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Look at me. Tell me you love me. You’ll stay with me . . .
She did look up at him again, turning her body to face him as the grinning fool before them had instructed. Those blue eyes softened as he stared down at her. Even so, within those beautiful depths, beneath the love she gave him so freely, there was reserve. Perhaps fear.
Maybe neither of them was really ready for this . . .
Here was the thing though. She was everything good in his world—a world that had been filled with gray loneliness most of his life. He needed her. He loved her. And just like Dave had charged him to do so, he would do right by her.
He promised her right there, in his heart. He would.
Helen stared out the window overlooking the hospital grounds, her nails biting into her palms as she watched snow drift toward the ground. Two hours before, she was all giddy joy, planning Christmas with the grandchildren. Now she barely held back tears.
“Mom.” Tyler stood beside her, his large, rough hand cupping her elbow. “Why don’t you sit?”
She continued to watch the snow. It was so gentle. Beautiful.
“I can’t,” she breathed. If she moved away, looked from the mesmerizing beauty, she’d have to face her sons. Jacob had arrived moments after she’d stepped through the ER doors. Ty insisted he wasn’t leaving, even though his drive home would be more than an hour long and over a snowy pass.
They wanted to be there. For her. And the father they looked up to. They wanted to lend her strength and courage. Thing was, if she turned to face them, she’d fall to pieces. She knew she would.
Merely the thought of it rocked emotion from the depths of her soul. Hugging herself with one arm, she grasped the pendent of blue topaz that she’d worn for nearly thirty-six years. A gift from her beloved for their fourth anniversary. A splurge that they couldn’t afford back then, but it’d meant the world to her—to them both. Because they were still married at that point, and the year before it had looked very much like they wouldn’t make it that far. There had been moments, in fact, when it hadn’t looked like Kevin would make it at all.
That had beenafter.
After Kevin had nearly taken his life driving drunk, landing himself here. In that very hospital, thirty-seven years before.
Helen shut her eyes as that awful season of her life replayed.
It had been a couple of days since she’d heard from him. Tears had filled the hours when the boys were sleeping or were sufficiently distracted by Mr. Rogers orSesame Street. She’d tried to hide them from her toddlers. But as she made a lunch of boxed macaroni and cheese and orange slices, Helen couldn’t keep the streams from flowing.
“Daddy home tonight?” Matt had asked ten minutes before.
Swallowing the hard lump in her throat, Helen had forced a tight smile at her oldest son. “I don’t think so, Matty.”
“He still workin’.” Matt nodded his head, all proud and firm. Certain his dad was out there doing good things to take care of this rapidly growing family.
Helen wrapped his little three-year-old body with one arm and squeezed. Rather than answering him—because how long was she going to keep up this lie?—she simply kissed his dark hair and carried him over to their small secondhand loveseat. “You and Jacob watch Big Bird while I get your lunch ready. Tina is coming over to play with you tonight.”
From his seat on the sofa, Matt scrunched his nose at her. “You gone again?”
Ache squeezed Helen’s heart as she replayed the disappointment in her oldest boy’s expression. She didn’t want to be gone from them in the evenings. Didn’t want to miss bedtime stories and good-night kisses. But even a dingy trailer cost money. Not to mention having babies.
That ache hadn’t eased in the minutes that it’d taken to get the boys settled in front of the TV and then start the mac ’n’ cheese. Lowering the wooden spoon she’d been stirring the pasta with, Helen covered the small bump of her womb. Three babies in less than four years. Eye-yah. She and Kevin were not doing well on a lot of things, but apparently making babies was not a weakness with them.
With a glance over her shoulder, she peeked at the boys. They sat together, Matty’s arm draped over baby Jacob’s shoulders. One with dark hair who looked an awful lot like his way-more-handsome-than-was-good-for-him father. The other fairer, with blue eyes—the son who looked like her. Seemed like that should have been a good place to stop—one boy looking like dad and one looking like mom. Sufficiently blessed. Especially considering their finances.
More especially, considering Kevin’s rapidly increasing drinking habit.
“His dad is a drunk, Helen.”
“Oh, Daddy. Kevin isn’t his father.”
“No?” Daddy crossed his arms. “Why did I find a fleet of empty beer bottles in the back of that ugly wreck of a truck he drives?”
One of several discussions she’d had with her father about the boy she had been dating the summer after her senior year. They’d always ended the same way: Daddy telling her to be careful and not to make choices she’d end up regretting. She promising him and then begging him, with everything sweet and hopeful in her, to please just give Kevin a chance.
That was all Kevin needed—a chance. She’d been certain of it. He was thoughtful and kind. He knew how to work hard. And he didn’t like his dad—didn’t want to be anything like him.
He needed a chance to be something more than the town-drunk’s son.
