once more in control of his emotions.
Still, she’d remarried only a week after their divorce. She’d gone to work at the HomeContractor store in Killeen, where David Taylor was the assistant manager, right after Nate left for Afghanistan. She’d been lonely and alone and her marriage was over. So when David fell in love with her, she’d tried to love him back, she’d tried so very hard.
“David was a good man, Nate. He would’ve been a loving husband and father to our son, but he never had the chance.”
Nate stood abruptly and the unexpectedness of his movement drew Sarah awkwardly from her chair as well. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at the ground for a long moment, gathering his thoughts. It was a habit of his, she remembered, and it had always irritated her when she was bubbling over with words. But she’d learned something about patience over the last three, hard years and waited for him to speak. “What’s wrong with you, Sarah?” he said at last. “Do you have cancer?”
“I have a growth, here on my spine.” She touched the back of her neck. “It’s not malignant. Not the way cancer is. What it’s called doesn’t matter. The name’s so long I can’t even pronounce it. The doctors in Texas didn’t even want to attempt the surgery. They referred me up here to a Doctor Jamison at the university. Have you heard of her?”
Nate shook his head “It doesn’t matter. The odds are less than fifty percent she’ll be able to remove the entire growth. I might wake up paralyzed. I…I might not wake up at all.”
His hands came out of his pockets. For a moment she thought he might take her in his arms. She took a step back. She’d always remembered how wonderful it felt to be held by him, although while she was married to David, she’d buried the memory so deeply she almost believed she’d forgotten. She’d break down and give in to the terrible fear inside her if he showed her any tenderness at all. “I’m not asking you to be responsible for me if I’m not able to take care of myself. I…I’ve made arrangements.” She would tell him later, all the details of insurance and long-term care facilities, of living wills and “do not resuscitate” orders. She didn’t dare dwell on herself, on what might lie in store for her. It was Matty she had to safeguard.
He gripped the back of the lawn chair and leaned slightly forward. “Good God, Sarah, listen to yourself. Do you know what you’re asking? We ended up divorced because we couldn’t agree on having children. Why in God’s name would you trust me with your son?” His jaw tightened. He looked fierce and rock hard. And sad. Beneath the surface anger his eyes were dark with sorrow and loss, she would swear it.
“You’re a kind man. You’ll make a fantastic father.” She couldn’t stop a small, bittersweet smile. “I always knew that about you even if you didn’t know it yourself.” She kept on talking, not giving him a chance to deny it. “I know I could ask you to just be his guardian but that takes time, filings, court hearings, all those things. Until all of that was settled he would have to be placed in foster care.” She faltered a little over those words but kept going. “The lawyer said…it would be simpler if we were married. That it would be easier for you to make decisions for Matty if I’m not able to care for him.” This time she couldn’t stop the quaver in her voice. She didn’t know which nightmare was more terrifying. Death, quick and painless as it would be, or the alternative, the possibility of paralysis or years and years in a vegetative state, dependent on others for everything, while Matty grew up alone and unwanted, the way she had.
“He needs you, Nate. There’s no one else. David’s only sister is a single mother. Her youngest has Down syndrome. Matthew’s grandfather is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Carrie, my sister-in-law, has him to care for, too. And I…” She let the sentence trail off. Nate knew she was an orphan, abandoned at birth. She’d bounced around from one foster home to another throughout her childhood. She didn’t need to remind him of the loneliness and heartache of her youth. “The only family I ever really had was you.”
CHAPTER TWO
“I WONDERED HOW LONG it was going to take you to get yourself down the hill and tell me what’s going on at your place. Where you been all day?” Harmon Riley, bundled up in an ancient buffalo plaid wool coat and with a vintage Tigers cap covering his nearly bald head, was seated in an old metal lawn chair in front of the fire he built on the lakeshore most nights it wasn’t raining or blowing too hard. A plastic cooler sat on the ground beside him. His old tom, Buster, was curled up on his lap. The cat opened one eye, stared at Nate suspiciously for a moment, and then went back to sleep.
“I had business in Ann Arbor.”
“Don’t you mean we had business in Ann Arbor? I didn’t see that minivan with the out-of-state plates take off and leave, did I?”
“No. It’s still here.”
“So’s the woman that was driving it yesterday, eh? Not like you to have overnight guests. At least not the kind you don’t bring down to introduce to your old granddad. Sit down. You give me a crick in my neck standing there like that.”
Nate did as he was told and Harm handed him a beer from the cooler. He twisted off the top and took a swallow, then cradled the longneck with one hand and stared past the fire at the lights of the yacht club on the other side of the lake.
“This overnight guest anyone I know?” the old man asked bluntly, making no attempt to hide his curiosity. Subtlety was not a Riley family trait. Just ask any of the members of the Cottonwood Lake Development Committee. They wanted to gentrify the hamlet of Riley’s Cove just like the lawyers and doctors and the professors from the university were doing to Lakeview, the larger town that sprawled along the north shore of the lake. But the stubborn old man, who’d lived in Riley’s Cove all his life, wanted nothing to do with upscale condos and art galleries, and even, God help them, a Starbucks.
Harm wanted things to stay the way they were. Simple and fairly inexpensive and quiet eight months out of twelve. So there was no way he would give in to the committee and move the dozen or so campers and travel trailers he rented back from the lakefront, or tear down the rickety boathouse at the edge of the property. And most defiantly of all, he would not hear of upgrading the name of his establishment. Riley’s Trailer Trash Campground was here to stay.
“It’s Sarah, Granddad.”
“I’ll be darned. Sarah? I thought she looked familiar but I don’t see as good as I used to, so I couldn’t be sure. Never figured to see her here again, though.” He shook his head. “Sarah. She’s got a little one with her, I noticed. Boy or girl?”
“A little boy. His name is Matthew and he’s three.”
“Hard to tell these days the way they dress them alike. Does he favor her?” Harmon picked up his cigar from the cut-down coffee can that served as an ashtray and took a long pull. Nate watched its ember glow red and then fade. Disturbed by the movement, or maybe just because he didn’t like the smell of tobacco smoke, the old cat jumped stiffly down off Harm’s lap and stalked away into the shadows along the shoreline, tail held high.
“He looks a lot like her except he’s blond and his eyes are blue, not brown. He’s a sturdy little kid, but not real big for his age.”
“Three, you say? Same age as Tessa’s hellion. Don’t know how your sister copes with that one! Sarah’s not here to tell you he’s yours, is she?” The old man’s voice had gentled but Nate pretended not to notice.
“You know he’s not mine.” The words were hard to get out. He would like to have a son. He’d
