a giggle, then tried to muffle the sound with both hands across her mouth.
Heather sighed, shaking her head. Like mother, like daughter. Except that she’d learned the hard way just what a fool she was. She fervently prayed that Hayley would never meet someone who would shake her world up so completely.
Looking again in the rearview mirror, she said to her older daughter. “How about you, Hannah?” Hannah had lapsed into her customary silence while they were still at the clinic. Heather had tried to gauge the little girl’s reaction to Ben, but she couldn’t detect anything one way or the other. “Do you like him?”
Hannah turned her small face toward the window at her side. Small shoulders rose and fell, as if she hadn’t thought about it and now found the topic not crucial enough to consider.
Hayley’s legs waved even faster. “Hannah doesn’t like anybody,” she declared.
“Do, too,” Hannah protested.
And they were off, Heather thought. But at least they were home, she comforted herself. Turning the wheel, she pulled up right in front of the small two-story house that Joe had built for her with his own hands. It was a labor of love. Every time she looked at it, she could feel a smattering of guilt assail her. Joe had loved her a great deal. And she had rewarded that love with deception.
Not going to do you any good, dwelling on that. You did the best you could. For everyone.
Knowing that didn’t make it right.
“Don’t fight, girls,” she said, turning off the engine. “You know how it bothers Gran.”
“Everything bothers Gran,” Hayley responded with a wisdom that was far beyond her four years.
She had that right, Heather thought. As far back as she could remember, her mother had something disparaging to say about almost everyone and everything. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen her mother smile, and couldn’t. The woman’s face had all but frozen in a permanently sour expression. It made her appear years older than the date on her birth certificate.
Heather stifled a sigh as she got out of the car and opened the rear door directly behind the driver’s seat. She undid first one child seat, then the other, her fingers moving mechanically; she’d done this a thousand times.
Life was funny. At eighteen, when she’d imagined herself at thirty, she would have thought that she would be at least half a continent away from both her mother and from Hades. She’d wanted to do something different, something important with her life.
Instead, hers had turned out to be a very old story, almost as old as time itself. Nursing a crush from the time she was ten, she had fallen under the spell of a handsome local one fateful night. Leading with her heart instead of the brains that God had given her, she had one wonderful experience and then very quickly found herself pregnant. With no one to turn to, she was trying to work up her nerve to tell the man who had captured her heart that he was about to be a father when she discovered that he’d abruptly left town. Leaving her emotionally stranded.
Not that he had done any of this on purpose. He had no more clue that she was pregnant than her mother did. It wasn’t as if they’d been going together before that night. They had run into each other, she walking off the effects of another awful argument with her mother and he coming back from a trip to Anchorage. She was walking along the road by the lake, and he’d slowed down his car to ask her if she wanted a drive home.
Home was the last place she’d wanted to go and said so. But he hadn’t wanted to leave her alone out there, so he offered to keep her company. They’d sat in his car and talked. About his plans. About hers. And then, somehow, magic had happened. Magic that had nothing to do with her mother or the woman he was supposedly engaged to, or the woman he’d been writing to who he’d invited to come out here to live. It was the first time she’d ever seen him looking anything but decisive. But he was having doubts about the future.
They both took shelter in the present. In the moment. In each other.
And soon after that, he left Hades. Left because Lila Montgomery had changed her mind. Lila Montgomery who’d once bragged that she could have any man. And she had wanted Ben.
Opening her front door, Heather realized that Ben had never answered the question she’d asked him at the clinic. He never said what he was doing back. Or how long he intended on staying. Was this just a visit or the beginning of something permanent?
She had no idea which she was rooting for.
Shepherding the girls in front of her, Heather entered the house. “Mother, we’re back.”
She heard the floorboards creak as the wheelchair slid over them.
“Did you remember to pick up my medication?” Martha demanded sharply as she propelled her wheelchair into the room.
Heather felt her stomach drop another notch.
Chapter Four
Please, please, let me get out of here without an argument.
Mindful that the girls would pick up any exchange of heated words, Heather hoped her mother would just drop the matter, even though she knew better. Martha Ryan let nothing drop until she was good and ready.
One hand on each little girl, Heather shepherded them toward the kitchen. She’d left snacks for them in the refrigerator.
“Sorry.” She tossed the apology over her shoulder. “I’ll pick it up on my way home.”
Heather didn’t have to look to know that her mother was glaring at her. She could feel it.
“If you don’t forget.”
Heather kept her voice upbeat and cheerful. “I won’t forget.”
“You forgot this morning,” her mother accused.
“I was in a hurry,” Heather pointed out.
It wasn’t easy keeping the irritation and frustration out of her voice. She certainly hadn’t forgotten her mother’s medication on purpose. Seeing Ben had knocked every thought out of her head. Besides, it wasn’t as if her mother was down to her last dose. There was enough for several more days. And yet, forgetting the medication was just another “failing” to upbraid her for. Her mother never cut her any slack. She’d even taken her to task for some minor oversight the day of Joe’s funeral.
“And tonight you’ll be tired,” Martha declared as if it was a foregone conclusion.
“I’ll go and pick your medicine up during my lunch break.” She saw her mother open her mouth for another go-round. Sometimes she thought that the woman lived for arguments. “Mother, I have to go.”
Heather deliberately turned her back on her mother, hoping that was the end of it. Bending down, she kissed first one girl and then the other. She didn’t think she would have been able to stand it if they weren’t in her life. Hannah and Hayley were what kept her going. What kept her sane.
She hugged them both quickly. “You two be good today and be sure to help your grandmother, okay?”
Hannah made no protest. She merely nodded
