Page 11 of Tracking Safety

Now Jenna—their mother, his wife—was standing in a hardware store parking lot in Blue Ridge Hollow. She’d been watching him and had tried to run.

He attempted to make sense of it all.

“Where have you been?” The words sounded like sandpaper as they left his lips.

A frown tugged at her lips as she said, “It’s . . . a long story.”

“And why are you back now? What do you want?”

She frowned and sucked on her bottom lip as if trying to choose her words. “I have so much I need to tell you.”

“So tell me.” His jaw tightened as he waited for her to say more.

She tugged at the bill of her baseball hat before glancing around. Her gaze landed on him again, hesitation evident in her features. “I’ve been trying to work up the courage to talk to you.”

He looked at her. At this woman he’d married. At the stranger she’d become in the time she’d been gone.

He had a thousand things to say to her.

Yet he couldn’t remember a single one.

Jenna stood still and let Luke look at her.

She’d imagined this moment a hundred times in the past month. She’d rehearsed words, discarded them, rehearsed others. She’d told herself she was ready for whatever she found on Luke’s face when they finally talked.

However, she wasn’t ready for this. There was no way she could be.

Luke’s hands had closed into fists the moment he recognized her. His jaw clenched.

She’d watched him tense like that throughout their marriage. When his youngest sister had left for Hollywood. At his other sister’s funeral. The night Jonah was born too early and too small.

He’d stood exactly like this each time—his shoulders level and his hands closed.

Right now, he said nothing. Neither did she. The spring air sat flat and cold between them, and years of silence stretched across every inch of it.

He spoke first. “How long have you been here?”

“A while.” How did she tell him she’d been in town for a month? That she’d kept talking herself out of approaching him?

Something shifted behind his eyes—something she couldn’t name and didn’t like. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

She frowned. “It’s complicated, Luke.”

He let out a short breath. “Complicated? Let me tell you about complicated, Jenna.”

She went still, bracing herself for his next words—words she knew she deserved.

“Complicated is being a single father to three kids who don’t understand what happened to their mother. Complicated is sitting across the breakfast table from a child who keeps asking where Mommy went and not having a single answer to give her.”

She held his gaze. She deserved any guilt she felt right now or any harsh words Luke might hurl onto her.

“Complicated is watching your daughter cry herself to sleep for three weeks straight and not being able to do a thing about it.” Luke’s voice remained level, which somehow made his words harder to hear than shouting. “Complicated is not being able to tell her it’s going to be okay—because you don’t know if it is.”

Jenna’s throat tightened, but she said nothing.

“By every account it looked like you just gave up on us. Packed up and discarded whatever you felt for this family and walked away.” He paused. “That’s complicated.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Her voice trembled. “Luke, I need you to understand . . . there are things I haven’t been able to tell you. Things I couldn’t tell you. But I’m here now, and I need you to let me explain.”