“Are you OK?”

Julia asked the question, her head tilted in concern.

“Fine,” Jesse lied quickly, not wanting to see her concern turn to pity. “I’m drunk.” Another lie.

“Jesse,” she breathed, her smile hesitant and somehow beseeching. He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to remember what he was trying so hard to forget.

He made the mistake of looking into her endless blue eyes, and he saw exactly what he had seen when he met her the first time, months ago in Germany.

A million missed opportunities. A thousand unanswered prayers and unspoken wishes.

He’d been kicked in the gut when his best friend had opened that door and introduced the woman of Jesse’s dreams as his wife.

And now fate had brought her here to finish him off.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Molly O’Keefe is thrilled to add Superromance author to her résumé. And even more excited to add her new role as mother. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, with her husband and son. She loves hearing from readers, so drop her a line at www.molly-okeefe.com.

Dear Reader,

My husband and I welcomed our son into the world in February 2006 and soon after I was right back to work on the rewrites of this book. I had no idea when I got the idea for His Best Friend’s Baby (months before even getting pregnant!) how one of its themes would resonate in my life – the need for a support system.

After giving birth (my water broke at a book signing – how about that for dramatic?) I found myself with an infant who didn’t care much for naps and some serious work to do. As much help as my husband was, I needed more. I needed support. And I found it in spades. Writing, like motherhood, can be lonely at times and I am blessed with friends, a mother-in-law and my own mother who provided me with baked goods, laughs and a couple of hours every day to get the work done.

I felt as though I belonged to a tribe. Sleeplessness, worry and a joy I’d never experienced before were my entry into that circle of mothers.

It made me feel even more for Julia, the single-mother heroine in this book. She came to life for me during these rewrites in a way I never would have dreamed. I hope you enjoy her path to happily ever after as much I enjoyed discovering it.

Happy reading!

Molly O’Keefe

His Best
Friend’s Baby

MOLLY O’KEEFE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For all the Mothers in my life:

Tracey Fader and JK, who kept me laughing.

Leslie Millan and Sarah Drynan, who kept

me sane. Cindy and Carole Mernick,

who made the revisions of this book possible.

And especially

to Mum, who made all of this possible.

You left me very big shoes to fill in the

motherhood department – I love you.

CHAPTER ONE

JESSE FILMORE lifted his fingers from the bar, signaling for another drink.

“Liquid lunch, huh?” the bartender asked with a nervous laugh as he poured Jesse another cup of coffee. Black.

“What time is it?” Jesse’s voice sounded like something that had been dragged behind a horse. His whole body felt that way—sore and beat up.

“Twelve-thirty.” The bartender leaned against the polished wood bar. “We don’t get a lot of coffee drinkers in here. You want a beer or a sandwich or something? We’ve got—”

“What’s your name?” Jesse asked. He didn’t lift his head, just stared at the bartender from under his eyebrows. His neck was killing him. Moving it would send an electric shock through his body.

“My name? Billy. This is my—”

“Billy? I’d like to drink in quiet.”

Billy looked stunned, no doubt used to a friendlier sort of drinker in this crappy sports bar. “Yeah, ah, sure. I’ll be down here if you need me.” Billy backed toward the other end of the bar where two guys shared a pitcher of beer and a plate of nachos while they watched yesterday’s sports recap on the screen in the corner.

When Jesse was a kid, this bar used to be a serious drinking place. No music. No darts. No pool tables. No damn ESPN. It had been a bar where men swaggered in after work and stumbled home at midnight, then fell into bed and slept without dreams.

Jesse wasn’t doing any drinking. The pain meds the docs had him on were bad enough, he didn’t need to let go of any more reality.

But a little peace and quiet wasn’t too much to ask for.

He’d come here to get out of the sun, stall for time before going to see what was left of the old house.

He’d come in here because he was a little bit scared.

He blocked out the noise of the television and the buzzing neon lights and drained half of his coffee mug before setting it down precisely on the damp circle that stained the napkin.

“Holy shit. Jesse Filmore!”

Jesse turned his head as much as he comfortably could and saw Patrick Sanderson barreling down on him. In high school, Patrick had tried, briefly, to keep up with Jesse and his best friend, Mitch Adams. But the kind of trouble Jesse and Mitch had gotten into wasn’t for the faint of heart and Patrick had definitely been faint of heart.

It was probably for the best. Jesse recalled the night that Patrick had gone out with them. We got arrested for stealing that car.

“How have you been, man?” Patrick slapped a clammy hand on Jesse’s back. Jesse fought the urge to shake it off. It wasn’t Patrick so much—though he had never liked the guy—as it was anyone and everyone getting too close. Even alone in a room he felt crowded. Too many ghosts.

Jesse shrugged and the gesture apparently satisfied Patrick. “We haven’t seen you in town since…?”

“My mother’s funeral,” Jesse said carefully, his throat a solid throb of pain.

“God, right, three years ago. I thought you were still over in Iraq.” Patrick slid onto the stool next to Jesse. “I heard about Mitch. Terrible news. Just terrible.” Patrick’s belly strained against his yellow golf shirt. He ran his hand over his thinning hair. “Agnes and Ron are all messed up over it.”

Jesse didn’t smile, didn’t in any way encourage this intrusion, but Patrick didn’t seem to need encouragement.

“I’d steer clear of that house if I was you. She’d probably skin you alive if she saw you.” He laughed, as though what he was saying wasn’t the heartbreaking reality of Jesse’s life. Luckily, Jesse had grown a thick skin, from years of letting the casually hurtful and completely stupid things people said roll off him.

Billy sauntered over and threw a cardboard coaster on the bar in front of Patrick.

“What can I get you, Pat?”

“Draft and whatever Jesse here is drinking—”

“No thanks,” Jesse declined. “I’m good.”

Billy shot Patrick a look indicating what he thought of Jesse’s manners, before walking away to get the beer.

“So are you on leave or something?” Patrick asked, turning back to Jesse.

“Something.” Jesse took a big gulp of his coffee, eager to get out of this place.

“I tell you, that war…” Patrick shook his head. “Lots of good boys dying over there. Mitch Adams, I still can’t believe it. He always seemed to have a horseshoe up his ass or something—luckiest damn guy. Did you ever see that girl he married?” Patrick whistled through his teeth and Jesse had the sudden and powerful urge to smash in those teeth.

“I heard she was gorgeous,” Patrick continued.

Time to leave.

Jesse shifted, digging into his back pocket for his wallet.

“Guess old Mitch’s luck ran out.” Patrick’s well of insight was seemingly bottomless. “The whole town thought it was nuts when he went into the military after you. He could have done anything, football scholarship, anything. His mother…” Patrick wrapped his fat fingers around the pint Billy slid over.

“Will never forgive me. I know.” Her name was at the top of a long list of such people.

I shouldn’t have come in here.

Jesse threw a few bucks on the bar, drained his mug then made an attempt to stand. But his bum knee buckled. Too many hours in the car.

“Whoa there.” Patrick laughed, putting up a hand to brace Jesse. “What’d you have in that mug?”

Jesse’s arm jerked instinctually. He stood frozen, knowing exactly how he could kill Patrick with an elbow to the windpipe or the heel of his hand to the nose.

Jesse didn’t do it, of course, but he was capable of it and that was somehow worse.

“Hey, man, sorry if talking about Mitch—” Patrick looked nervous but there was something else in his small eyes, a certain morbid curiosity. The rumors had made it home. “Terrible accident.”

If Jesse stood here long enough, maybe Patrick would just come right out and ask what he clearly wanted confirmed. But Jesse didn’t have time to pussyfoot, he had a house to get rid of and a life to get on with, so he took pity on Patrick.

“I killed him.” Jesse said. “I killed Artie McKinley and Dave Mancio. I put Caleb Gomez in the hospital. And I watched Mitch Adams burn up in his helicopter.” He patted Patrick on the back, like the good friend Patrick had always wished him to be, and limped away.

Mitch ghost dogged Jesse out the door.

The bright sunshine blinded him. Jesse blinked and gave himself a second to adjust before tackling the steps down to the asphalt parking lot.

A hot wind blew down from the mountains, carrying the smell of tar and sun-warmed grass. The scent of the southern California desert reminded him all too much of being a boy.

He’d grown up in this town on the edge of nowhere, and if it weren’t for the damn house his mother left to him in her will, he would never have returned. The war had kept him occupied for three years, but now, thanks to the discharge papers, he could no longer ignore this little obligation.

All he had to do was get rid of the house and he could leave. Chris Barnhardt, a buddy from before the war, waited for him in San Diego with more construction work than he could handle and an interesting proposition that included the word partner.

If Jesse were a smart man, something he’d never claimed to be—he’d be halfway down Highway 101 on his way to the rest of his life. A life he could taste like clean, cold water after years choking on dust in the desert.

Instead he was in New Springs. Just him, more dust, the dumb dog he couldn’t get rid of and the ghosts.

The bright spot of reflection bounced off his Jeep’s windshield sitting the corner of the parking lot. A small woman stood next to the vehicle. Her brown hair blew out behind her like a flag. Like a warning.

He lurched to a stop.

Not this, Jesse thought, panic kick-starting his heart. Not her.

She pushed away from the Jeep and Jesse forced one foot in front of the other, inching his way toward his sister.

She had a lot of nerve. A lot of goddamned nerve tracking him down this way, ambushing him when he hadn’t been in town long enough to get his bearings.

“Hello, Jesse.” Rachel took a few steps closer. He tried not to notice the chin she thrust out as though she were ready for whatever he might throw at her.

It was exactly the way he remembered her. Even at thirty-four, she still looked like that eighteen-year-old girl who’d been so damn fired up to take on the world.

“How’d you know I was here?”

