Page 70 of His Wounded Heart

I swipe at the wet on my cheeks, blinking until I can see in the dark. I get up and yank the comforter off the bed, then the sweaty sheets. At least I’d done laundry and have a fresh set to put on. I shuffle to the bathroom and turn on the shower, and wait for the small trickle of water to turn warm.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

When will I stop dreaming of Lizzie’s death? Shouldn’t I start to remember some of the good times we’d had?

I let the water pour over my head and close my eyes. I conjure up that day when Mom and Lizzie had gotten together and baked homemade banana bread and banana cream pie while I was on leave. Two of my favorites. Those ladies sure knew how to bake. It had been a year since my divorce and they were coddling me on my birthday. I was okay with it. As a matter of fact, I was soaking it up.

“Now I know it’s my birthday.” I rubbed my hands together. “You’ve baked banana cream pie and banana bread.” I gave both my mom and my sister hugs. “Now I want a picture of the two of you, and my birthday will be complete.”

“Come on, Simon Says, blow out the candles. I bought thirty-five of them, and if you don’t blow them out, the homemade whipped cream will melt.”

I rolled my eyes at my sister. I hated that nickname. She’d used it since she’d heard of the game when she was five years old.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll blow out the candles, and even make a wish, if you’ll stop calling me Simon Says for the rest of the week.”

Lizzie’s eyes sparkled as she held up the cake cutter. “Deal. Now hurry.”

I blew out the candles, wishing I could spend time with my family more often.

“You got all of them. Your wish will come true! Did you see that, Mom?”

“You are a nut. You realize you are twenty-four years old, but you’re acting like you’re ten.” I grinned at my little sister. God, I missed her brand of nuttiness.

“Take out the candles, birthday boy,” Lizzie directed.

“I’m not the one who put them in,” I protested.

“No, but you’re the one who blew them out. Them’s the rules.”

I sighed and plucked out all the candles and put them on the dish Mom provided. I heard Lizzie’s phone ding. It was the fifth text message she’d gotten since we’d started eating.

I was getting pretty damned sick of her boyfriend. It was like he had an ankle monitor on her the way she kept having to check in.

She came back into the dining room, holding her phone. “You two start without me. I have to call Ned.”

“Surely it can wait, can’t it?” Mom asked.

Lizzie shook her head. She looked pale. I wondered if she was coming down with something. “No, he says it’s something important, and he needs to talk to me.”

“Then you definitely need to call him,” Mom said.

As soon as I heard her on the phone in the living room, I turned to Mom. “Is it always like this with Ned? Him trying to control Lizzie?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Within two hours he texted her five times, and she answered him each time. The Lizzie I knew would have just put her phone on mute.”

“You’re not understanding how it is. He’s not being controlling, he’s protective. Why, just last week when she had a flat tire, he left work during a major meeting to find her on the side of the interstate, and he drove her home. He’s the one who arranged for her flat to be fixed and her car brought back to her apartment.”

I thought about it, and I was slightly mollified. But still. I kept pulling out the candles and putting them on the plate.

Mom must have caught on that I still wasn’t satisfied with her answer about Ned, so she continued.

“Simon, he’s the one. I’m sure he’s going to propose, and Lizzie is head over heels in love with him.”

“But they’ve only been going out a month,” I protested.

“Pish, it’s been three and a half months. That’s plenty of time. What’s more, I know Lizzie; she’s been keeping a wedding file for years. It will take a year for her to plan the wedding of her dreams. So, they’ll have even longer to get to know one another.”