many of Ryan’s things and felt free enough with them to give them away, he’d also been honest about the fact he wasn’t very close with his son.
Mari, Leon often said, was a second chance.
Since Leon Calder was the only father Mari had ever known, he was her only chance.
But now Mari stood in the kitchen, in shadow, watching Ryan come in from the outside. He stamped his feet to get the snow off his boots. Brushed it off his shoulders. It was melting in his blond hair, leaving rivulets of water trickling down his temples and making puddles from the hems of his pants on the floor.
He didn’t see her, and she didn’t want him to. Mari went quiet; she went still. She was silence. Not a breath, not a sigh, not a blink. And Ryan passed by her little corner of shadow and headed for the living room, calling out for his dad.
She had time to run upstairs and hastily comb through her hair. Put on clean clothes. She didn’t have many pretty things. Leon preferred her to dress in something like a uniform. Appropriate clothes, he said, because he wanted nobody to say there was anything inappropriate going on. People already had enough reason to whisper, he said, though he’d never explained exactly what that meant. Mari didn’t like the plaid skirt, the white blouse, the saddle shoes and knee socks. She’d rather have the sorts of clothes she’d seen the kids on TV wearing. Jeans and sneakers. Now, though, she wished she had something pretty. Flowy. Something soft, like a princess would wear.
For the first time, she understood why Anne cared about what dress she wore to impress Gilbert Blythe.
When she crept down the stairs again, her heart pounding, Mari saw Ryan in the living room with his dad. They were drinking from glasses filled with Scotch. Ryan didn’t look very much like his father, but they both turned at the same time and she saw there was something very much the same in their smiles.
“Ryan,” said Leon, “this...is Mari.”
“Hey, little sister,” Ryan said. “What have you done?”
“Nothing,” Mari answered and was confused when Ryan choked with laughter. “What?”
“She doesn’t know Billy Idol, Ryan.”
“Oh. Right.” Ryan nodded like he understood, but the quirk of his smile said he didn’t. Not really.
He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. He was her brother, Leon said, but there was nothing brotherly about the way he looked at her.
Mari wanted him like some girls wanted rock stars or movie stars or TV celebrities.
Later, when Leon had gone to bed and Mari was still in the kitchen scrubbing the floor because of the mess Ryan’s shoes had made, he found her. “Hey. What are you doing?”
She looked up at him. “Cleaning. I don’t like it to be dirty.”
“My dad makes you clean like that? Doesn’t he have a housekeeper?”
“I don’t mind.” It had never occurred to her that it was something to be ashamed of, taking care of Leon. After all, he’d taken care of her.
“Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be up late scrubbing the floor. You should be out having fun.” Ryan’s gaze had cut away from her before sneaking back like a dog looking to steal from the table.
The next time he came home with a pink T-shirt with a unicorn covered in sparkles on the front of it. It wasn’t a princess dress, but Mari would eventually wear it to shreds. He took her to the movies, which she hated, too dark, too loud, the chemical scent of the popcorn butter distasteful. He took her to a restaurant, and she liked that much better, especially when she got a giant sundae for dessert. Three days he spent at home, three days he spent teasing her into laughter and making her shine.
“You take care, kid,” he told her on the day he left and chucked her under the chin.
She watched him walk to the car, her hand raised in a half wave that was the best she could muster, considering the thought of him leaving her so soon was enough to make her want to curl in a ball beneath the blankets and cry.
A day later, he called the house to talk to her. Not to his father, who handed her the phone with a raised eyebrow, but no comment. Mari took the phone curiously, uncertain, but the moment she heard Ryan’s voice, everything that had seemed dark became light.
For two years, Ryan was there when she needed someone to talk to, though in truth she often did more listening than speaking. He taught her how to drive. Ryan was there when Leon didn’t understand what a young girl needed—pretty clothes, not dowdy uniforms. Trips to the park and the zoo and the mall instead of being kept at home and out of sight. Ryan was the one who told his father that Mari needed to be allowed to wear mascara, get her ears pierced, if she wanted to. To look and act like other girls her age, even if she’d grow up to be a different sort of woman. He was her champion, her advocate.
He was her prince.
And then, Leon died.
She was not surprised when it happened, though it was sudden. One moment he was sitting in front of the meatloaf she’d cooked for dinner, asking her about her studies—she was a month from finishing the homeschooling courses that would give her a GED—and the next he was facedown in the mashed potatoes. A few hours after that, the man who’d given her a life had lost his.
Death was nothing new to her. She’d seen it on the farm with chicks and puppies and kittens, and her grandmother, too. Some part of her had been waiting for Leon to abandon her since the day he’d taken her home. She wept, of course, at the loss. Leon had saved her...but he’d never been her savior, had he? Not really.
She had a prince for that.
The night before Leon’s funeral, Ryan came home late. Mari was waiting for him in the living room in front of the fireplace. She didn’t know about seduction, but it turned out she didn’t have to. She wanted him and now she had him.
Eight months later, they were married.
* * *
Beside her sleeping husband, Mari thinks of all this now. How some choices were made for her and some she’s made for herself, but that the whole of her life has led her to this man, this house, this space. This life. And it’s a good life, full of love and so much more than she’d ever have guessed she could have.
If Ryan says they need to go back, he must have a good reason. And if she trusts him, as she’s always done, then she also has to trust that everything will be all right. When he tells her he’s taking her home, he has no real idea of what that means to her and never has. She doesn’t want him to know. But she trusts Ryan as much as she loves him, and that means Mari will follow him wherever he thinks he needs to go.
Ryan is not the first man to rescue her, but Mari has always believed he would be the last.
IT WOULD’VE BEEN a total cliché for Kendra to hate her parents for this. They’d taken her away from her friends, the pool, all the stuff she’d been looking forward to this summer. Her riding lessons. She’d been planning to do the adult summer reading program for the first time, and it was
