Even after all this time. Eleanor had lost her own father when she was just eighteen. Having Harry in her life had filled a hole that had been empty. Divorcing Max had brought back even that pain. The pain of not having that father figure in her world, who was always there with a ready hug to tell her everything was going to be okay.
“How is Sarah?”
He didn’t look good, Eleanor thought. He looked older than she remembered when it had been only a few months since she’d last seen him. Suddenly now, she was worried. Was someone sick?
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said gruffly. “So I’m just going to come out and say it. Max is...Max is gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean? Off on another assignment? I suppose I assumed that.”
Harry shook his head. “No. After he got back from the last assignment, he called us to tell us what happened with you two. We told him you had been by to see us and explain. He said they had gotten additional funding, and he was going to do another month at sea. That as soon as he got back he was going to come home to the States and fix things between you two. I told him he should do that now. I told him how serious you seemed about the whole thing. That you had said you wanted a divorce. But you know how stubborn he can be.”
She did. She knew exactly how stubborn he could be.
“The ship...it’s gone. They think it went down in a storm. They’ve been looking for weeks and weeks. But there is no communication and no sign of it on any radar. I just got a call from the university today. They told us at this point we have to assume there were no survivors.”
He stopped talking, and Eleanor took a second to process what he was saying.
Max was on a ship. The ship was gone. There were no survivors.
Max was dead.
It was the strangest thing she ever did, but she laughed. Actually laughed at her husband’s grieving father. She reached out and gently touched him on the arm.
“Oh, Harry, Max isn’t dead. He can’t be.”
She would know it if he was dead. She would feel it. Her plan in life was to hate Max Harper every day from now until the day she died. A lifetime of hating him for not putting her first. For not choosing correctly when he had a choice between his work or her.
A lifetime of it.
He couldn’t be dead.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I know things didn’t end well between you two. Sarah and I were both so sad about that.”
“He’s not dead, Harry. I would know it.”
He nodded. “Sarah says the same. But we can only go by what the experts are telling us, and they have officially declared him dead. We’re going to hold a service, and we would appreciate it if you were there. No matter how you two ended, you were family. His and ours for a time.”
Harry patted her hand, then turned to leave. Eleanor shook her head, still not understanding what had happened. There was no way this could be right. No way she was going to lose Max.
Again.
She stumbled back to her desk in the center of the loft and pulled up her laptop.
“Eleanor? Everything okay?”
She ignored her assistant while she typed Max Harper Oceanographer in a Google search page.
And there it was on her screen.
Max Harper, renowned oceanographer and climate scientist, declared dead along with the crew of the ship the Savior.
She fell to her knees, and Selena immediately crouched on the floor next to her.
“Eleanor, what’s wrong? What’s the matter? Are you sick?”
No, she thought. I’m not sick. I’m dead.
Two and a half years later
“A TOAST! TO my lovely daughter and her fiancé. I, as I’m sure everyone here does, wish them the most happiness. And I know my dear husband, Frank, is smiling down on them from heaven.”
Eleanor looked at her mother in the center of the room and smiled even as she lifted her glass in the air. She glanced at her sister, Allie, and her fiancé, Mike, and was happy to see they seemed to be having a nice time.
The house was filled with family and friends for the engagement party. A party she knew Allie and Mike didn’t originally want, hoping to keep things as low-key as possible. They had just announced their engagement last week, and no sooner had that happened than Marilyn was planning the party despite Allie’s objections. However, Marilyn was insistent, and, in the Gaffney household, whatever Marilyn wanted, Marilyn got.
Whether her children felt the same or not.
The wedding was almost a year away, but Eleanor had already agreed to take time from her company to make sure she could attend all the various activities. Tonight was just the start. Eventually there would be a bridal shower, then the bachelorette party, the rehearsal dinner, all culminating in what Marilyn Gaffney was proclaiming would be the event of the season in the town of Hartsville, Nebraska, next June.
Given that the population of Hartsville was just a little over five thousand citizens, any wedding that happened in town usually was the event of the season.
“Some champagne?”
Eleanor turned at the sound of the voice behind her. Daniel, her date for the evening, held up two flutes. She gladly accepted one.
“Thank you. You may need to keep this coming.”
“You seem to be getting along with your mother,” he said in a lowered voice. “From everything you had told me on the drive here, I was expecting something a little more dramatic between you two.”
“I’m trying to do everything I can to avoid the drama. Mom and I are fine as long as I’m agreeing with her. It’s when I don’t that things become difficult. Take this party, for example. Completely unnecessary. We’re going to be seeing all these same people at the wedding. What’s the point of doing it twice?”
Daniel raised an eyebrow. “What’s the point of any party? To have fun.”
Eleanor looked at Allie and Mike again. They were still smiling, still chatting with the people around them. They looked like what they were. A couple in love. A couple who was excited about their future.
And Eleanor was happy for them.
All this wedding paraphernalia didn’t bother her. Not in the least. That’s what she was telling herself anyway, and she could be very convincing when she needed to be.
Still, she knew everything on the surface wasn’t always as it appeared.
“I know my sister. It’s going to be hard enough for her to be the center
