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Chapter 21
It was getting too messy. Miranda saw everything closing in on her and knew that her time with Tad had to end. She’d known it all along.
Just as she’d known she couldn’t have a long-term committed relationship—with anyone. The closer she and Tad got, the more he tried to know her, to discover exactly who she was. And there was only so much “her” to know. His questions weren’t wrong. His curiosity was perfectly normal. By the same token, she wanted to find out everything there was to learn about him.
Still, she didn’t ask much. She couldn’t take what she couldn’t give.
But she wasn’t ready to lose him. Not yet. He had at least half a dozen more months in town. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to handle the lies for that long. For now, for this day, and maybe the next week or two, maybe even a month, she had to try.
Just thinking about him had pulled her out of the dark realms of paranoia and panic, to a place where she’d actually been able to sleep the night before. She’d woken around three in the morning on the couch and had managed to get to her room, crawl into bed and fall back asleep.
She hoped she was helping him, too. He didn’t want a long-lasting relationship with her, either. He was far from home while he healed—not just physically, but emotionally. He had to be somewhat on edge, waiting to hear about the Internal Affairs investigation and his job. His entire career. She and Ethan did seem to be helping him get through it.
They might be ships passing in the night, but were meant to anchor together for this brief time. She had it all worked out.
She just had to quiet the clamoring of her mind and live in the moment. The day. The next week or two. A month...
She had to get through this stage of whatever step she’d reached on her life’s journey. Ethan was branching out. She was branching out. They were getting through the changes.
And it was understandable that she’d be uneasy. That a bit of paranoia would present itself. It always would during moments of vulnerability. The trick was knowing how to deal with it. To beat it back rather than give in to it.
“Time for bed, little man,” she said as she and Tad came in from the back porch just as Ethan’s movie was ending. “Say good-night to Tad and then put your jammies on and brush your teeth.”
Ethan got up from his place on the floor, his glasses bobbing on his face as he rubbed his eyes. “Night,” he said to Tad, and headed down the hall.
A signal to her that it was Tad’s time to go.
“He doesn’t ever argue about going to bed,” Tad marveled, after telling Ethan to “sleep well.”
“Never has,” she said, loving her boy so much. “When he’s tired, he wants his bed.” She didn’t invite him to sit. To hang around. She stood there, listening while Ethan brushed his teeth.
“Mind if I use the restroom before I go?” Tad asked. “I thought I’d drive by Marie’s place before I go home.”
Of course she didn’t mind. She told him to use her bathroom, since Ethan was in his. And then stood there wishing she could join him in his car, in the dark, driving slowly through town. Wished she could help him more than she did.
Perhaps they could go to the beach again on Sunday. The three of them.
Ethan crossed the hall to his room and she went to tuck him in, reveling in the small arms that wrapped sleepily around her neck. “Night, Mommy, love you,” he said, and her heart lurched. He was already half-asleep as he turned on his side and curled his hands under his pillow.
Mommy. He hadn’t called her that in a while, other than when he was particularly sleepy.
“Love you, too, sweetie. Sleep tight,” she whispered.
This was why she lived as she did. Why she’d gone through everything she had to get Ethan out of North Carolina. And continued to sacrifice to keep him safe. She and Jeff had created a life—their son’s—purposefully. Jeff had trusted her, even knowing about her father’s power over her. And she was going to do everything in her power to give Ethan the life she and Jeff hadn’t had. A life free of violence, with a caring parent who was capable of unconditional love.
She heard her bathroom door open and instead of returning to the living room to show her guest to the door, she pulled Ethan’s door partly closed and continued into her own room.
She just needed a minute. Something to sustain her as she spent the rest of the evening alone. The ghost in the black sedan that morning was starting to loom in her mind again, gray baseball cap and all. But she had it under control. Knew it for what it was. Now those memories were simply reminders that she’d never have a man in her life full-time—at least until Ethan was grown. She’d never know what it felt like to say good-night to her child and crawl into bed with his father.
Meeting Tad halfway between her bathroom and her bedroom door, she wrapped her arms around his waist, shivering as his arms came around her.
“I wish you could stay,” she whispered.
His answer was to press his pelvis against hers, letting her feel how ready he was to crawl into her bed.
Conscious of the hallway, of her son’s door just feet away, she pulled Tad into her bathroom, closing that door.
It was the one door Ethan was used to seeing closed. She’d decided when he was four, and getting curious about physical differences, to answer his questions as they came, and to shut that door so they didn’t come too soon or too often.