“You know small-town gossip. Mac and I got word the second you drove into town.” She tried to laugh, but it came out all wrong. Broken in all the important places.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and he was struck by how short she was. How fragile she appeared. He almost laughed as he thought it. Fragile? Rachel? As a boy he’d believed she was the biggest, tallest, strongest thing on earth.

But now she didn’t even come up to his shoulder and he could easily snap her in two.

He never figured his perspective would change.

He opened the driver door only to have Rachel slam it out of his hand. She slid along the side of the vehicle until she was right in his face. “You’re not going to run from me like you did at Mom’s funeral.”

“Get out of the way, Rachel,” he growled, not necessarily on purpose, but the effect was good.

“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Please just listen to what I have to say.”

He didn’t care what Rachel had to say, so he turned and started walking back to the bar. He’d take Patrick and his barely veiled insinuations over his sister any day.

She darted around him and Jesse stopped, attracted

and repelled by his sister’s magnetic force. “Why didn’t she leave you the damn house?” he demanded.

“Jesse,” she whispered. He kept his eyes locked on the y in the Billy’s Final Score sign over the door of the bar rather than succumb to Rachel’s plan. Her voice was thick with emotion and he was not going to stand here and watch her fight tears. “Before Mom died I wrote you letters, Jesse. Didn’t you get the letters I sent?”

“I got them.”

She had written almost every week since the day she’d left after her high school graduation. Once he turned eighteen and joined the army, he’d finally written her back and told her to stop. And for a year, she respected his request. Then the letters had started arriving again—with a vengeance. He now knew that was about the time she and Mac Edwards had finally gotten together.

There had been cards from Mac, boxes of cookies from Rachel and funny pictures from Amanda—Jesse’s new niece thanks to Rachel’s marriage to Mac.

He’d opened all letters that weren’t addressed in Rachel’s handwriting. The rest he sent back or burned. Except the cookies—a man could only be so mad.

But he’d never responded to Mac’s letters, and only once to Amanda’s. There was never a reason for them to continue sending him stuff. But they had.

The whole family was just so stubborn.

“We’re hoping you might come up to the farm. Amanda is dying to see you again and Mac can’t wait.” She smiled again, all the hope in the world rolling off her.

“I didn’t read your letters, Rachel.”

“Jesse.” She reached out to him as though to touch his arm, and he stepped out of the way. His eyes met hers and he saw what his rejection did to her, the light that it killed in her eyes.

Let it go, Rachel, he urged silently. You keep coming at me like this and you’re only going to get hurt.

Her hand curled into a fist and fell to her side. “I know you’re mad. But I tried—”

“Stop it.” Jesse struggled to find that cold dark center of himself, that place where simplicity reigned. “I was a kid when you left. You don’t know me and I don’t want to know you. Just leave it alone.” He watched all that hope crumple in her, like wadded-up paper.

Good. Now, stay away.

He moved past her to his beat-up Jeep and she didn’t try to stop him.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“San Diego,” he told her. He winced as he swung his aching leg into the vehicle. Damn bum knee. “After I take care of Mom’s house.”

“So you’re just gonna run again?”

Everything in him went still.

“Running’s your deal, not mine. I stayed until the old man died. What did you do?”

They both knew the answer all too well—she’d left, when he’d needed her most.

She was a little late if she expected forgiveness now.

Wainwright, the ancient black Lab he’d somehow inherited in the last two weeks, lifted his head from the duffel bag he’d been using as a bed.

Take the dog, Artie McKinley’s folks had said. He’s old and we’re moving to an apartment in Nogales. We can’t have pets. Artie had been their only son, so there had been no one else to take care of Wainwright and they refused to put him down.

What could Jesse do?

So he’d taken the aging dog and now, every time he looked at the animal, he remembered why Artie hadn’t come back to claim his dog.

Wainwright spied Rachel and barked. She flinched.

“I hear you, boy,” Jesse muttered. He turned over the engine and peeled out of the parking lot without once looking back.

DAMN IT.

Jesse braked at the deserted intersection of Goleta Road and Foothill after having driven around aimlessly for an hour. He leaned forward in the driver’s seat and looked right down the long stretch of road that would lead him down to the coast and Highway 101.

He could drive to San Diego, be there by tonight.

He turned and looked left down the length of asphalt that would lead him back to New Springs.

“What do you think, Wain?” The dog struggled to his feet and climbed over the console to sit in the passenger seat. He barked once at a passing bird. “That’s not much help, buddy.”

Jesse’s knee throbbed from all the walking and driving he had been doing the past week and even though he was steering clear of the pain meds in his bag, the relief they offered seemed pretty good right now.

Jesse eyed the waves of heat rising off the blacktop and Wain nudged his thigh with his snout. Jesse patted the dog’s head and wished again, as he had a million times in the past, that his genetic makeup was different.

It would be so damn easy if he was the kind to run away like his sister.

But no, Jesse took after his mother. He had Eva’s black eyes, dark hair and the same stubborn chin. Despite heavy drinking and hard living, his father had looked like a young man when he died, but Eva had looked every one of her fifty-six years, as if all her disappointments and heartaches had been pressed into the lines on her face.

Jesse wondered briefly what was written across his face. What details of his past were visible?

He and Eva were the same beasts of burden, carrying everyone’s troubles and responsibilities like stones around their necks. When everyone else had deserted they had both stayed—in that house, in this town—long after the time they should have left.

Just do what you are supposed to do, he told himself. You’re in this little shithole for a reason.

He pulled his cell phone out of the faded green duffel and dialed Chris’s number.

“Inglewood Construction,” Chris answered after two rings and Jesse’s dark mood lifted at the sound of his friend’s voice.

“Hey, Chris. It’s Jesse.”

“Jesse, when the hell are you going to get down here? I am up to my pits in work.” A saw buzzed to life on Chris’s side of the line. “Watch the damn floors!” Chris yelled and Jesse could practically smell the sawdust; he could almost taste it. “Seriously, man,” Chris said. “I need you here, like, yesterday.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Chris, but it looks like I’m stuck in New Springs for a few days.”

“Well, the sooner you get here the faster we can drink some cold beers and start making some money.”

“Sounds good,” Jesse said. It sounded like heaven, like the furthest possible thing from the life he’d lived for the past three years. “Sounds real good.”

“Keep me posted,” Chris said. “I gotta run. The guys are pouring the basement floor and I swear if someone doesn’t watch them, they’ll make a swimming pool out of it.”

“See ya, Chris.” Jesse hung up and threw the phone back in his duffel.

Wishing was for fools, something he learned the day his sister walked away from him, so he stopped wasting his own precious time. He was who he was and he had to take care of his responsibilities.

He gave Wain a pat on the snout.

“See what you’re getting me into?”

Wain farted and sighed.

Jesse jerked the wheel to the left and kicked up a lot of dust heading toward New Springs. He took the winding mountain road too fast. Wainwright put his nose in the air and howled and Jesse knew exactly how he felt.

He drove through Old Town, past the Royal Theater and the Dairy Dream ice-cream shop. He took the left after the Vons grocery store, toward the south side. With every twist and turn through his old neighborhood, the pressure in his chest built.

There weren’t any railroad tracks in New Springs, but Jesse never questioned which side of the proverbial tracks he was from. There had been a grit and a filth that came from this part of town and sometimes he could still feel it.

When he was a kid, this particular street had been made up of single moms with kids they couldn’t control. Big, once-beautiful old homes—the first built in the town—had been falling to ruin or divided into apartments while people with money had chosen to live in the newer homes by the rec center on the other side of town.

He shifted gears as the pressure in his chest started to feel like panic.

The turning point of his life had come when Mitch and his family had moved into the neighborhood. Mitch’s mom liked old houses and apparently she’d never noticed the filth until her son had come home after school with Jesse in tow.

Then she’d noticed.

Since those days, however, the old neighborhood had clearly changed. The lawns were now green and nice, the tiled roofs repaired, the houses painted.

It freaked him out. He wiped one sweaty palm on his thigh. He felt like the boy in the fancy shop who security watched—a feeling he hadn’t had since he was a kid.

The old house must be the eyesore on this street.

Mom had died three years ago and the house had been a nightmare then. Jesse could only imagine the damage raccoons and high-school kids looking for a place to get drunk had done since then.

Truth be told, the idea appealed to him—the old homestead a broken-down disgrace among these refurbished houses. All the neighbors once again cursing the Filmore family over their repaired and whitewashed back fences.

Just like the good old days.

But at the corner of Wilson and Pine, where the ruins of his childhood home should have sat, was a house newly painted a creamy yellow color. There were red flowers in window boxes and a shiny white front porch.

“What the hell…?” His mouth fell open as he peered through the open passenger window at the vision.

His heart squeezed uncomfortably.

Man, I wish Mom could have seen it like this.

Jesse pulled up to the curb, and stared, stunned, at 314 Wilson.

That was his old house all right, but it looked nothing like it once had.

Years ago, he’d thrown a rock through the front picture window after a fight with his father. His mom had covered the hole with cardboard because they couldn’t afford a new piece of glass that size.

Now, the cardboard was gone, the replacement window surrounded by flowers nodding in the breeze.

The porch where his father used to sit many nights drinking Scotch and getting mean no longer sagged, threatening to fall away from the house. And the hole Jesse had used to crawl under the porch on nights when Dad kicked him out was covered over. He’d learned later that his mother had kept the back door open for him the way she had for Rachel, when his sister had been the one thrown out into the cold desert night.

All of his surprise and regret quickly boiled down to something much more familiar. Anger.

His mother had left him the damn place as some kind of chain, forcing him back here. Worse, Rachel had been repairing it and shining it up pretty.

Wonderful. A gold-plated chain.

