiar territory. Dreaded, but familiar.

He got the girls on their feet and by his side, and then there was just the dog. Jax was afraid he’d have a fight on his hands, but Romeo seemed to understand. He took his turn nuzzling her cheek and whining over her, and then jumped off the bed and stood quietly by Jax’s side.

“Good dog,” Kim said, stooping over to hug Romeo and then wrapping her arm around Jax’s waist.

He took the dog’s leash. Kathie leaned into his other side, her head on his shoulder, and Katie linked her arm with Kathie’s.

“Okay. Ready?” he asked.

“We should say a little prayer,” Kathie said. “Mom would like that.”

“Okay,” Jax said.

They could say anything they wanted, as long as they left. He bowed his head with the rest of them, and Kim did it. She started off by thanking God for their mother and ended with something that sounded vaguely like a threat, a take-good-care-of-her-or-else thing.

Or else what?

Katie raised her head and gave her sister an odd look.

“Well, He’d better take care of her,” Kim said. “All those prayers she said. All the ones people said on her behalf. And she’s still gone.”

“It’s okay,” Jax said. None of them were particularly religious, except their mother, and he understood exactly how Kim felt. “Now we go.”

They pivoted around as best they could without letting go of each other and trooped out.

Two of their mother’s friends were outside the door, one crying. One of her neighbors was standing there holding fresh flowers. At the nurses’ station, three women stood staring, sad, understanding expressions on their faces. Jax looked down at the floor, and then looked away. He just didn’t have anything left, not for anyone.

The girls pulled themselves together and thanked their mother’s friends for all their kindness during her illness and over the years. They thanked each and every one of the nurses on the floor, showing all the graciousness and kindness their mother had taught them. She would have been proud. His sisters could be a little flaky, each in her own way, but they were strong, smart women, good down to the core.

Their mother had loved them well.

She’d loved Jax, too. Completely. Powerfully. Joyously.

But she’d been disappointed in him, too. He knew that.

She’d said it, right there at the end, in that jumble of thoughts where she’d believed she’d seen his father again.

And it wasn’t as if it was a surprise that she was disappointed in him. She thought he was playing at life, wasting it, letting it slip through his fingers. That he had no faith. Not just in the God she trusted so completely, but in other people as well.

In life and in love.

Losing his father hadn’t weakened her faith in either of those things. Nothing had.

So where had it come from? he wondered. The trust? The faith? The hope?

He trusted that life would hurt him sooner or later, that people would disappoint him and disappear, had faith that there was nothing more to this world than what he could see with his eyes and touch with his hands.

And yet he wanted to believe what she’d said, that she’d watch over him, even now. That his father had been waiting for her, even after all this time, and God had come for her, taken her by the hand and led her…. Wherever it was that people went. That nothing hurt her anymore, and she’d never even be sad or miss him and his sisters or her silly dog.

That’s what he wanted to believe.

But he didn’t.

So once more, he gathered up his poor, brokenhearted sisters and the dog. Arm in arm, they walked out of the place where they’d lost their mother.

Gwendolyn Moss dragged herself out into the midday sunshine in the town park across from Petal Pushers, the bright, cheery flower shop where she worked.

On the north end of the park, on a bench beneath a huge, sprawling oak and a cluster of magnolias, she sat and ate the sandwich she’d packed that morning, all the while trying her best not to be afraid.

It was high noon, sunshine raining down through the branches of the trees, dappling the ground with spots of light among the lazy shadows. The temperature was a perfect, balmy seventy degrees with an ever-so-slight breeze, and the park was smack-dab in the middle of a small picturesque, Southern town.

No one was going to grab her and drag her off into a dark corner because there were no dark corners here. Gwen had made sure of that. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come outside.

She sat off on the fringes of the park, keeping to herself but careful not to stray too far from the crowds, even in broad daylight.

There was a playground a little off to the right, where mothers gathered to gossip while their children pushed each other on the swings and climbed into the tree fort, athletic fields to the south where adults and children alike played and friends clustered around to watch them.

Magnolia Falls Park was shaped like a crescent moon that ran from the north to the south end of town, all along the west side, following the path of and surrounding Falls Creek. For the most part, the creek was not much more than a wide, shallow stream of water rushing over a slick, smooth, sloping rock face. But to the south, still surrounded by parkland, the creek bed dropped all of thirty feet over a quarter of a mile, into a wide, rounded pool of water surrounded by a dozen magnolia trees, forming Magnolia Falls, for which the park and the town was named.

