now. Not when he kept seeing this new Grace, instead of the old one he was so comfortable with.
Not when all the pieces of his life were finally in place, and he was about to get out of Wrightsville himself. He couldn’t fix this for her, not this time.
So he said, in his most casual tone, “Could you ask Robert to help out?” He leaned one elbow on a stack of cartons, and jumped back when it wobbled.
She raised her face to his and blinked incredulously. “Robert? Why on earth would I do that?”
Right. Why? He shrugged. “Well, he is your husband.”
“And I left him,” she pointed out, looking at him as if he were a particularly stupid kid. “I can’t ask him to finance it.”
Time to plunge in. Throw the proverbial piece of spaghetti against the wall and see if it stuck. Even so, he found himself looking at his shoes as he said, “Maybe it’s not really over. Maybe you just needed some time to cool off. Maybe, just maybe, you miss him. Maybe you should—”
He looked up just in time to see her stand up, wielding an empty plastic water bottle which she obviously intended to introduce to his head. He ducked toward the door. “Okay, maybe not. Sorry.”
She was sputtering, he realized, actually sputtering as she followed him into the hall, the water bottle still clutched in one hand and her cheeks bright pink with outrage now.
“It’s over,” she finally managed. There went her eyes, blazing like a freshly set fire. “And I do not need you or anybody else to suggest different!”
“Got it,” he said, and backed down the stairs, hands up in surrender. “Sorry. Leaving now.”
“Good!” she yelled, and turned on her heel, disappearing into the spare room with a slam of the door.
“Don’t ask,” he said to Toby, who was waiting at the bottom of the steps with his hands on his hips.
It just proved how dangerous being impulsive could be, he thought as he strode out to his truck. It never paid to do something without thinking it over first, and that was a lesson he didn’t need to learn twice.
No, Grace’s problems were her own now. And he had his own life to live.
He flinched as another piece of furniture shot out of the window and hit the ground with a crash.
The sooner he remembered that, the better.
Two hours later, Grace was reheating a cup of coffee downstairs in the kitchen. The morning sun had given way to a gray drizzle, and Mr. Garrity had already called twice to complain about the “refuse” on his lawn, which was now wet and was a lot heavier to carry around the house to the driveway than it had been going out the window.
Damn Nick, anyway. He was always right. She hated that in a person.
And she hated how guilty she felt. Toby would never say no to her, and she knew he loved her, but showing up on his doorstep unexpectedly was something she had done on Saturdays in the ninth grade. When you were supposed to be a grown-up, it probably left something to be desired.
Toby pushed open the swinging door just as she was getting up to retrieve her coffee from the microwave. “I have a surprise for you,” he said with a sly grin.
She arched an eyebrow. “A cleaning woman?”
“Nope, it’s me,” came a female voice, and then Casey Peyton pushed past him and into the kitchen. “When Mohammed doesn’t come to the mountain…”
“Casey!” Grace squealed, and scared the baby in Casey’s arms, who immediately wrinkled up his face and began to cry.
“Jack, it’s okay,” Casey murmured, and brushed her lips across his peach fuzz head. “It’s Aunt Grace. Loud Aunt Grace.”
“Hey, Jack,” Grace said softly, and inched forward to drop a kiss on his mother’s cheek. “I haven’t seen you since you were, well, even smaller than you are now. How are you, buddy?”
The baby sniffled and hid his face in Casey’s shoulder.
“He’ll come around,” Casey promised, and dropped into the nearest chair, patting the baby’s back all the while. “For a one-year-old, a cookie is a surefire bribe.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” Grace said, and sat down beside her. “Where’s Jilli?”
“Jilli is hiding behind Uncle Toby’s leg,” Toby said, glancing over his shoulder. A small red head and a bright purple jacket were just visible behind him. “Forget everything your mother’s told you,” he whispered to the child. “Grace doesn’t bite.”
“Toby!”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Just kidding. Come on, Jilli, let’s show Grace where we hide the cookies.”
“I can’t believe how big they’ve both gotten.” Grace stood in the doorway to the upstairs living room. Both kids were parked in front of the TV, watching Sesame Street with a plate of apple slices and cookies between them.
“I can’t believe you’ve been here for two days and you haven’t called me, you rotten friend,” Casey said, shaking her head. She slung an arm around Grace’s shoulders. “Thank goodness I have Toby to deliver news.”
“I’ve been a little distracted.” Grace turned around and hugged Casey for the third time in fifteen minutes. “It’s so good to see you. Really. I was going to call today, I swear.”
“After you finished pitching stuff out the window, I presume,” Casey said with a wry tilt of her head. She’d cut her hair a little bit shorter since Grace had seen her last, but she still looked like the same Casey who had been Grace’s other half since sixth grade. She sat down on the floor in the hall and patted the space beside her. “Join me. If we even tiptoe in there, the spell will be broken.”
Grace slid down next to her and nudged Casey’s shoulder. “Something you’re not telling me?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Casey said with a laugh. “You’re full of surprises, huh?”
“What else is new?”
Casey’s laugh was gentle, but she was all business as usual. “So what are you going to do now?” she asked. “Do you have a plan? Where are you going to work? Live?”
“I slept on the couch last night, you know,” Grace told her archly. “I’m still trying to clear a path into my bedroom. I haven’t thought too much beyond that yet.”
“Okay, well, what about your bank account? Did you go down to First National yet? Have you forwarded your mail? Did you call a lawyer?”
Grace’s shoulders sagged. “I didn’t think about that.”
Casey’s smile was sympathetic. “Which?”
Grace winced. “All of it?”
“Grace.”
She
