Once inside his spacious, slightly cluttered, ultra-male living room, the three children flocked around the mother like chicks around a hen.
“Mama, you want me to change Bella?” Mr. Serious asked, still toting the diaper bag.
“Yes, Brandon.” Crystal took the little girl by the arm and pushed her toward Brandon. “Go over there in the corner, Bella. Brandon will change you.”
Zak felt sorry for the boy, but it wasn’t his place to interfere. “Can I get you some water or a Pepsi or something?”
She shook her head. “Nothing for me. The kids are probably starving.”
Crystal was still Crystal. Needy and unembarrassed to ask. “I’ve got baloney and wieners.” What could she expect? He was a guy. Sandwiches and ’dogs were his mainstay. “Will they eat that?”
“Anything.”
Jilly, who’d helped herd the children inside, spoke up. “I can make sandwiches, Zak.”
Thank goodness for Jilly. He was a little rattled at the moment. “Thanks.”
Jilly disappeared into his kitchen, knowing her way around from the many times they’d hung out. She was a pal like no other. And she made sandwiches and herded unfamiliar rug rats. Great neighbor.
“What’s this little dude’s name?” he asked, chin hitched toward the yowler with a thumb in his face. The boy looked a little old for thumb-sucking.
“This is Jake. He’s almost seven. That’s Brandon. He’s nine. And Bella. She’s three.”
“Cute kids,” he said politely although inside he was going loco. His heart thundered like a spring storm, his palms leaked sweat and every rational brain cell suspected an unpleasant reason for Crystal’s visit. “So what’s going on, Crystal? We haven’t seen each other in what? Ten years?”
“About that.” A ghost of a smile pulled at her gaunt cheeks, more of a grimace than joy. “I was really stupid back then, Zak.”
Wary of apologies at this juncture, his anxiety jacked up another notch. “We were college kids. Stupid is normal.”
She fidgeted; her skinny hands twisted in her lap. From the kitchen came the sound of Jilly digging in the fridge, cellophane crumpling—normal sounds—while in his living room sat the biggest mistake of his life.
“I shouldn’t have gone with Tank that second time.” Her smile was wan. “Or the third. He was a jerk. Just like you said.”
Tank Rogers had gotten her pregnant and dumped her—on Zak. Then, the creep had come back “for his woman.”
“That was a long time ago, Crystal.”
Her sigh was tired and whispery and full of regret. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I don’t want my kids to suffer for them.”
Okay, what did that have to do with him? He sat with hands gripped together between his knees and waited her out, not knowing what else to do.
“I don’t suppose you have a cigarette,” she said.
“No.”
She made a wry face. “I thought about quitting, but now I figure, what’s the use? I’m sick, Zak.” She drew in a shuddery breath. Hollow eyes focused on the boy in the corner changing his sister’s diaper. “The doctors stopped treatment last week. I have cancer. I’m dying.”
Even though he barely remembered this woman, other than the humiliation he’d received at her hands, the pitiful statement made him ache. He was a certified paramedic/firefighter, a serve-and-protect kind of guy, who liked people and wanted the best for them. Crystal was too young to die and leave behind three kids.
He shifted, cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.” Sorry seemed a pathetically useless word in the face of death.
“That’s why I looked you up, why I’ve driven across the state to find you. You have to help me.”
Now they were getting down to the purpose of her visit, although he was still clueless. The sweat on the back of his neck said her reasons wouldn’t be good. “You need money? I don’t have a lot but maybe I can manage something.”
She shook her head. Her gaunt body sagged against the fat pillow of his napping chair. “No.”
“You sure you don’t want to go to the E.R.?” Even a paramedic was limited in what he could do without equipment.
She brushed away the suggestion like a gnat. “No time, Zak. Please hear me out.”
“Okay. Talk, but if you pass out again, you’re going.”
With effort, she gripped the chair arms and straightened. “Remember those days at college when you and I first got together?”
“Sure.” How could he forget? She was pregnant with some other guy’s baby, helpless and clingy, and he was an eighteen-year-old who thought he was the answer to her problems. She’d come to him, crying and needy, and he’d let her tears convince him to do something stupid.
Jilly reentered the living room, bearing a tall glass of orange juice, which she handed to Crystal. “You should drink something.”
Zak noticed the grass stains on Jilly’s shoes and the blades of grass stuck to the back of her shorts-clad legs. She’d raced to the rescue without a thought, leaving behind her uncut grass.
“Thanks,” Crystal said wanly. She wrapped skinny fingers around the glass but didn’t drink.
“I have sandwiches at the table if your kids are hungry.” Jilly barely got the words out of her mouth when the trio launched themselves toward the dining room. Eyes wide, Jilly looked to Zak who shrugged. What did he know about Crystal’s brood? Jilly hunched her shoulders and made a cute face. “I’ll make sure they wash their hands,” she said and hurried after them.
Crystal waited until the noise died down and Jilly’s voice drifted between the rooms. Then she said, “You were the only person who ever treated me with respect.”
What could he say except, “Thanks, I guess.”
She smiled again, that odd stretching of cheeks too thin to handle the movement. “I should have stayed with you, Zak. I’m sorry for what I did. For the way I did it.”
The unexpected visit was beginning to make sense. Crystal was seeking closure before she died. She wanted to make amends for her past mistakes, to the people she’d wronged. He couldn’t help but wonder if there were others besides good old Zak Ashford on her list.
“If you came all this way to apologize,” he said, “consider everything forgiven and forgotten. I have no bad feelings if that’s what’s worrying you.” In fact, he never thought of her at all. Hadn’t in years. “We did a dumb thing, but you took care of it and we both moved on.”
Crystal set the untouched juice on his ottoman. Her hand shook. She grasped it with the other in her lap and squeezed, her fingers turning