It was especially pretty there, and Gwen liked the soothing noise the rushing water made, but for now she preferred her little corner on the fringes of the park. It was farther than she’d have come just a month or so ago. So this was progress of sorts.

There was sunshine on her face and her bare arms, heat when for so long she’d been so cold, light when for so long she’d hidden in darkness, air when at times she’d found it hard to even breathe.

As she munched on her sandwich, she eyed a bench closer to the playground. Maybe next week or next month, when the sun was even hotter and more pleasant, she’d lunch there and not be afraid.

Finishing her lunch, she crumpled up her napkin, put it in her little brown bag and tossed the whole thing into a nearby garbage can, then set off around the far western perimeter of the park, toward the flower shop where she’d worked for the past three months.

There were towering trees, oaks, pines, a willow here and there, in addition to the magnolias, walking paths, playing fields, a playground, an amphitheater and just about anything else anyone had been able to think of. The park hosted outdoor arts festivals, music festivals, kids’ festivals, garden shows, town celebrations, all sorts of things. It seemed any excuse to fill the park with people was welcomed.

Gwen was going to attend one of those festivals one day. For now, she watched a baby in a stroller throw a fit and fling her rattle onto the sidewalk, then cry and pout when she didn’t get the toy back after the mother picked it up.

Pretty, yellow tulips edged the sidewalk that must have just burst into bloom, and there were leaves in that brand-new green of spring slowly unfurling on the trees. Tiny baby squirrels chattered and scampered about. Birds were raising a ruckus in the trees.

Two kids squabbled loudly and vehemently over a ball, a disagreement that quickly led to shoving and parental intervention. Gwen actually grinned at that.

Fight back. Don’t let anyone walk all over you like that.

The parents would be horrified. Her parents certainly would have been. She’d been raised never to lift her hand to anyone, never to raise a fuss. It certainly wasn’t the reason for what had happened to her, but still, she had to wonder what would have happened if she’d screamed long and loud. If she’d struck out with her fists or her knee.

Not that it really mattered. She hadn’t.

People said attackers could pick out someone born to be a victim just by the way she walked, that attitude alone could dissuade a criminal from going after one woman and targeting another one instead.

She didn’t want to be a victim anymore.

Feeling bolder by the minute, Gwen, born a follower of all rules great and small, stepped off the sidewalk that skirted the park and trudged toward the creek, walked along its banks and then crossed it on one of the pretty, arching, stone-and-wood footbridges that crossed it at various points throughout the town.

Looking around, she saw there were power walkers, arms pumping energetically, making a trek around the fringes of the park, a vendor selling ice cream from a cart, little boys shrieking and trampling some of the new spring flowers as they played a wild game of chase. No victims there.

Walking on, she lifted her head high, threw her shoulders back and tried to strut confidently, not at all sure if she was succeeding or not. The motion felt awkward at best. She hoped no one was laughing or even paying her the least bit of attention.

Now that she looked about, she realized no one was.

In fact…How odd. It seemed nearly every eye was on something or someone else at the opposite end of the park. At least, every female eye. She turned, thinking something might be wrong, and that’s when she saw them.

“Oh, my,” Gwen said, stopping altogether and staring.

Runners, a man and a dog, both impossibly masculine, with dark blond hair, broad through the shoulder, narrow at the waist, and just so pretty it was impossible not to look. Sunlight caught in their hair and haloed around them. They were moving quickly, at a grueling pace that would have defeated her within a half mile. But they looked like they’d been at it forever.

The allover tan of the man, the leanness of his muscles and the rhythm in which he moved said he did this often. The look on his face said he was completely oblivious to the attention he was receiving.

Women were all but falling at his feet. If he stopped running long enough, surely they would.

The dog pranced. There was simply no other word. Nose stuck high in the air, as if he were king of all he surveyed, tail twitching proudly. He wasn’t even looking where he was going. He was too busy soaking up the attention of all the women.

“It has been too long since that man graced us with his presence,” a woman Gwen passed said to her friend. “He certainly brightens up the atmosphere in the park, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, yeah. We could sell tickets for his run,” her friend said. “People would pay just to watch.”

Gwen’s mouth started to twitch into something that might have been an honest-to-goodness smile. What a pair. The gorgeous man and the equally gorgeous dog. No reason a woman couldn’t appreciate the sight. There were all sorts of nice things to look at here in the park in the soft, spring sunshine today.

She decided to circle back to the ice-cream vendor and have a scoop of chocolate. Why not? She could use it.

She was still savoring the last bite when she came across the man and the dog again at the edge of the park. He was swiping at the sweat on his forehead, still breathing hard, power positively radiating from him.

