were thirteen when your father died, not seven. And you had your two older sisters to help you through.”
“Maybe. But it’s been a year, Mom. What should have been the hardest part is already behind us. The first Thanksgiving without James. The first Christmas. The first birthday. Yet Jeffrey isn’t getting any better. If anything, he’s getting worse.”
“Have patience, honey. And faith. He’ll come back to us. I know he will.”
Samantha wished she could be so certain. She drew a long, shuddering breath. It tore at her heart to think of her child being so alone. Before James’s death, Jeffrey had been so outgoing, so alive. And now…
Swallowing, she said, “To tell you the truth, Mom, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
She was a nurse. She’d dedicated her life to helping others. It tortured her that she couldn’t do anything to help her own son. She could bandage a cut, soothe a fevered brow, but she had no idea how to heal the bruising of Jeffrey’s soul. With every day that passed, he slipped further and further away from her. No matter how hard she tried, Samantha couldn’t reach him.
“Would you like me to come over for a couple of evenings this week, so you can get out on your own?” Maxine asked. “Maybe some time by yourself would help.”
“It wouldn’t do any good. I worry about Jeffrey whether I’m with him or not.”
“I could just come and keep you company.”
Once again, Samantha found herself blinking back tears. “I’d like that, Mom. Very much.”
“I think going to Chief Garibaldi was a step in the right direction. Having Jeffrey spend time with someone who knew and worked with his father might just be able to bring about the breakthrough we’ve been praying for.”
“I certainly hope so,” Samantha said fervently. So much rode on this relationship working out. The stakes were incredibly high. Too high?
“What’s he like?” Maxine asked.
“Who?”
“Chief Garibaldi.”
Samantha’s heart thudded as she recalled her first glimpse of him. “Oh.”
“Well?” Maxine gazed at her pointedly.
“He’s…just like James described him.” And so much more.
“His picture was in the paper last week. He was honored for his actions that day.”
“I know,” Samantha said softly. “I saw it.”
After speaking to Mayor Boyer that morning, Samantha had dug the newspaper in question out of the pile to be placed at the curb on recycling day. Though grainy, the photograph on the front page had arrested her attention. She’d seen his cap of unruly black hair, his broad forehead, his piercing brown eyes that gleamed with intelligence, his classic Roman nose and his determined chin, and had known exactly what to expect when she met him: a man who, like her husband, was filled with an unswerving dedication to right all wrongs.
What she hadn’t expected was his smoldering sensuality, or the helpless way she had responded to it.
Guilt stabbed at her as she faced a truth she’d been trying to hide from since the moment she’d laid eyes on her son’s buddy. Her husband, whom she’d loved more than life itself, had been gone just over a year, and she’d stood on Carlo Garibaldi’s front doorstep, gaping at him like a hormone-struck teenager. Her son needed help desperately, and all she’d been able to think about was the breadth of his shoulders, the depth of his brown eyes, and the fullness of his lips. What had gotten into her?
She supposed it had something to do with the fact that he was nothing like she had anticipated. When he’d answered his door, her first reaction, before awareness set in, had been amazement that he wasn’t taller. After the way James had sung Carlo’s praises, Samantha had expected him to be almost Paul Bunyanesque in stature. To discover that he was a good two inches shy of the six-foot mark had been a surprise.
What he lacked in height, however, he more than made up for with his dark good looks, sheer force of personality and well-muscled physique. He’d looked so strong, so capable, that Samantha had found herself repressing a ridiculous desire to lean her head on his shoulder and tell him all her troubles.
When she’d realized how he affected her, she’d almost turned on her heel and walked away. Instead, for Jeffrey’s sake, she’d forced herself to offer him her hand.
Since there was no way she could talk to her mother about this, Samantha decided that a change of subject was in order. “When do you leave on your cruise?” she asked.
“A week from tomorrow.”
Because Lawrence Miller had been killed on Thanksgiving Day, Maxine always took a cruise over the holiday—the exception being the preceding year because it had been too soon after James’s death. Getting away was her mother’s way of dealing with her loss.
“You really don’t mind me going?” Maxine asked.
“Why should I mind?”
Her mother shrugged. “I’m not sure I should be leaving you alone just now.”
“I’m not alone, Mom,” Samantha said gently. “I have Jeffrey. We’ll be just fine.”
She was stretching the truth somewhat. Things wouldn’t be truly fine until Jeffrey was himself again. But the last thing Samantha wanted was for her mother to worry about the two of them while she was on her cruise.
“If you say so.” The doubt in Maxine’s voice made her ambivalence clear.
“I say so.”
“If only your sisters didn’t live so far away.”
Bridget, Samantha’s oldest sister, was a financial analyst on Wall Street. Colleen, the middle child, was an electrical engineer and lived in Los Angeles. Both were so wrapped up in their careers that they rarely made it back home.
“It’s a sign of the times,” Samantha said.
“A sad sign, if you ask me,” her mother replied.
Silence reigned while Maxine followed Samantha out to the kitchen. Against her will, Samantha’s thoughts returned to Carlo Garibaldi and her reaction to him. Her mother had grieved for nineteen years now for the man she had lost. To the best of Samantha’s knowledge, in all that time Maxine had never looked at another man.
Samantha had looked long and hard at Carlo Garibaldi. What did that make her?
Her unwelcome awareness of him wasn’t important, she told herself. She certainly wasn’t going to act on it. All that mattered was that Jeffrey get well again.
Pairing Jeffrey with Carlo Garibaldi was a last-ditch effort to break down the walls he had erected between himself and the rest of the world. With all her heart and soul, Samantha prayed it would work. Because, while she herself didn’t know how to reach her son, she was certain of one thing. If someone didn’t