If Rachel thought she could stop him from getting rid of it—tearing the damn thing down if he had to—she was wrong. Rachel could dress up the house all she wanted, repair it and cover up the ugly parts, but underneath it was still the violent and angry home of his youth. There was not enough paint in the world to cover that.

“Let’s go, Wain.” Jesse climbed gingerly out of the Jeep.

Wain barked with an enthusiasm Jesse was far from feeling and trotted ahead to sniff and urinate on a hydrangea bush.

Jesse pulled the key from around his neck, where it hung with his dog tags.

He bent and picked up one of the solid decorative rocks that lined the walkway. He tested its heft and then hurled it through the front window. The glass shattered and Jesse smiled.

Now, it looks like home.

CHAPTER TWO

JULIA ADAMS managed to eat three bites of the cinnamon roll she had grabbed from the motel vending machine then tossed it in a garbage can outside the Vons grocery store. She took another sip of the stale coffee from the motel lobby and dumped that out as well.

She couldn’t get food past the slick bitter taste of nerves at the back of her throat. The anxiety had gathered steam as she and Ben walked into town from the motel and now she was a kettle about ready to blow.

“I think Momma has made a mistake, Ben,” she said to her two-year-old son, even though he was sound asleep in his stroller.

One mistake? How do you figure just one? The voice belonged to Mitch, her dead husband, always there to count her failings.

She hit a crack in the sidewalk and the stroller under her hands swayed, thanks to the loose screws she’d tried repair a million times—the whole thing was just about shot.

The streetlights blinked on and the world past the street receded to shadows. Dusk arrived to the desert town with a beauty Julia had never seen. The enormous sky turned purple and blue and the temperature finally cooled to a tolerable level.

She and Ben had missed the worst of the heat, having spent most of the day inside their motel room. Ben had napped and fussed, confused by the time change, and she’d stewed—replaying Agnes’s phone call in her head, wondering if she’d gotten the invitation all wrong.

The smell of eucalyptus filled the air and Julia, trying to calm the twisting of her stomach, pulled off one of the flat round leaves and rubbed it between her fingers. The oil soaked into her skin, but it wasn’t enough to calm the raging nerves.

She turned left and the reality of what she was doing came down on her like a hammer.

She was about to knock on Mitch’s parents’ door. Her in-laws, who had never liked her, and say…

“What?” she asked herself aloud. “Surprise! Can I stay a while? Here’s your grandson. Do you mind if I take a nap?” She took a deep breath. “Remember when you asked me to come for a visit? When you said you would be here for me?”

I’ve finally lost it. I’m talking to myself!

“Your mother’s a lunatic,” she told her sleeping son, just to prove the point.

With Mitch gone, Julia only had her own mother, Sergeant Beth Milhow. Julia and Ben could have gone to live with her mom and continue the life she had known forever.

A military daughter. A military wife. A military widow.

But she couldn’t do it anymore. She wanted a family. Friends who had more in common with her than what their husbands did for a living. She wanted more than duty and loneliness so sharp it sliced at her. She had to try and find a better way, which was why she’d come to New Springs.

What she really wished, if she were completely honest with herself, was that Jesse Filmore would be here. Last she had heard he was in the hospital in San Diego, which was close enough that he might head home if he still had family in the area. She’d settle for any kind of anchor that would pull him back to New Springs.

This was her new life—a fresh start, and she wanted desperately to have Jesse in it.

She was being foolish. She had enough on her plate dealing with her in-laws. The very last thing she needed to do was cloud up her head with romantic illusions…or delusions. Particularly about her dead husband’s best friend.

But if she closed her eyes, she could still see Jesse’s dark eyes burning bright through the shadowy dawn.

She pulled the envelope from Agnes and Ron’s last Christmas card out of her jeans pocket and checked it against the numbers on the houses. She turned at the corner at Wilson and Hemlock, walked down half a block until she found 12 Hemlock Street, a two-story brick house that was triple the size of the small army house she and Ben had called home in Germany for the past two years.

She swiped at the sweat that beaded up on her forehead. Oh, God, why didn’t I call? What if Agnes changed her mind?

She turned up the beautiful slate path toward the house. Her heart clogged her throat and with every heartbeat she saw spots in the corners of her eyes.

The last thing she needed was to faint on the Adams’ doorstep. She tried to focus on the concrete reality: the flowering vines clinging to the red brick, the overgrown garden filled with jade plants and gorgeous lupine that were nearly choked out with weeds.

Losing a son must put you off lawn work for a while.

She clapped a hand over her mouth to stop the hysterical giggle that was nearly a sob. She was coming unglued. She stopped at the door—a wooden one, simple and solid with a small window at the top.

She tried to smooth her short, dishwater-blond hair to get the worst of the haywire strands to settle down. Julia never bothered with makeup, and now she wished she had at least put on a little blush.

Yeah, she laughed at herself, because your hair and makeup are really going to make her love you.

She leaned down and looked at sleeping Ben. He’d woken up a few hours ago but his internal clock was screwy from jet lag.

Julia tried to see her son with unbiased eyes, to find imperfections, but she couldn’t detect any. Even dead to the world he was still the cutest kid she’d ever seen. He had Mitch’s thick, white-gold hair with just a little curl. His eyes, when they were open, mirrored her own big blue ones. And, thanks to a genetic hiccup, he had a dimple in his chin.

“Grandma Agnes is going to love you, Ben,” Julia whispered. “Even if she can’t stand me.”

She didn’t give herself time to think, or change her mind or even imagine the worst possible outcome. She charged ahead and rang the doorbell.

The seconds between pressing the small illuminated button and hearing someone on the other side of the door stretched unbearably. Slowly, the door swung open and an older, sadder version of Mitch wearing a faded plaid shirt stood there. He peered over the top of a pair of thin gold glasses. “Hello?”

“Hi, um, Ron.”

He flipped on the light over the door and Julia blinked, jerking back from the brightness. Ben woke up with a cry and clapped his hands over his eyes.

“Oh, my,” Ron whispered.

“Ron? Who is it?” a woman’s voice called from inside.

Ron smiled and Julia felt every bit of tension and worry slide right out of her.

“It’s Julia and Ben,” Ron replied, his smile growing until he started to laugh.

“That’s not funny, Ron.”

“I’m not kidding, Agnes.”

Silence. And then the clatter of a pan hitting the sink and Agnes—a short, round woman with a curly nimbus of gray hair and a tea towel trailing like a silk scarf behind her—was running down the hallway toward them.

“Oh, oh!” she cried, barreling past her husband to wrap her arms around Julia. Julia was awash in the scent of garlic and roses. Agnes’s strong wet hands gripped Julia’s back and she felt all the air rush from her body. Agnes dropped her arms and knelt in front of Ben.

“Hello, hello, little boy,” she cried, tears running down her round cheeks.

Julia shut her gaping mouth. This welcome was simply more than she could have hoped for. More than she’d ever dreamed.

Careful, Mitch’s snide voice whispered. You always believe the things that are too good to be true.

Julia, exhausted and emotional, ignored her dead husband’s voice. If this was too good to be true she would figure it out later, as she always did. Right now, she was swept up in the tide of the moment, helpless to stop this strange homecoming.

“He looks just like Mitch, doesn’t he, Ron?”

“Yes, he does,” Ron agreed, lifting his glasses to wipe his eyes. “Let’s get them in the door, Agnes.”

“Of course.” Agnes started to get up and Julia held out a hand to assist and found herself back in her mother-in-law’s arms.

“We’re so glad you’re here,” Agnes murmured. “Thank you for coming to us.”

The icy silences between Julia and Agnes had seemingly melted away after Mitch had died in the helicopter crash. Julia had gotten a call from an inconsolable Agnes, who’d begged Julia to come to California, to bring Ben so they could get to know him—the only thing left of their precious son.

Come, she’d said, we will be here for you.

It had been a spell, an enchantment, we will be here for you. Words so foreign to Julia they might have been a different language.

A million things rushed to Julia’s throat but all she could manage to say was a tight, “Thanks for having us.”

“Are you hungry? Did you just get in? Do you have a place to stay? You have to stay here. We insist, don’t we, Ron?” They stepped through the foyer into a small dining room that opened into a large living room with a fireplace and bookshelves crammed with books.

The dining-room table was freshly wiped down, the streaks still damp on the oak finish, and the smell of garlic and potatoes filled the air.

Julia’s stomach roared to life.

“I guess she’s hungry,” Ron said.

Julia pressed a fist to her stomach. “You know, airline food,” she said with dumb chuckle. The truth was the rubbery airline sandwich was probably the best meal she’d had in weeks.

Ron crouched, his knees cracking, to get a better look at Ben, who blinked owlishly at the old man. “Hello,” Ron said in a soft voice and everyone seemed to hold their breath, as if this were a test that they could all fail.

After a moment, Ben reached out a curled fist and dropped a handful of raisins in Ron’s hand and smiled his heartbreaker smile.

Ron and Agnes sighed in adoration.

Nice one, Ben. Julia ruffled her son’s blond hair. They’re goners for sure.

“We got in this morning.” Julia unhooked her son from the stroller and he pitched himself from the seat with his usual enthusiasm. “We’re over at the Motel Six on the highway.”

“Oh, no,” Agnes gasped as if Julia had said, “We are living in trees.”

“You have to stay here, we can’t have Mitch’s bab—”

“You are welcome to stay here,” Ron interrupted. “We could go pick up your stuff and bring it back.”

Julia and her overextended bank account heaved a sigh of relief. She had hoped they would offer, but the motel had been a necessary plan B. “That would be nice, thank you.”

“We have so many questions.” Agnes took a deep breath and seemed about to launch into all of them and Julia braced herself with the limited reserves of energy she had left.