Gwen had never been that comfortable with men like him. Very pretty men. Confident ones. Powerful ones. He was probably pushy, probably expected all sorts of things from a woman, just because he bought her a nice dinner. She wasn’t that kind of girl.

Not that he’d ever pay attention to a mouse like Gwen.

At the moment, three little boys were clustered around the dog, who was breathing hard, tongue lolling out. He seemed to be grinning, if that were possible, in between showing his appreciation for their attention and lapping at a cup filled with water, provided by the man standing at his side.

“Come on,” said the first kid, on his knees in the dirt beside the dog. “What’s his name?”

“Killer,” the man claimed with a straight face.

The dog looked at the man and gave a low growl, then whined sympathetically to the kid, as if to say he was completely misunderstood and unappreciated.

The kids giggled, and the next one took up the cause. “No it’s not. Tell us his name.”

“Butch,” the man said, glancing for the first time at Gwen, who quickly looked away.

The dog whined once more, laid himself flat on the ground, his tail wagging enthusiastically, as if begging the kids to play with him.

“Is not,” the biggest kid said.

“No, it’s not. But you can just call her Sweetpea. She loves that.”

The dog gave the man a look of pure disgust, and then turned puppy-dog eyes onto the boys, begging them to save him from such humiliating treatment.

Gwen couldn’t help it. She grinned.

“Mister, I don’t think your dog likes you very much,” one of the boys said.

“She’s just a little upset because she lost her pink bow on our run.”

“Uh-uh,” the littlest kid said. “She’s a boy dog.”

“Oh, I guess so. How about that. He just acts like a girl.”

Gwen had a feeling the dog might just turn around and take a hunk out of the man who’d insulted him so, but instead, the dog caught sight of her and forgot the little boys completely.

He made a little purring sound. Beautiful, blue eyes gazed up at her with a kind of interest she seldom inspired in males, and yes, he could do something with his expression that looked distinctly like a smile.

He swished his bushy tail back and forth for a moment, and then walked over to her, nuzzled his snout against her shins for a moment, then dropped to the ground and rolled over onto his back, presenting her with his soft, furry belly for her to rub.

“That’s it, boys,” the man said. “That dog won’t even remember you’re alive when there’s a woman nearby to impress.”

The boys grumbled, tried to get the dog’s attention again, but to no avail. The dog didn’t so much as look at them. They finally gave up and walked off in a sulk, and the gorgeous man came closer.

“Romeo, believe it or not, not everyone falls in love with you at first sight,” the man said, shaking his head, looking both mussed and disreputable.

Gwen tried very hard not to look at him anymore. The dog grinned some more at her, waiting, as if he definitely believed he was irresistible and was sure she would, too.

It wasn’t so bad, being the focus of his admiration, Gwen decided.

She grinned back at the dog, thinking he probably made friends so much more easily than she did. Just walk up and grin at someone and fall onto his back in the grass, inviting her to pet him.

“What a sweet thing you are,” she said, forgetting all about the dirt or the dampness of the grass and her favorite, mousy-colored skirt as she got down on her knees and rubbed a hand through the luxuriously soft fur of the dog’s belly.

He whimpered. His tongue lolled out of his mouth, and then he started licking her knee, a wet, silly touch that nearly had her laughing out loud. Her entire day had brightened.

“Romeo, you are such a dog,” the man said.

“Romeo?” Gwen said, daring a quick look up at the man whose hair sparkled like gold in the sun.

“Yes.”

“That’s really his name?”

The man nodded. “Believe me, he earns it every day.”

She let her hand linger on the dog, thinking it had been a long time since’d she touched any living thing, surprised at how pleasurable something as simple as rubbing the dog’s fur could be.

The detective who’d handled her case had wanted her to get a dog. For protection and for company. She’d never really considered it, but maybe that was a mistake. Maybe she should. If she could find one as sweet as this one.

“You’re so pretty,” she told him.

Romeo licked her knee one more time, and then gave the man a smug-looking smile, as if to say, So there.

And then Gwen started to worry about the dog. “You really do like him, don’t you?” Gwen asked the man.

“I tolerate him. That’s it.”

“Oh.” Gwen puzzled over that, then thought she’d figured out what was going on. “So, he’s not your dog?”

“No,” the man said, all the light, all the gold and sunshine, fading away in an instant.

What had she said? The dog was such a sore spot?

“But you know him?” Gwen tried. “I mean…he has a home? Because if he doesn’t…He seems so sweet, and I was supposed to get a dog.”