“Is it just me, or does this dog bear a resemblance to Einstein?” he muttered, showing her the picture.
“Hence the name,” she said, and he smiled reluctantly. Damned if the dog didn’t bear a striking resemblance to the high school teacher, Mr. Bastigal, who had emulated his science hero right down to the crazy gray hair and walrus mustache.
When she nodded that the dog on the screen resembled hers, he slipped the phone into his pocket and vowed to himself he would find it. He ran a multimillion-dollar empire. Trouble-shooting was his specialty. One small dog was no match for him. It looked like Einstein. That didn’t mean it was smart.
And while he was tracking down the doggie, an assistant could do the homework on More-moo, not that it mattered. He was willing to bet Kayla would find another failing business to ride to the rescue of once she was given the reality check on More-moo.
“I’ll leave Mary a business card with my cell number on it. You can call me if you change your mind about the ride home.”
“I won’t.”
He scanned her face, nodded and left the room, leaving the card with Mary, as promised. Mary seemed to want to catch up—she’d been the nurse here way back when he was lifeguarding, and she’d seemed old then—but he begged off, claiming responsibility for the dog.
David Blaze had had enough of old home week. Except, as he walked back out into the sultry heat of the July day, he glanced at his watch. He hadn’t been here a week. Nowhere near. It had been thirty-two whole minutes since he had last checked his watch in the snarled traffic of Main Street.
KAYLA WAS AT HOME, and in bed. She could not sleep. She ordered herself not to look at the bedside alarm, but she did, anyway.
It was 3:10 a.m.
She was exhausted, and wide awake at the same time, possibly from the drugs in her system.
But possibly sleep eluded her because she had become used to her little dog cuddled against her in the night, his sweet snores, his wiry whiskers tickling her chin, his eyes popping open to make sure she was still there, staring deeply at her, his liquid gaze holding nothing but devotion and loyalty.
Unlike her husband.
Wasn’t that why she was really awake? Contemplating what David had told her about the day of the drowning?
She had called David a liar.
But in her heart, she had felt the sickening reverberation of truth.
That, Kayla decided, was what was hateful about being awake at this time of night. She was held hostage by the thoughts that she could fend off during the day. During the day there was so much this old house needed, it was overwhelming.
But being overwhelmed was not necessarily a bad thing. It could occupy her every thought and every waking hour. Between that, the new dog and looking for the perfect investment opportunity, she was blessedly busy.
But on a night like tonight, thoughts crowded into her tired mind. Even before David had said that about Kevin flirting with a girl instead of doing his job, Kayla had lain awake at night and contemplated her marriage.
She tried to direct her thoughts to good things and good memories, like the night he had proposed, so sweet and serious and sincere.
I want to do the honorable thing. For once.
She frowned. She hadn’t thought of that part of it for a long time, and not in the light she was thinking of it now. Had he loved her, or had he done the honorable thing?
Crazy thoughts. Middle of the night thoughts. Of course he had loved her.
In his way. So what if his way bought flowers when they needed groceries? That was romantic! And he had been a dreamer. That was a good memory. Of them sitting at the kitchen table, in the early days of their marriage sipping the last of their coffee, his face all intense and earnest as he described what he wanted for them: a business of their own, a big house, a great car.
Disloyal to think his dreams had been grandiose and made it impossible for him to settle for an ordinary life. Within days of finding a job, it would seem his litany of complaints would begin. He wasn’t appreciated. He wasn’t being paid enough. His boss was a jerk. His coworkers were inferior, his great ideas weren’t being listened to or implemented.
She never stopped hoping and praying that he would find himself, that he would grow up to be a man with all the best characteristics of that boy she had grown up with—so fun-loving and energetic and full of mischief.
Kevin had rewarded her unflagging belief in him by increasingly taking her for granted. He had become careless of her feelings—though the old charm would return, temporarily, when she threatened to leave or when it managed to bail them out of one of his predicaments yet again.
The old charm. The one thing he was good at. What had David meant about Kevin flirting with a girl? Had he been talking to her? Or more? Touching her? Kissing her?
Had Kevin had affairs during their marriage?
There. She was there, at the place she had refused to go since her husband’s death. It felt like she had just plunged into a hard place at the core of her, that did not go away because she pretended it was not there, that had not been a part of her makeup before she had married Kevin.
Was it this very suspicion that had caused it? This suspicion, and so much disappointment that it felt so disloyal to look at?
She had wondered about Kevin’s fidelity even before David’s shocking revelation outside of the clinic that afternoon. It seemed to her the more Kevin failed at everything else, the more she had become lonely within their marriage, the more he had exercised his substantial charm outside of it.
Where had he been, when speeding toward home too late at night, the car sliding on ice and slamming into a tree?
No seat belt. So like Kevin.
He had been chronically irresponsible, and others had picked up the tab for that.
It felt like David’s fault, David’s sudden unexpected presence in her life, and his revelations of this afternoon that had brought these thoughts, lurking beneath the surface, surging to the top.
Kayla blinked back tears. It had just all gone so terribly, terribly wrong. The tears felt weak, and at the same time, better than that hard, cold rock she carried around where her heart used to be.
And now David was back, and words she had not allowed herself to think of in those five long years of marriage to Kevin were at the forefront of her mind.
Don’t marry him, Kayla.
She considered the awful possibility that David, who had withheld his forgiveness, had not been the cause of Kevin’s downward spiral, but that he had seen something about his oldest friend that she had missed.
And who was withholding forgiveness now? It was pathetic. But now that her feelings had surfaced, she was aware one of them was anger. It was useless to