“Agnes, the girl is asleep on her feet. Let’s get her some food and let her rest for a minute,” Ron cut in reasonably and Julia’s affection for the man leaped off the charts.

Ben put his hand in Ron’s and pulled him toward the other room as though he wanted a guided tour.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, I’m just so excited.”

Julia smiled. She didn’t have the energy to do more.

“I’ve got roasted chicken and some potatoes,” Agnes offered. “It’s not very fancy but—”

“That would be wonderful, thank you,” Julia whispered. Tears of relief and gratitude filled her eyes. Agnes ran off into the kitchen. Ben toddled toward the shelves and all of the books and magazines he, no doubt, could not wait to rip to pieces. Ron followed, his eyes glued to Mitch’s son.

Suddenly alone in the room, Julia collapsed into a chair. All of the fear and hunger and worry that had been keeping her upright since getting the call that Mitch was dead disappeared.

Thank you, she said silently.

Her life, irrevocably diverted when she’d bumped into Mitch on that beach, might somehow end up back on track.

AFTER DINNER, Agnes led Julia, with a sleeping Ben in her arms, up the staircase to the bedrooms.

“You can use Mitch’s old room,” she said with a sad smile. Agnes pushed open the door to a room that had been frozen in time. Posters of Michael Jordan—back when the basketball shorts were shorter—covered one wall. A prom picture of a young Mitch looking uncomfortable wearing a pink bow tie sat on the dresser.

“This will be great,” Julia said. Her bags, which Ron had kindly picked up from the Motel 6, sat at the foot of the bed.

Agnes backed out of the room, but stopped before shutting the door. “Thank you,” she said fervently for the hundredth time in the few hours Julia had been there. “Thank you for bringing Ben to us.”

Julia smiled and reached out to squeeze Agnes’s hand. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who almost three years ago had called Julia a gold-digging whore.

Goes to show how some people can change.

Agnes left and Julia put her son down on the bed and took off the Spider-Man shoes that were getting too small for him. Once he was settled, she dug through her purse for her cell phone. She checked her watch—9:00 p.m. in California meant that it was midnight in Washington, D.C.

Julia said a quick prayer—please Mom, be home—and dialed, needing desperately to hear her friendly, if firm, voice.

“Sergeant Beth Milhow,” Julia’s mother said by way of greeting.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Julia? You made it okay? I was getting worried.”

“We had some delays, but we got to New Springs this morning.”

“You must be tired.”

“I am so past tired, I can’t even see straight.” Every time her eyes fluttered shut she could feel herself falling asleep.

“How was Ben on the flight?”

“He was great.” Julia couldn’t quite make that half truth totally believable. “Well, he was as great as could be expected. A minor meltdown somewhere over Denver and a larger one on the bus, but mostly he slept and stared at every new face.”

“How are you?” Her mom’s voice dropped and Julia rubbed her forehead. Her mind was slippery and clouded from too much worry and too little sleep. “I’m—” nervous, tired, freaked out “—all right.”

“Oh, honey, you don’t have to do this. You can come back here and—”

Live in a big empty house all alone, Julia finished her mother’s sentence. You can continue doing everything by yourself.

“I know, Mom,” Julia interrupted. “But I really need to do this.”

Her mom made a skeptical noise and Julia brushed her fingers through Ben’s fine hair that was so much like Mitch’s. She leaned down and kissed the top of his head, smelled the distinctive powdery-fruity scent of her son and hoped she was doing the right thing.

“Mom, they want to get to know Ben. They’ve never even seen him. We just spent two weeks with you, plus you came to visit us in Germany, but they—”

“They never bothered.”

Ben woke up with a whiny cry and rolled toward her. He had fallen asleep during supper and she knew the poor guy was probably hungry. Julia winced and tried to stop Ben from smashing her kneecaps as he crawled over her legs. He was two, but he weighed thirty pounds. She grabbed a Thomas the Tank Engine toy from his diaper bag and wiggled it in front of him. He took the bait, wrapping his little fingers around the toy. Sleepy, but determined to stay awake, Ben ran Thomas up and down her legs like railroad tracks. “Choo choo,” he said and Julia found a smile from somewhere in her weary body. She jiggled her legs under him so he bounced around. He laughed and buried his face against her.

Oh, God, she prayed again, please don’t let this selfish decision hurt Ben.

“They only want to get to know you now because Mitch is dead,” Beth said and Julia flinched, swallowing the taste of copper and bile. It had been five months since the accident and she still felt raw.

“What’s wrong with that?” Julia asked, pushing aside her own doubt. “So they’re two years late? Should I punish them forever?”

“Well, I don’t think you should go running into their open arms. They were nothing but terrible to you.”

“They weren’t terrible,” Julia muttered. “They just weren’t nice.”

But they are here and they are solid and they aren’t going anywhere. They aren’t going to fight in any wars or move every two or three years. Their roots go so deep that maybe Ben and I can stand close and pretend those roots are ours.

“Oh, sweetheart, you are too nice for your own good,” Beth said, her voice soft like a hug. She was prickly and stubborn to the point of blindness, but Julia never doubted that her mother loved her.

“Probably,” Julia laughed.

“So, how are they? Is that woman civil?” Julia smiled at her mother’s loyalty. Ever since Agnes had so singularly rejected Julia, Beth referred to her as “that woman.”

The petty parts of Julia that were still wounded by the things Agnes had said sort of liked it.

“They’ve been really nice to me and nothing but sweet to Ben.”

“But don’t you go forgiving that woman too soon. You are a strong mother, you don’t need their help.”

Julia clapped a hand over her mouth to stop the incredulous laughter. Beth, as usual, had no clue what Julia needed.

Julia was a twenty-four-year-old widow. She had a two-year-old son who only knew his father from photographs. Her own father was dead and her mother, though loving and involved in Julia’s life, was still an active engineer in the army. And when the United States wasn’t at war, Mom was home in Washington, D.C., for only about half the year. For the past three years, Beth had spent eleven months out of twelve in Iraq.

No one had ever truly been there for Julia and Ben. And she needed that to change. Ben needed family, people in his life on a daily basis. Not twice a year for a few weeks.

“Do you have enough money?”

An excellent question, Mother. “I’m fine,” she hedged.

“Okay, I’ll let you get some rest.” Beth’s deep breath echoed down the line. “Remember, sweetheart, you can always come here. I leave to go back on Saturday to help the Brits with their water problems so my house will be empty.”

Another empty army house. Exactly what I am trying to avoid.

“I know, Mom, thanks. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

They hung up and Julia’s spirits bobbed upward. She smiled at her son, who was nearly asleep where he lay against her legs.

“Everything is going to be okay,” she told him and hoped with every last thing in her body that it was true.

THE DREAM CAME as it had for the past five months. She stood at the front door of the small apartment in Germany she and Mitch shared briefly before he went to Iraq. She was dressed in her favorite white skirt and a sweater that Mitch said made her eyes look like the sky. She knew she was opening the door to something special. Excitement danced over her skin and she was happy, the way she’d been for the first few months of her marriage. But when she opened the door there was only fire and smoke and the sound of someone screaming.

She ran into the smoke, sure that someone needed her. Just her, no one else could help. The smoke shifted and on the floor of the hallway sprawled Mitch, bloody and hurt.

“Hey, baby,” he said with a smile she recognized from the days when he was trying to get her in bed.

She dropped to her knees beside him, looking for the source of all that blood, but she couldn’t find it.

“Is this a trick?” she asked, angry.

“No trick,” a voice said behind her and she turned and Jesse, Mitch’s best friend, stood there with a hole in his chest that she could see through. His dark eyes seemed to burn and smolder, the way they had the day she met him. “I can’t stay here,” Jesse said and turned away into the fog. Julia wanted to tell him to wait, to take care of that wound, to stay. But she didn’t.

She remained silent in the middle of a war with her husband.

CHAPTER THREE

JULIA WOKE to the smell of pancakes and coffee and—she took another sniff of the air. Oh, boy. Bacon. It wasn’t so much the food that had her eyes flying open, it was that she didn’t have to make it. All that food waited for her.

She stared at the ceiling and luxuriated in the faded blue sheets. She had slept like a rock on this soft mattress with all the extra pillows. It was heaven.

This was definitely the right place for Ben. She could feel their roots growing already.

Growing up as an army brat, Julia had worked hard for years to never form material attachments. But one night in this room and she coveted everything—the mahogany bed frame that matched the old washstand in the corner and the five-drawer dresser on the far wall. She wanted the mirror hanging over the dresser that reflected the small window and the perfect California day outside.

Everything was so beautiful. So permanent and substantial.

She’d even take the Michael Jordan posters.

This is a brand new day. Opportunity was here, glimmering like dust motes in the sunlight. She could shed the past and try something new. Try to be someone new.

Try to figure out who I am.

She rolled over to see how her son had slept, but he was nowhere to be found. She sat up and searched the floor around the bed. Where did he go? How could he have woken up and left the room without her noticing? She didn’t trust him entirely on his own with stairs, and they had followed Agnes up a steep wooden flight last night to this bedroom.

Julia rolled out of bed and ran downstairs, her bare feet slipping across the polished hardwood floors on her way to the kitchen. She burst into a scene right out of Norman Rock¬ well.

Ben sat in an ancient high chair, cheerfully shoving blueberries in his mouth.

“Airplane!” he cried. “Big airplane.”

“And what else?” Agnes asked.

“On a bus.”

“You were on an airplane and a bus in the same day?” Agnes asked, her eyes wide as though no one had ever done such a thing.

Ben nodded.

“Such a big boy!” Agnes cooed and Ben smiled, his teeth blue. He lifted his hands above his head to show her how big he truly was. Julia loved this game, loved wondering if he was broadcasting how big he felt, the size of his cheerful spirit.

