again.
She’d known back in the ambulance that Walt would never recover—and that Michael was dead. She’d asked about Matthew. They’d told her that her younger son was fine. When the deck had collapsed, he’d been safely in bed with three other toddlers in the O’Maras’ guest room.
Yet when she’d regained consciousness in the emergency room, Susan had convinced herself that Mattie was dead, too. She thought they were lying to her when they said her friends, Jim and Barbara Church, had taken Mattie for the night. She didn’t calm down again until they called the Churches, and Barbara put a tired, confused Mattie on the phone with her.
If it wasn’t for Mattie, she would have completely fallen apart. She had to be brave and carry on for him. But that didn’t stop her from having moments when she’d think about Walt and Michael and start sobbing uncontrollably. Thank God most of these crying jags hit her when she was alone—driving in her car, or in bed at night. But occasionally they snuck up on her—in the checkout line at the supermarket or during her lunch break at the sandwich place near Dr. Chang’s office. All it took sometimes was a song on the radio or the sight of a young dad and his son, and then the damn water-works would start.
It was silly of her to think these awful, empty, heartbreaking episodes would suddenly stop now that Allen was in her life. He didn’t know that she still had those moments. He didn’t ask about Walt much—and for that, she was grateful.
The accident had been almost two years ago, and yet she still couldn’t help worrying that she’d lose Mattie, too. So if she was a bit overprotective of him at times, that was why.
At the kitchen sink, Susan blew her nose and wiped her tears away with a paper towel. Then she splashed some cold water on her face.
With a sigh, she took the Tater Tots and French bread out of the oven and set them out on the warm stove. Then she went back to the sunroom, sat down beside Mattie, and mussed his hair. “We’ll have to put WALL-E on hold for dinner, honey,” she said. “Let’s get your hands washed, okay?”
Gazing wide-eyed at the TV with the Woody doll at his side, Matthew didn’t respond.
“C’mon, Mattie,” Susan said, reaching for the remote. “You can…”
A hammering noise outside silenced her. Susan got to her feet and wandered toward the sliding screen door. She looked out at the porch. On the table by the gas grill was the platter of barbecued chicken breasts with a sheet of tinfoil over it—fluttering slightly in the night breeze.
She saw Allen by the corner of the porch, bent over the faulty balustrade with a hammer in his hand. In his mouth, he had an extra nail. He was repairing the loose railing.
Obviously, he had no idea she was watching him. Every once in a while, Allen stopped his hammering and looked out at the woods surrounding their rental house. Susan figured he was on the lookout for that man who had followed her here from the Arby’s in Mount Vernon. Maybe he was being a bit overprotective himself. But Susan didn’t mind, not at all.
She told herself that Allen was only doing his best to keep them safe—against all the odds.
CHAPTER FOUR
“You guys just want to see me naked,” Moira Dancey said.
Jordan Prewitt and Leo Forester stood by the kitchen door, each with a rolled-up bath towel under his arm. Jordan had a flashlight. It was already dark outside, starting to get chilly; they both wore fall jackets over their street clothes. Yet they were ready to hike through the woods so they could sit naked in some secluded hot spring.
Leo rolled his eyes at her and shook his head. “Jeez, full of yourself much?” he said. “I don’t want to see you naked. I want to see Jordan naked. We just need you for a chaperone—so things don’t get too Brokeback Mountain.”
“You wish,” Jordan said, bumping his shoulder against Leo’s.
The buffed, handsome lacrosse player and his lean, gangly best buddy made an odd-looking duo. But they’d been best friends for six years. “It’s weird to think,” Leo had mentioned in the car on the way up from Seattle. “Jordan and I have known each other B.P.H. That’s before pubic hair.”
“And we’re all still waiting for Leo to grow some,” Jordan had chimed in from the driver’s seat, never taking his eyes off the road.
“Stop, stop, please,” Leo had rejoined in a deadpan tone. “My sides are aching. You’re so hysterical. I think I just ruptured my spleen from laughing.”
Riding alone in the backseat of the Honda Civic, Moira had felt a bit like an outsider with the two of them. She was Leo’s friend. He and Jordan went to Garfield High School, and she attended Holy Names Academy, an all-girls Catholic school. A year ago, her mother and Leo’s mother had fixed them up at a Sadie Hawkins dance—or the Sadie Hawkins Disaster, as they now referred to it. Mrs. Dancey had been really pushing for the date, because most of the guys Moira hung out with were a bit dangerous. Mrs. Dancey described them as “hoody.” Her mother needn’t have worried too much. Moira was still a virgin—technically. She never let it get too far with any of those guys, but sometimes, she felt like she was pushing the envelope—and her luck. One of her friends said she was a “virgin on the verge.” Moira wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about that label, but it didn’t make her happy.
Unlike the guys who usually turned her head, Leo was safe—and nice. His dad had been killed in Iraq, and Leo worked nights, busing tables at Broadmoor Estates Country Club to help his mom with the finances. He also had a kid sister he helped care for. How much nicer could a guy get?
Moira and Leo had a horrible time at the dance, probably because she was—admittedly—a jerk to him for the first two hours. She’d made up her mind not to like this guy her mother was forcing her to go out with. But afterward he’d taken her to the Deluxe Restaurant, and during their one-on-one time together over burgers, she realized he was funny and sweet and genuine. He even had an offbeat kind of cuteness. But she just wasn’t that attracted to him.
Leo later said he’d caught on to her lack of passion when he’d tried to kiss her good night on that first date. Moira had let him kiss her on the lips, but she’d kept her mouth closed and punctuated the kiss with a mwah afterward. “You gave me the mwah. That’s the way my aunt Sonja kisses,” Leo had later told her.
Moira liked him—just not that way. So they were good friends—with a little something extra, that something extra being his slight crush on her. He was always there for her. As long as Leo was around, Moira had a date for every dance or social occasion that came up. She still had an occasional date with some other guy, but never anything serious.
She’d met Jordan four times—always with Leo, of course. She thought he was very handsome and sexy, but the less Leo knew about that, the better. So she did her damnedest to conceal her attraction to this brooding, sensitive jock.
She wasn’t sure how Jordan felt about her. Earlier, when they’d stopped at that ma-and-pa grocery store down the road, he’d shown a lot more interest in that pretty brunette woman with the little boy than he had in her throughout the entire drive up from Seattle.
The Prewitts’ Cullen retreat was a brown-shingle, two-story cabin—quaint and rustic looking on the outside. But inside she found a gracious living room with a big stone fireplace. The kitchen was wallpapered with a tacky design that must have been called Spice Rack, because it had olive and brown-tone renderings of spices
