“We all have scars, don’t we?” Ryan’s voice softened, his gaze fixed on the lights that seemed reflected in her eyes. “Some you can see, some you can’t. The ones on the outside... they’re easy. People notice them, maybe even ask about them. But the ones inside? Sometimes they’re the ones that shape you, whether you like it or not.”
He looked down at her, regretting that he had said so much. “Anyway, that’s the whole ugly story. I don’t have much to do with the colonel now, which is better all the way around.”
“Kim doesn’t seem bitter about your father. She moved here to be closer to him and Diane.”
He still found that baffling, as he had when Kim told him she was moving to Idaho where their father had retired.
“Maybe she’s better at hiding it than I am,” he said.
Even as he spoke the words, he thought of his sister escaping into a bad marriage, about her past brushes with the law and her current stint in rehab. Maybe suppressed pain and grief contributed to her struggles with substance use disorder.
Their father wasn’t wholly to blame for everything, he knew. Much of their pain had probably resulted from losing the mother who had been the anchor of their family. But Doug’s careful reserve and his virtual abandonment of them hadn’t helped.
“For what it’s worth, I like Diane,” he said. “I know Kim does, too. Since the colonel married her, she’s been a good influence on him. Kim was right when she told you the person you have met is not the same man my father was after my mother died.”
“Time has a way of changing all of us, doesn’t it? Some for the better, some not. I’m not the person I was a few years ago. And I wouldn’t want to be.”
She was a remarkable person.
By all rights, Holly should be the bitter one, filled with anger at her ex-husband, who had left her and her child with special needs. Instead, she was doing her best to keep her daughter in his life, to cement ties with his family.
He admired her more than any woman he had met in a long time. Maybe ever.
“I suspect you haven’t changed all that much,” he said, his voice low. “You were probably still a lovely person two years ago.”
She met his gaze, her blue eyes startled, then she gave a husky laugh. “That shows how little you know me, Lieutenant Commander Caldwell. I’m impatient, short-tempered, cranky in the morning without my coffee. And I can be petty, too.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“My sister could tell you stories, believe me. Sometimes when a customer is rude to me or to one of my employees, I deliberately don’t give them the best flowers.”
He laughed, completely charmed by her. “Okay. You’ve convinced me. You’re a horrible, evil person who should have nothing to do with my sister or my niece.”
She smiled back at him and he thought he could happily stand here all night in the lightly falling snow while the sound of children’s laughter rang through the December air.
“Seriously, I appreciate the listening ear and I’m sorry if I sounded whiny.”
“You didn’t at all. Anyway, I asked.”
“Yes, but I didn’t have to answer.”
She tilted her head and studied him. “Why did you?”
As he considered her question, he realized he had wanted to tell her. Something about Holly’s kindness and compassion had assured him she would listen with understanding.
“I’ve never really had anybody else to talk to about what happened after my mom died,” he admitted. “Kim only gets upset if I ever mention it.”
“So you stopped saying anything and held it all inside.”
“Basically. I’m a guy. A lot of us tend to do that.”
“And those guys usually end up paying a steep price for burying everything.”
“My relationship with my father doesn’t really take up much space in my life. Most of the time our interactions are polite and cordial, if distant. I don’t have much to do with him, which is fine with me.”
“Until your sister asked you to come out to Shelter Springs to help her.”
“Yeah. It’s much harder to avoid him this year. I haven’t spent this much time in the same state with him in a longtime, especially not during the holiday season, which seems to heighten and exacerbate every childhood emotion.”