Ron laughed. “All done?” he asked.

Ben nodded, his blond curls waving, and Ron leaned in to wipe Ben’s face and hands. “Let me atcha.”

Agnes picked up a camera and took a couple of pictures of Ron attempting to clean Ben up.

“Smile, Benny,” she cooed and Julia tried not to cringe at that nickname.

Julia had only sent them one picture of their grandson. A family shot of her, Mitch and Ben taken six months ago—the night Mitch was on leave from Iraq.

Jesse had taken the picture.

Shame and regret trickled through her.

She should have been the bigger person, tried harder to breach the gaps between her and the Adamses. But she was too much like her mother, maybe. Too proud.

New beginnings, she reminded herself.

“Momma,” Ben cried, dodging Ron’s washcloth. Agnes and Ron turned toward her, their smiles radiant.

“We heard him wake up and knew you needed your rest so we brought him downstairs, hope you don’t mind,” Agnes said with a bright smile before focusing on her grandson again.

“Of course not,” Julia croaked, her voice rusty from nearly twelve hours of sleep. Despite her assurance, something in her chafed at the idea that they had come into her room while she slept.

Really, you’re gonna get mad because they let you sleep an extra hour? She tried to relax. Clearly she had been on her own for too long.

Ben struggled to lift himself out of the chair with one hand and reached for Julia with the other.

“Stay there, Ben.” She walked over to kiss his cheeks and his hands, rub her nose with his damp one. All of their morning rituals. He laughed and clapped in response.

“Hog heaven, huh, buddy?” she asked, letting him put his hands on her face leaving sticky hand-prints on her skin. “Pancakes and blueberries.”

“Nana,” he said, pointing to Agnes, but watching Julia.

“That’s what I told him to call me,” Agnes said with an embarrassed laugh, pulling at the neck of her yellow T-shirt. “I’ve always wanted to be a Nana.”

“Sounds good.” Julia swallowed a lump of emotion.

“Ron.” Ben pointed to Ron and everyone laughed.

“Grandpa is for old men,” Ron said with a grin. The metal frame of his glasses caught the sunlight and winked, making him seem particularly merry. “Besides, Ron is easier to say.”

He looked young, trim and healthy with his blond hair shot through with a little silver. He appeared younger than his wife and Julia wondered if Mitch would have looked that way. Respectable. Dependable.

She doubted it.

“Ron, it is.” Julia nodded definitively as if she were checking that off a list. What to call Grandfather—check.

“Ron,” Ben mimicked Julia’s nod and tone.

“He’s such a sweet baby,” Agnes said.

“The sweetest,” Julia said, smiling in agreement. She ran her fingers through her son’s hair to try and work out a knot of maple syrup near his ear.

“Look at us, forgetting our manners.” Agnes stood, suddenly a flurry of activity.

“Would you like something to eat, Julia?” Ron patted the chair next to him at the small kitchen table. “Some coffee?”

“Coffee would be a dream.” Julia sat and an uncomfortable silence blanketed the room. They had covered the basics last night. Weather. Flights. How they must just be exhausted. This morning all the unsaid things and the hurt they had caused each other in the past pulled up chairs and sat at the table.

Julia curled her bare toes into the braid rug under the table and folded her hands into her lap, trying to look the opposite of a gold-digging whore. She felt shabby in Mitch’s old army T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

I should have worn something nicer, she thought, when unease and doubt slipped under her guard. I don’t have anything nicer.

“How did you sleep?” Ron asked.

“Like a rock,” Julia said brightly and wondered how she could stretch that answer for another hour of conversation. “Very well, thank you.”

More silence.

“You have a lovely home.” She hoped that didn’t make her sound like a gold digger. She was only telling the truth. Every room was filled with books and art and warm rich colors, rugs, beautiful wood floors, light stucco walls with dark wood support beams across the ceiling.

“Thank you.” Ron nodded and took a sip of coffee.

Kill me now, Julia thought.

Agnes cleared her throat and Julia looked over to where the woman, short and round, stood in a pool of light from the window above the double ceramic sink. Tears glittered on Agnes’s cheeks.

“I am sorry, Julia,” she whispered and shook her head. Squeezing her eyes tight. “I was horrible to you and—” She stopped and a single sob came out.

Julia leaped to take the coffee mug out of her mother-in-law’s hands. She wrapped her arms around Agnes’s curved shoulders. “I wasn’t the best, either,” she said.

“I was just so upset that you got married without telling us,” Agnes went on. “Mitch is—” another sob escaped “—was our only son and I know we expected a lot but it was just such a shock. The marriage and then the news of the baby—it was just such a shock.”

“Tell me about it,” Julia said dryly, relieved when Agnes gave a watery chuckle. “Trust me, getting pregnant and marrying a helicopter pilot was the last thing I expected to happen.” Or wanted to happen, she didn’t say. Her life tended to be made up of things she had to make the best of.

“You know how your son was,” Julia said softly. “He was so—” She stopped, at a loss for words, trying to remember exactly what it was that had attracted her so ferociously to Mitch Adams. “Bright, you know? Shiny and bold. Like the world was there just for him to enjoy.”

“Yes,” Ron agreed. “He was like that.”

“He just swept me off my feet.” Swept wasn’t even the right way to describe the sensation. It was as if she had been blinded by the light that always shone around Mitch.

“When I got pregnant—” she cleared her throat, uncomfortable with the topic “—we hadn’t known each other very long.”

“A month,” Agnes said, obviously casting judgment on Julia’s loose morals. Julia swallowed the protestations of her innocence. They seemed pretty stupid, in light of what had happened. What did it matter if Mitch had been her first? She’d been so completely paranoid about pregnancy that they’d used two forms of birth control.

She’d gotten pregnant anyway, after only knowing Mitch for three weeks. She had been so stupid and silly with lust and love.

“I was twenty-one—”

“So young,” Agnes said, lifting watery brown eyes to Julia.

“Mitch didn’t hesitate. He wanted to get married. He wanted to give our child what you guys gave him.”

He just never managed to be around enough to do it.

Agnes, who had been weeping silently, buckled a little and put a hand on the counter to brace herself.

“We wasted so much time with him.” Agnes sighed. “Three years. I would give anything to have them back.” Her face twisted in agony that struck a chord in Julia’s own grief. “Anything.”

“Nana!” Ben yelled. “Don’t cry!” Ben hated when Julia cried. He got angry and fussy. But when all three of them turned to the little boy he looked away, confused and embarrassed. Julia wondered if he’d ever had the undivided attention of three people.

“You want more pancakes?” Agnes asked Ben and he broke into a beatific grin, revealing all of his little teeth.

“That’s a yes,” Julia translated needlessly.

“Well, sit and drink your coffee,” Agnes said, drying her eyes with a dish towel. “I’ll make some more pancakes.”

Agnes put a steaming mug of coffee in front of Julia and darted a quick look at Ron. It was a cue of some sort and Julia braced herself. Not for any particular reason; it was the conditioned response of a woman who had never felt as though she really belonged anywhere.

“Julia,” Ron started uncomfortably. He drummed his fingers on the table briefly and cleared his throat. There was a glacial undercurrent in the room suddenly and she was not so sure of her welcome here. “What are your, ah, your plans?”

“Plans?” she croaked. This was it. This was “the good to see you, don’t be a stranger, but could you move on?” speech. Her stomach churned bile. Maybe Mitch was right. She was a fool for believing in the good things.

“I mean, how long will you be—” Ron and Agnes shared a look “—in California.”

Julia put her mug on the table. “I don’t have any plans,” she said coolly. “We can be on our way today.”

Agnes gasped and dropped a plate in the sink, a discordant crash that made all of them jump and Ben fuss. Julia turned to her son and tugged on his ear.

“Nana’s bringing you more pancakes, buddy,” she whispered, staring at her son to stall for time.

No rest for the weary. She quickly shifted to survival mode. She had the money that the army gave her each month as a widow, but she was still paying off most of Mitch’s debts. The remainder might cover rent some place, although she wasn’t sure she wanted to live in a place that could be rented for next to nothing. She’d need to find a job. She would have to get daycare for Ben.

She’d come all the way to New Springs and now didn’t have enough money to leave immediately. She’d have to stay until next month’s check—

“Do you have to go so soon?” Agnes asked, her hands clenching the counter. “I mean it would be wonderful to have you stay.”

“Stay?” Julia asked, not sure she’d heard correctly.

“As long as you like,” Agnes insisted. “You can stay here however long. Ron used to teach at the community college over in Lawshaw. I’m sure he could talk to someone there. Get you enrolled in the fall and you could get your degree. I remember Mitch saying something about you wanting a degree.”

And another lie from Mitch. Thank you, sweetheart.

“I hadn’t given it much thought,” Julia said and she really hadn’t. Mitch’s death, the phone call from Agnes, getting out of Germany, all of that had taken up every minute of her life.

“Well, you can be here and think about it. This house is so empty with just the two of us,” Agnes said. Ron stared at Julia levelly, his eyes warm and steadfast.

“You can get your associate degree for just about anything at Lawshaw, can’t she, Ron?”

“We would like you to stay,” Ron said, cutting through his wife’s chatter. “We would like to get to know you and Ben.”

“You know,” she said with a bright smile, solace like a cool stream of water sliding through her, gently eroding the tension that had built in the last few moments. “You had me with the coffee.” She lifted her mug and took a sip while Agnes and Ron laughed.

“What do you think, buddy?” Julia asked her son. “Should we stay?

Ben smiled, his face radiant and beloved and threw his arms in the air. “Pancake!”

“Sounds unanimous,” Ron said.

Julia watched her son clap his hands and she took a big sip of coffee, using both hands so that she wouldn’t do the same.

