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"Tory?"
"There was a guy, but I didn't know him long enough to fall for him. We didn't have a chance to see where things would go."
"Do you still think about him?"
"Maybe once in a while," she admitted, knowing that once in a while had turned into pretty much every day since she'd seen him at the wharf.
Megan's gaze turned serious. "You've given up a lot for me."
She had given up a lot: her life, her identity, everything. But so had Megan. "You're worth it, honey. We're family. You're stuck with me forever."
"Forever doesn't seem as long as it used to," Megan said with the wisdom that came from experiencing too much tragedy at too young of an age.
Ria had no answer to that statement. They'd both learned how fragile life could be.
Fortunately, Megan's attention was drawn to her phone, and in typical teenage fashion she was distracted by the latest text from one of her friends.
Ria wished she could find the same kind of escape, but she couldn't let herself forget that they were living in a house built of cards, and one wrong move could bring it all tumbling down.
Chapter Three
After getting off work, Drew drove across town to his parents' house. He wasn't big on family events, and with the Callaways, there was always some kind of celebration happening, but this party was for Brandon and Nicole, and the two of them could certainly use as much support as they could get.
Brandon had been diagnosed with autism almost three years ago, and while there had been some minimal improvement in his communication skills, Brandon was still very much locked in his head. It was such a change from when he was a baby. It was like someone had turned off a switch in his brain at the age of three. And no matter how hard Nicole and the doctors worked to turn that switch back on, nothing generated improvement.
He admired his sister's efforts. Nicole was a warrior mom when it came to her son. There was no therapy too complicated to try, no doctor's office too far away to travel to, but her efforts had not paid off. And Nicole's intense devotion to her son's recovery was affecting her marriage. Nicole and her husband, Ryan, had separated a few months earlier. Drew hoped that the break wouldn't turn into a break-up. Nicole and Ryan were good together, and they just needed to find a way back to each other.
Not that he knew anything about marriage or even serious relationships. He'd always preferred his single life. He couldn't remember the last time he'd dated a woman for more than three months. He'd certainly never met anyone who'd made him think about happily ever after, except maybe Ria, but that was probably because happily-ever-after was an impossibility.
He rolled down his window, letting the cool breeze drift through the window. The weather had certainly changed in a hurry. But that was typical of San Francisco. It could be foggy and cold in one part of the city, warm and sunny in another. He was happy to see the sun. He was off until Monday, and he wanted to enjoy the weekend.
A lot of other people seemed to have the same idea; there was quite a bit of city traffic. But eventually he made it to St. Francis Wood, an upscale neighborhood of large houses with front lawns and backyards, a sight that was rare in a city where many buildings shared common walls.
As he pulled up in front of the two-story house where he'd grown up, he felt his tension immediately ease. This house had always been his safe haven. It was where his father, Jack Callaway, had brought him and his three brothers after his mom died, after Jack found love again with Lynda Kane, a divorcee with two daughters of her own.
Lynda had inherited the house from her grandparents, and she and Jack had decided it was the perfect place to merge their two families. They'd solidified the merge by adding a set of twins to the family. For a while, it was a his, hers and ours kind of situation, but eventually they all became Callaways.
With eight kids, the house had always felt crowded, especially to Drew. He was the third oldest boy, but the fourth oldest in the family, putting him right in the middle of a lineup of siblings with big personalities. His oldest brother, Burke, was the perfect one, the born athlete, scholar and leader. Then came Aiden, the reckless rebel, Nicole, the warrior mom, then himself. Emma was next in line; she was a feisty fire investigator, then Sean, who'd broken the family tradition of serve and protect by following his dream of becoming a singer/songwriter. After Sean were the twins, Shayla, a super smart medical student, and Colton a rookie firefighter.
