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Caleb blinked up at him, his red-cheeked face looking impossibly small and helpless against the mounds of brown homespun.
"Hi, Caleb." The greeting sounded harsh and tired, and Jack was unable to push anything else past the lump of emotion in his throat.
He thought about touching the tiny cheek, and changed his mind. It was best not to get involved, best not to ...
Amarylis plopped to her knees beside him. "Isn't he perfect?" she said in a quiet voice.
The lump in Jack's throat swelled to watermelon size. He nodded and looked away, right at the thick brown tree trunk beside him. The bark swam embarrassingly before his moist eyes.
Christalmighty. He staggered to his feet and stumbled backward, putting a safer distance between him and his stranger-by-the-moment wife. "I'll get the food." Spinning away, he ran for the wagon.
By the time he got there, he was out of breath and his heart was pounding, and he knew it had nothing to do with
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the length of the run. It was because of the goddamn changes. They were killing him.
She was killing him. The woman he'd loved for more than half his life had finally found a way to kill him.
Feeling suddenly tired and ancient and unbearably alone, Jack turned around. Lissa and Savannah and Katie were holding hands and skipping around in a circle. Their joy-filled voices rose into the air.
"Ring-around-the-rosie, pocketful-of-posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!"
They collapsed in a giggling, writhing heap of elbows and billowing skirts.
Jack felt his solitude like a fist to the heart. He leaned heavily against the wagon and dropped his head, staring at the golden-green grass. Sadness and longing and regret coiled together and crept through his chest until it hurt to breathe.
"... We all fall down!"
Reluctantly, knowing he shouldn't but unable to help himself, he lifted his chin and glanced their way.
Lissa hit the ground first, and the girls piled on top of her. They hugged one another and rolled down the hill, skirts flapping, hair flying. The happy sound of their laughter tore at his heart, slicing a piece of it away.
"Oh, God," he breathed. Christ, how he wanted, ached, to join in. To just once be a part of them. The need was like a burning pain in his chest. His hands curled into tight, shaking white fists. All of a sudden Lissa looked up at him. Jack's breath caught in his throat. She lay sprawled in the tall grass, her hair sprayed around her face like a golden waterfall, her skirts hiked up to reveal pale, shapely legs.
She pushed to a sit slowly, never taking her eyes off his
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face. Then, unbelievably, she cocked her head. "Join us," she mouthed. "Come on ..."
Jack clutched the wagon for support. He felt as if he were being slowly, inexorably, sucked over the edge of a steep, straight-edged cliff. Below lay a fall that would shatter his soul and leave him in a thousand irretrievable pieces.
He licked his lips nervously. Don't go, Jackson.
But he was already moving toward her, drawn by a need he'd felt more than half his life, a love he'd never been able to forget or deny.
It wasn't until he'd gone about fifteen feet that he realized what he was doing. He was falling, hell, he was running, right into her goddamn trap. He stumbled to a halt and forced himself to look away. He stared at the madrone tree and turned numbly toward it. "I'll sit over here."
He thought he heard her sigh.
"Okay, Jack."
He glanced quickly at her, surprised by the sad echo in her voice. "Lissa? Are you all right?"
She smiled, but somehow it, too, was a dismal shadow of itself. "I'm fine, Jack. I was just going to teach the girls to make daisy chains. Want to learn?"
He shook his head, afraid to let himself speak.