CHAPTER FOUR

JULIA INSISTED on doing the dinner dishes that night and spent a long time with her hands in the warm soapy water, washing Agnes’s great-grandmother’s china.

Her fingers traced the faded vine around the edge of a dinner plate and she tried to imagine owning something so old. So precious. There was such a feeling of solidity and permanence in this house that she craved to be a part of.

She put Ben to sleep after finishing the dishes and Agnes retired a few hours later, declaring herself pooped. But Julia was too awake to go to bed. In Germany she’d put Ben in daycare three days a week for two hours because she’d been worried that seeing only her day in, day out would stunt him in some way—make him a social outcast in kindergarten. So while he’d learned to share toys with other kids, Julia had taken long runs to drive out her worry, to banish her fears. It seemed a good tactic to use now.

“I am going to go for a walk,” she told Ron, who read in his easy chair. He and Agnes had accepted Julia so quickly, had taken care of her and Ben so readily, that she felt a little blank. What am I supposed to do? she wondered. She wanted so badly to believe that this comfort and family was real. Was hers. She could settle in, put her feet up and stop treading water. But part of her was still braced—ready for the rejection she still wasn’t entirely convinced wasn’t going to come.

“Ben is out like a light,” she said assuring Ron that she wasn’t going to run out and leave him to entertain her toddler.

“Of course, Julia, it’s a lovely night,” he said with a smile. “Grab my sweater there at the door.”

She took the beige cardigan, then stepped outside. The cool twilight embraced her as she admired the low stucco homes that made up the neighborhood. The sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine filled the air and somewhere nearby a dog barked and another answered. Julia gave herself a moment to imagine a life here. A family. Ben and a dog and a man who was honorable. Everything that she’d thought was possible when she married Mitch.

Mitch had loved New Springs—or at least his boyhood. That had been part of the attraction for Julia at first, what drew her to him like metal shavings to a magnet. He’d seemed so grounded, so focused. He’d told her all about this beautiful, fairytale-childhood with adoring parents and a best friend with whom he’d gotten into nothing but trouble.

Jesse.

More importantly, Mitch had claimed to want to recreate that experience with his own family—right down to the best friend and the trouble. She almost laughed at the spectacular failure he had made of that.

She remembered everything Jesse and Mitch had talked about that night in Germany. Every word was imprinted on her, including the directions for the shortcut between Mitch’s home and Jesse’s.

In this foreign territory, she longed for a trace of something familiar, even if it were only a tidbit from a story she’d heard months ago.

It had not been her intention to seek out Jesse’s house when she set out for her walk. But standing on the sidewalk with nowhere to go, her heart became a compass.

She looked around to get her bearings. Mitch’s street ended in a forested dead end and she walked toward it, then cut left across one dark lawn and another before finally jumping over a ditch to arrive at the next street. She turned right and saw a small house on the corner with a broken front window.

Jesse’s childhood home. Interior lamps cast a shallow pool of light on the porch through the damaged glass and a ladder leaned against the side of the house.

Her heart faltered, her breath clogged in her throat. Her skin pricked as blood rushed through her veins and the world seemed to swim.

Someone was home.

The house surely belongs to someone else now, she told herself, but her feet suddenly had wings. She crossed the street, hoping that somehow Jesse was there. The sidewalk ended abruptly and she stood on the grass in front of the house.

On the porch, a man sat in a rocking chair with his head in his hands. She couldn’t see his face, but chills ran down her arms, across her chest.

He leaned back in his chair, resting his head so he could look up at the sky. The light from the house that fell through the broken window illuminated part of his face—a long straight nose, and a strong chin, hair that gleamed black.

Jesse.

He was here.

She could have dissolved with relief while joy and hope nearly lifted her off her feet.

A dog lying beside him lifted his nose and barked once.

“Rachel?” Jesse said, but his voice was a harsh whisper, practically a growl, and Julia realized he stared at where she stood in the shadows.

He laughed, a weary broken chuckle and again something stirred in her memory. “Just come out, Rach. I’m too tired for this.”

“I’m not Rachel,” she said as she crossed the dark lawn. She took a step into the pool of light and smiled. “Hello, Jesse.”

He stood quickly and the chair tipped sideways. He took a lurching step to the left and looked as though he were going to fall, so Julia leaped forward to help him, but he caught himself against the railing.

“Is this a joke?” he barked.

JESSE BLINKED and shook his head, horrified that the pain meds had managed to crack the lock on this particular fantasy.

Julia Adams.

Close enough to touch. Her short blond hair gleamed in the low light and her skin looked like velvet, cream velvet.

No wonder people get addicted to these drugs. He wondered what he could do with this vision, if he could spend the rest of his life high enough to keep seeing this woman.

“Jesse?” She put her hand on his arm and the touch of her cool skin against his overheated flesh slammed him back to reality.

He pulled away, limping backward, his fantasy now a nightmare. “What are you doing here?”

Her brow furrowed. “I’m, ah,” she stuttered and wrapped an oversized brown sweater around her lithe body, as though it would provide protection against him. “Ben and I are visiting Mitch’s parents.”

Ben. Right. The kid. Mitch’s kid. Another life he’d ruined.

“What are you doing here?” His voice grated through his throat—every effort to talk hurt. The doctor had told him he shouldn’t overwork his damaged larynx. He wondered what the good doctor would think if he started screaming. “On my porch.”

Rachel. The house. And now this.

“I was just out for a walk—I—Jesse?” She smiled, clearly trying to get this little reunion back on track. “I can’t believe that you’re here. This is amazing.”

She took a step toward him, her hand out. But if she touched him, he would shatter. He took another staggering step backward.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her head tilted in concern.

“Fine,” he lied quickly, not wanting to see her concern turn to pity. “I’m drunk,” he lied.

“Jesse,” she whispered, her smile hesitant and somehow beseeching. He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to remember what he was trying so hard to forget.

He made the mistake of looking into her endless blue eyes and he saw exactly what he had seen when he met her for the first time.

A million missed opportunities. A thousand unanswered prayers and unspoken wishes.

He’d been kicked in the gut when Mitch opened that door and introduced the woman of Jesse’s dreams as his own wife.

And now fate had brought her here to finish Jesse off.

Just in time, the drugs kicked in with a vengeance, the world wavered and he felt himself sliding along with it, carried on the sudden wave of painlessness.

“Sit down,” she urged, picking up the rocker he’d knocked over.

Defeated by the pain meds and the appearance of every damn ghost he was trying to outrun, he dropped into the old wooden chair like a stone.

“Last I heard you were still in the hospital,” she said, once he was seated.

“I left two weeks ago,” he whispered.

“Are you okay—I mean, all right? Your knee and—”

“I’m fine.”

She smiled and then laughed nervously. The sound lifted him up, made him weightless.

I’m doing better than Mitch, he thought just to remind himself who was the bad guy in this scene.

“Do you mind if I sit? Just for a minute.”

He couldn’t say no. She was the way she’d been in Germany—so hungry for company that she’d sit down with the devil just for some conversation.

He simply nodded, worried that if he opened his mouth, words he barely allowed himself to think would fly out.

When she sat on the step and wrapped the sweater around her legs, resting her chin on her knees, Jesse let himself go. He let go of all the mistakes he had made and the ghosts that were catching up with him. He left the broken and battered shell of his body and allowed himself to be a man on a porch enjoying the evening with the woman of his dreams. He let possibility and hope hover close. The what-ifs he refused to think about settled on his shoulders like snow.

What if she were here to give him a second chance? What if life weren’t as cruel as he had always thought? What if it were possible for him to be forgiven?

“I didn’t know you’d left Germany,” he said, engaging in conversation even though he knew it was a bad idea. He remembered everything she’d said in Germany. All the small hints and gifts of herself she’d made during those brief twenty-four hours. He knew she hated mushrooms, couldn’t sing, loved to run.

He knew she was so lonely she cried most nights.

“There was nothing keeping me there,” she sighed. “I didn’t have many friends and my mom was back and forth between Iraq and D.C., so I decided to come here.”

“Looking for a family?” he asked, the drugs making him loose and careless.

She smiled at him. “Constantly. You want to adopt us?” She joked but it fell flat in the thick air.

No, sweetheart, he thought, reminded of all the things he really wanted to do to her.

Wain stood up from his spot at Jesse’s side with a groan and shuffled over to Julia. He sniffed her, must have decided she was okay and collapsed on the step above her.

She smiled and scratched the old guy’s ears.

“Nice dog,” she said.

“He’s yours if you want him,” Jesse said, though his hand itched with a sudden desire to scratch those old ears.

Wain curled up into a ball and soon started to snore.

“Have you heard anything about Caleb?” Julia asked quietly. “I called the hospital a few times to check on him, but then I got so busy with—”

“Still in the coma.” He was reluctantly touched that she would keep tabs on the survivors of the accident that had killed her husband. Touched, but not surprised. Julia was a good person. Good in a way most people never were. In a way he never dreamed of being.

He’d stopped checking in on Caleb, mostly because he, Jesse Filmore, was a coward. He’d already killed three men in that accident, he didn’t want to know about the death of another one added to his conscience.

“I got your note,” Julia said. She referred to the stupid, morphine-induced lapse of judgment that had resulted in him asking a nurse to write a note to send to Julia. A sympathy card. He couldn’t even remember what he’d said. “It really helped.” She sighed heavily and smiled at him.

He looked away and said nothing. What could he say? I’ve thought of you every day for months. I wish I’d never met you.

“That night in Germany seems like a million years ago, doesn’t it?” She rested her cheek against her knee and watched him, her blue eyes glowing with things he refused to recognize.

Seems like yesterday, he thought but didn’t say.

