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“What’d you think I meant?” Jackson asked, taking the tray from her with ease. He deposited it at the back of the room before wrapping an arm around her to usher her out the door.
“Sorry. When you saidhome, I thought you meant Pine Mountain. I guess it’s been a long day.”
Something odd shot through Jackson’s belly, startling him, yet he couldn’t place it.
“Yeah,” he agreed, settling into silence that was punctuated only by the softness of their footfalls as they headed toward the parking garage.
But the feeling lingered like leaves whispering in the wind.
* * *
Jackson awoketo several things simultaneously, all of which were confusing as hell. After a few seconds of rapid-fire blinking and muddled thought, he cleared up the where-am-I, what-time-is-it issue. The clock on the nightstand in the guest bedroom glared a rather rude 2:15, and he rolled to his side to work through the next set of questions.
The side of the bed where he’d last seen Carly was rumpled and empty, and there was a terrible racket coming from the kitchen down the hall.
Jackson yanked a shirt over his head as he padded barefoot down the narrow hallway, guided by the metallic clang of pots and pans and the hiss of Italian curse words. Carly stood in profile at the kitchen counter, the sleeves of her pajamas rolled tightly above her forearms. She gave the golden-yellow ball of dough under her palms a severe frown as she kneaded it, her hands flexing and releasing like a heartbeat.
She looked so overwhelmingly sad, with streaks of flour and utter, bone-numbing sadness covering her face, that Jackson’s heart whacked against his ribcage with the need to do something about it.
“Hey.” Okay, so it was a weak start, but it caught her attention. Carly’s head jerked up, eyebrows winging in surprise toward the sloppy knot on the crown of her head.
“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.” Her hands folded over the ball of dough in a blur of motion.
“It is kind of two in the morning,” Jackson pointed out gently, leaning against the doorframe. “Aren’t you exhausted?”
Carly shook her head, momentarily abandoning the dough in favor of stirring something in a huge stockpot on one of the three occupied burners on the stove. “I can’t sleep. Plus, we’re going to need food. Especially when mymamacomes home.” She dipped a small spoon into the pot, grimacing as she tasted the mixture. “Ugh. That’s not right.” The spoon went into the sink with a clatter and another curse.
“Carly,” Jackson started, but she halted his movement toward her with the firm lift of her palm.
“She’s going to need food.” She returned her attention to the stockpot, forehead creased tight. “More thyme. Yeah.” She rummaged through the cabinet over her head with relentless energy.
Jackson scrubbed a hand over his jaw, weighing his options. Sugar-coating things wasn’t really his style; plus, Carly wouldn’t fall for that anyway. He moved behind her to pluck the jar of thyme from the shelf, but when she reached forward to take it from his outstretched hand, he didn’t hand it over.
“I’m worried about you. You need to rest.”
“Don’t tell me what I need,” she snapped, yanking her hand back. “My mother is going to need food when she comes home. She’s cominghome,” Carly said, her voice emphatic. “I’m sorry I woke you up, but I have to do this. It’s the least I can do after…after I…” She trailed off on a choked sob, and realization slammed into Jackson like a wrecking ball.
Carly blamed herself for this.
“Jesus, Carly. It’s not your fault.” He grabbed her shoulders with the intention of wrapping his arms around her, but the coiled tension rippling beneath his palms shocked him into place. She swung around, her eyes flashing whiskey-brown and full of fear.
“Of course it’s my fault!” She balled her flour-covered fists over his T-shirt, but instead of pushing him away, she clung for dear life. “I yelled at her! I did everything but tell her to permanently butt out of my life, just this morning. What if she never woke up, Jackson? What if the last thing I’d said to her had been some stupid, angry thing about Travis? I never got to say goodbye to my father—I don’t even remember the last thing I ever said to him, but did I learn anything from that? No! What if…” Carly’s eyes flooded with tears that quickly breached her lids to course down her face. “What if she doesn’t wake up tomorrow? What if she dies, just like he did? Then what?”
Jackson didn’t hesitate, even though his rib cage felt like it had been run through a shredder. Carly’s waning strength was no match for the pull of his arms, and he folded her close, as if he could absorb her growing sobs through the contact.
“You had no way of knowing this would happen.”
“But it did. Itdidhappen, and now I have to fix it. The only way I know how to do that is to cook, okay? So, please let me fix it.Please,” she begged, emotion breaking over the word and carrying more tears with it. “I don’t know any other way to make this right.”
For a second, he thought her grief would drag him under, but Jackson dug in deep to steady himself and hold her up.
“Okay. If you want to cook, we’ll cook,” he said, and she shuddered against him, cries wracking every breath.
“Thank you.” She repeated the words into his shoulder enough times that he lost count, but she didn’t let go so Jackson didn’t budge. Only when her sadness had run its course, her gut-twisting cries subsiding into intermittent hitches, did he pull back to kiss a damp temple and tell her the truth.
“You didn’t cause your mother’s stroke, Carly.”
She rested her cheek on the tear-stained cotton of his T-shirt. “I know. But I didn’t make life easier by shutting her out. Despite her nagging, she means well. I’m just so tired of dwelling on everything that went wrong in my marriage. But I never stopped to think that my unhappiness affects her, too.”