“I couldn’t believe it when Mitch showed up out of the blue, and with you, no less.” She chuckled and rubbed her nose on her knee as if she were scratching an itch.

The desire to touch her was so strong he could taste it, bitter and hot in the back of his throat. Thanks to meds, everything had a rosy sort of glow, a sparkle, and she was so damn gorgeous—although she would have been so even without the effect of medication.

“We didn’t get a lot of warning about the assignment,” he told her, his tongue seeming to function its own. “It was real quick.”

“I’ll say. It was all real quick.” She sighed.

Their briefing had taken all of two days and then they were gone. And Mitch was dead. Real quick.

“We had fun though, didn’t we?” she asked.

“It was the wine,” he said, though Mitch had been the only one who’d drank it.

“It was the company. And the stories.” She pulled at a thread in the hem of the sweater. “Those stories Mitch told about you guys growing up and all the trouble you got into.”

“Mitch got us in trouble, I was just the cleanup.” The official blame-taker. No one had believed the troubled kid with the drunk for a father and everyone had believed the star football player who could always outrun the cops.

“Come on,” she teased. “Mitch said painting the water tower was your idea.”

He smiled, remembering. “Yeah, you’re right.”

There had been good times with Mitch. His wild streak had called out to Jesse’s own and in high school there was nowhere he’d rather have been than causing trouble with Mitch.

Mitch, however, had adopted that wildness as his life mission. Jesse found that, by default, he’d still been expected to clean up after his old buddy, long after the thrill had worn off for him.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and lifted her feet a little off the step so she balanced on her butt.

“Mitch told me you were a dancer,” Jesse blurted.

Julia shook her head, her eyes suddenly darker. “My husband said a lot of things…most of them not true.”

“He wasn’t known for his honesty.”

Julia’s eyes got sadder and Jesse could feel sympathy churn through his gut. The silence stretched and he watched her profile, the sweet line of her cheek, her nose. The perfect rose of her mouth. He was the only other person in the world who knew what Mitch was really like—and high on painkillers he couldn’t deny her the small bit of comfort she clearly needed.

“He was hard on the people who loved him,” he finally said.

She turned wide eyes on him. “You sound like a man with experience.” She tried to smile, but failed, and that told him so much about what being married to Mitch had cost her.

His hands itched to stroke her narrow shoulders, but not for comfort. Not as further cleanup after Mitch.

Jesse wanted to touch her for himself.

“Everybody in this town loved him, but no one knew him. There was only one guy stupid enough to be his best friend.”

She bit her lip and he wondered if he’d gone too far. If he’d read her wrong and her emotions for her husband were stronger than he thought. Maybe she didn’t know what a bastard Mitch was.

“He was pretty good at keeping the worst of himself hidden. Until it was too late.”

“Remember that when you get tired of all the Mitch stories this town can tell. These people never knew him like we knew him.”

He met her crystal gaze and they were suddenly knit together, not just by that morning in Germany, and not by the terrible, forbidden things he felt for her, but in their knowledge of Mitch Adams.

The Mitch the whole town refused to believe existed.

“I thought I married someone else,” she said. “The way he talked, I thought… Well, I thought he was a different person.”

“I understand,” he said. An expression of gratitude spread over her features.

“It’s been a long time since someone has said that to me.”

The moment stretched taut and then snapped. He looked away with a cough—hot and uncomfortable with how much he still wanted his best friend’s widow.

She laughed nervously and wiped at her eyes. “Look at me,” she said. “I arrive out of the blue to start crying on your porch.”

“Go ahead. Cry away.”

She turned aside and studied the stars while he studied her. Birds called and dogs barked and Jesse lifted himself from the chair and stupidly, foolishly, was about to lower himself onto the steps so he could touch her, smell her. Press his lips to the quick pulse that beat in her neck.

“Do you know Mitch’s parents real well?”

The air went cold, dousing the flames in him.

“Yeah.” He sat down heavily.

“What are they like?”

“They hate me,” he said, getting right to the point. “They’d hate you sitting on this porch with me.”

“Because of the accident?”

The word shattered the serene picture they made like a pane of glass. His intentions, his desire for her, turned to ash. They weren’t two strangers engaged in warm conversation, carefully scoping out the edges of their feelings for each other.

Mitch was between them. Mitch and his death and the accident.

He almost laughed. Accident? People could be so stupid. Didn’t anyone realize there were no such things as accidents?

“Among other things,” he said and shrugged.

She must blame him, at least a little, for Mitch’s death. How could she not? Her husband was dead while Jesse was alive. In his head the math was simple.

“Jesse?” She looked at him warily. The pressure in his chest grew unbearable. “That morning in Germany when you—”

“Don’t.” He groaned and shook his head. The honesty in her eyes and the ache in his chest defeated him so, like a coward, he looked away. “Don’t say anything. I’m sorry. I’m… sorry.”

“Sorry?”

He refused to look at her, willing her to get off his porch. He had been stupid to let her stay. Drugs or no drugs.

The silence built like a wall between them. Brick by brick, until he wasn’t even sure he could see her.

Finally she stood, swiped her hands over her butt and took a step toward the shadows of the lawn.

“Good night, Jesse.” She took another step, all but disappearing in the dark. “I’m so glad you’re here. I never expected a friend—”

“We’re not friends, Julia,” he said, from his side of the wall of silence and lies. “Don’t come back.”

JULIA DIDN’T SLEEP WELL. She was plagued by Jesse’s ravaged face and the sharp-fanged nightmares Mitch’s old room seemed to spark.

She had to put Mitch’s prom picture facedown in the hopes that she’d stop seeing it when she shut her eyes. But it was useless, Mitch’s ghost lived in this room, lived in these quiet moments of doubt that came at night. He mocked her and reminded her of how much she’d fallen out of love with him. Of how badly she’d wished he’d been more like Jesse.

In fact, that night in Germany with Jesse and Mitch, she’d wished he was Jesse.

And to make it all worse, there was nothing she could do to shake loose Jesse’s words. They ran on a loop whether her eyes were closed or not.

I’m sorry.

She’d carried the memory of that morning in Germany with Jesse in her heart for months. She’d lived on it when food tasted like dirt. She’d breathed it through Mitch’s funeral and through all the long nights.

And he was sorry. Sorry it ever happened.

We’re not friends. Don’t come back.

She flopped over on her back and stared up at the ceiling where the shadows of the maple branches danced and that morning rushed back to her in painful detail….

“All done,” Julia whispered to Ben. She held out her hands as if to prove she wasn’t holding anymore puréed peaches. “All gone.”

Ben mimicked her, shouting her words back to her in his gibberish.

“Sh,” she whispered. “We have to be quiet. Daddy and Jesse are sleeping.”

Jesse Filmore—the much-boasted-about friend of Mitch’s youth—slept in the living room, draped over the too-small couch. And Mitch slept on in the bedroom, smelling slightly of the wine he’d drank last night and the uncomfortable, lousy sex he’d attempted before dawn. He’d come to bed late, full of drunken apologies and tears. There’d been another girl. A reporter or a contractor or something. She’d meant nothing, he swore.

None of them meant anything.

Julia wiped Ben’s face, holding his head still so she could get the cereal from under his chin, and pulled him out of the makeshift high chair she’d rigged on the kitchen counter.

She filled his sippy cup with juice and water and walked behind him as he toddled over to the table she’d set up next to the only window in the apartment that let in the morning light.

She sat in her chair and Ben tried to pull himself up into her lap.

“Up you go,” she whispered, giving him a boost.

He repeated the tone of her voice, if not her exact words.

She had a few toys on the table and he played while she rested her chin on his head and looked out the window to the street of duplicate houses, covered in Christmas lights and snow that made up the family housing on the barracks.

Houses filled with women just like her. Alone. Lonely. Worried half the time. Scared the other half. They filled their time with book groups and sewing circles, coffee klatches and grief-counseling sessions.

She went, dragging Ben and bad pasta salad, wearing the mask of a woman still in love with her husband. She wore that mask until she thought she’d scream.

She rested her head against the window.

“Jesse,” Ben whispered and her heart squeezed tight at the mention of the handsome stranger her husband had brought home last night. It had been a surprise, not just Jesse, but Mitch’s appearance as well. She’d had no notice of their leave. No chance to prepare herself.

Not that she could have.

Not for Jesse Filmore.

He’d walked into her home, he’d shaken her hand, he’d smiled at her, played with her son. He’d even gone so far as to compliment her spaghetti and she knew she’d found the very limit to her foolish heart.

She’d watched him all night from the corner of her eye, from beneath her lashes like some lovesick teenager.

Maybe that’s what I am.

Maybe that’s what this feeling is.

He was a good man—it was the clearest thing she’d ever seen. As real as the sun behind the window. He’d walked into the room and she’d known him. Known him as though she’d been beside him his whole life. Jesse was the kind of man she’d imagined Mitch to be. The kind of man she wanted Mitch to be and it burned her like acid to have him in her house.

“Jesse,” Ben said louder and Julia turned finally to shush him, only to find Jesse standing in the doorway to the kitchen. A bright and dark angel brought into her life to remind her of the mistakes she’d made, of the things she’d never have.

His black eyes were a hot touch on her face.

She opened her mouth, but there was nothing to say. No empty chatter in her head to fill up this moment. She wanted to stay this way with this man’s eyes on her—intense and dark and so knowing she felt naked.

Ben scrambled off her lap and ran past Jesse into the TV room.

“There’s…” Her mouth was sticky, dry. But before she could try to finish her sentence Jesse crossed the kitchen in three steps, stopping only when he was right in front of her. Less than a foot away. She could have reached out to touch the hem of his gray T-shirt.

You’re married, she told herself—a stupid reminder of the vows she’d taken, binding herself to a man who had never meant them.

Jesse crouched in front of her, until his face was level with hers.

She grasped her hands in her lap until her knuckles went white.

“You deserve better,” Jesse whispered, and her lips parted on a broken breath. He reached out and his fingers, the very tips of them, brushed her face in a nearly imperceptible touch. Her cheek and the curve of her jaw. As though she were diamonds and gold to him. Precious.

She shut her eyes and hated herself for wanting him so much.

Jesse stood, jammed his fingers through his short military hair as if he wished he could pull it out.

“I can’t stay here,” he said.

Julia didn’t stop him and when she heard her front door click shut the tattered, threadbare life she’d managed to hold together split at the seams, falling in terrible ruin around her.

Julia closed her eyes wishing the memory away. Wishing it on another person. She’d arrived in New Springs looking for a family, to set down roots…and finding Jesse was like a dream come true. She was so close to all she ever wanted, only to have it ripped away.

Don’t come back here.

It’s because you expect other people to make you happy. Mitch’s voice revealed her worst fears about herself, the bitter truth she’d always suspected but never wanted to admit. You expect other people to do everything for you. You’re useless. You’re worse than useless.

The pain burrowed into her chest and made a home in the soft tissue surrounding her heart. She’d thought she was tougher than this, that Mitch’s lies and infidelity had turned her cold and hard. But she was wrong. That pain was nothing compared to what she felt right now.

Jesse’s rejection ruined her.

Such a fool. Such a sucker.

She rolled to her side and punched her pillow, trying to get comfortable. The wonderful mattress that had cradled her last night now seemed too soft. Lumpy in places. Hard in others.

You’re impossible to please. You want too much.

Ben sighed, murmured something in his sleep and rolled toward her, curving himself into her body, into that little space against her chest that had been made for him.

She had to get her act together. She had to make a life for her son. She couldn’t expect other people to help her with this anymore.

“No more,” she whispered.

What are you gonna do? Mitch’s voice asked and she could practically see his sneer, the snide superiority in his eyes that had made her feel two inches tall for most of her married life. Live off my folks? Sleep with my best friend? You heard him, he’s sorry for that morning. It was a mistake—

“No more!” she said, louder this time to shut up the voices in her head. To convince herself that she meant it.

Things were going to change.

She was going to get a job. Tomorrow. And she’d only stay with the Adamses as long as was absolutely necessary, until she’d paid off the last of Mitch’s debts and could save some money for a place of her own.

And she’d stay away from Jesse—just as he’d asked. She’d remove her heart, set it someplace else where she couldn’t feel its pain.

JESSE DIDN’T SLEEP. He was no fool, he knew the nightmares waited on the other side of consciousness. And frankly, tonight he had no taste for fire and the crash and Mitch’s knowing eyes.

He sat on the porch for a good long time, his eyes open and the image of Julia—sitting so close…right there…within arm’s reach—burned into his retinas.

He leaned his head against the old rocker he’d made in high-school shop class and imagined standing up on two good legs, walking down the street, jumping the ditch, crossing the yards. He imagined circling the Adams’ house and climbing the rainspout up to the roof of the kitchen. From there he could walk up to Mitch’s second-floor bedroom window. It was easy. He’d done it a thousand times.

It would be so simple to open that window, to ease into that dark hushed room, warm and alive with the scent of Julia, sleeping on that old bed. There’d be moonlight and silence and—

Jesse stood and the rocking chair slid backward, crashing into the house.

This has got to stop.

The world swam from the drugs and he gave himself a moment to get his knee under him before he stalked into the dark house.

He had been right to tell her to stay away. She had to or he wouldn’t survive. He was moving on with his life, putting the accident and Mitch and this town behind him.

So he grabbed another bottle of water and headed out the rusty aluminum back door that had not been changed in all of Rachel’s meddling renovations.

He’d been here two days and one night and so far all he’d been able to get done was write a list of all the things that needed to get done. The roof, the back porch, the kitchen floor—the list was a long one. And he was more tired than he’d thought. His long stay at the hospital had worn him down. The weakness was aggravating, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Slowly, each day he felt a little better, a little more as though he could get the work done.

The only reason he’d needed the painkillers tonight was because he’d spent most of the day on the roof, climbing up and down the ladder.

His knee was getting stronger and the work helped. He thought of it like conditioning for San Diego and the construction he and Chris were going to do. Preparation for his real life.

The night was cool, the sky clear and deep, and the air seemed damp. Everything seemed damp after the Middle East, where the desert turned everything into grit. Human beef jerky is what Dave Mancino used to say.

That’s all I am, walking beef jerky.

Jesse smiled—Dave had been a funny kid. Cocky as all get-out, but funny. Five months after the accident and Jesse was just now getting to the point that he could remember anything about those boys other than their deaths.

A million times a day he wished he’d backed Mitch instead of listening to his gut.

The one time in my life I decide not to do things Mitch’s way and the guy dies.

Jesse didn’t know whether to laugh or put a bullet in his head.

He stepped onto the long grass and left footprints in the dewy lawn as he crossed the backyard to the garage nestled back amongst some pines and more weeds. The door had once been red but now was the faded gray of weathered wood. The whole structure leaned slightly to the left and Jesse figured gravity would soon take care of the rest.

The garage had never housed a car. Inexplicably, his dad had once come home from the bar driving a golf cart and it had stayed in the garage for a week until the cops had come looking for it.

They’d all laughed over that.

What had always been housed in the garage—and Jesse was half hoping had been sold or lost or stolen over the years—were Granddad’s old woodworking tools. The planers and awls and chisels fit Jesse’s hand as though they had been born there. He had spent a lot of years in this garage with the tools, pretending that the world outside the sweet smell of fresh oak didn’t exist.

He could do with a little of that pretending right now.

The heavy door slid back on the nearly rusted rollers and the odor of sour, rotting wood poured out. He reached for the light switch, and was surprised when it flickered on, illuminating the cracked cement floor.

Along the back wall was the workbench he’d made himself a million years ago and on the wall above it, still as neatly arranged as he’d left them, were the tools.

When he was younger they’d offered him, if not a way out of his family and his home, a way to survive.

Jesse took a deep breath and stepped into the musty familiarity of the garage looking for something, anything, that could be saved.

CHAPTER FIVE

“YOU’RE A KILLER,” David Mancino’s father said. “We trusted our boy with you and you brought him home in a body bag.”

“But look.” Jesse tried to show Mr. Mancio what he’d brought in exchange for Dave. He held out his bloody palms and tried to give Mr. Mancio the still-beating heart.

“What the hell is wrong with you, boy?” Mr. Mancio smacked Jesse’s hands away and the heart fell to the ground. “We heard you were crazy!”

It’s ruined, Jesse thought, watching the heart pump blood into the dirt. No one is going to want that now.

“Wait, wait. I brought more, just a second.” Jesse waved over the thin blond woman with the haunted blue eyes he’d never been able to forget and she, in turn, led Wain and a man in a black hostage mask. “See, you can have the dog, and the—”

Jesse woke to the sound of a key sliding into the lock on his back door. The dream vanished and he traveled from sleep to battle ready in seconds—another little gift from the United States Army. He could kill a man in a hundred ways and he hadn’t fallen fully asleep in over six years.

The pain meds he’d popped last night made his brain feel thick and stupid, but the well-honed instinct in him was still razor sharp.

He crept from the couch, barefoot and in his blue jeans, toward the back door, where he had heard the distinct sound of a lock sliding open.

Wainwright snored on his pillow.

Some guard dog you turned out to be.

He fully expected Rachel to be busting in, and he relished letting her know in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t welcome. Her days of coming and going in this house were over.

But he yanked open the door only to find Mac Edwards, his arms filled with grocery bags. Jesse rocked back on his heels.

“Help a guy out, would you?” Mac asked over the perforated edge of one of the bags. The look in his light blue eyes went through Jesse like a knife. It was the look his men used to give him—respect and a general gladness to see him.

“I don’t—” Jesse started, but Mac stepped in and pushed the bags into Jesse’s chest. Instinctively, Jesse caught Mac’s burden and Mac used the opportunity to barge in.

“Nice one,” Jesse growled, his throat rusty.

“Old trick I learned from a nine-year-old,” Mac said over his shoulder. He walked past Jesse, through the small mudroom and into the kitchen.

The nine-year-old Mac referred to was him. Jesse had used the trick to dog Rachel and Mac’s every step.

Jesse shut the door with his foot and followed his old friend to dump the groceries onto the counter. He yanked opened the refrigerator door and began shoving the bags’ contents into the nearly empty fridge.

“Just as we suspected, you’re living on road trip food.” Mac reached around Jesse to hold up a turkey sandwich Jesse had gotten from the gas station out by the highway. “Not fit for human consumption.”

“Works fine by me,” Jesse said. He’d been avoiding the grocery store and all of the good citizens of New Springs.

“Good to see you, man.” Mac pulled Jesse into a hug before he could say two words. “It’s really good to see you.” Mac thumped him on the back, which hurt but, for some reason, Jesse didn’t say anything. He stood motionless, like a scared animal in the hard grip of Mac’s arms. Emotion leaped in him.

I missed you, he thought.

“It’s good to see you, too,” he finally managed to say. He squeezed Mac tight across the shoulders and then pushed away.

They both laughed awkwardly and Mac held Jesse out at arm’s length. It had been three years since they’d seen each other at his mother’s funeral and Jesse had kept his distance that day.

The moment stretched and Jesse took in the changes time had made in his old friend. Mac was big, thick across the chest and through the arms. His work in the sun had turned his skin brown and given him wrinkles and creases at the corners of his mouth and eyes. But his smile was still quick and his eyes sharper than ever.

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