He looked down at her. Gently, tenderly, he brushed a kiss across her lips. “I’ll take however long you need to convince you I mean what I say.”
“Then we’ll talk tonight.”
“Okay.” He led her inside. Liam was already at the table with a cup of coffee in front of him. “Morning, sis. You okay?”
She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Yep.” She started to sit but Tim grabbed her and planted a passionate kiss on her lips.
“Missed you last night, babe.”
“I missed you, too.” She cast a meaningful look at Jack. “I missed both of you.”
Jack gave her a smile that took years off his face.
She would have to figure out how to get past her pain, one way or the other.
* * * *
Jack left for work. He had court that morning. Tim and Gwen would go to the hospital to visit Jack’s mom. Liam begged off going with them. He wanted to spend the day relaxing and catching up on work. Gwen suspected he wanted her to have alone time with Tim, too.
She relaxed while Tim drove them to the hospital. His hand stole across the seats, where he laced his fingers with hers. “You have no idea how glad I am you’re home,” he said.
“Technically, I’m not home. The RV is our home.” Despite wanting her own happily-ever-after, she reserved her heart. She still needed to have a long, private sit-down with Jack, and even then, the outcome might not be what she prayed for.
Not if he couldn’t fully open his heart. Love wasn’t enough. She needed to know he loved her for her, not because of Melodie.
Ed hadn’t arrived yet. Helen sat up in bed, intently watching a program about current stock trends on CNBC. She brightly smiled when they walked in. “Tim! Come here and give me a hug, sweetie. I haven’t seen you in so long!”
He gently squeezed Gwen’s hand. Helen must be having a good morning. He leaned in and hugged her. “How are you doing, Helen?”
“Had a nice breakfast earlier. Ed called me a little while ago, he’ll be by after lunch.” She looked at Gwen. “Didn’t I meet you yesterday?” Her face clouded. “I’m sorry. I’m not at my best with names now.”
Gwen stepped forward and held out her hand. “Gwen Oxford. You met me and my brother, Liam, yesterday.”
Recognition dawned. “Ah! That’s right. Pete came by yesterday, and I kept confusing your brother with Pete.”
Tim and Gwen exchanged a sharp look. A heavy feeling settled in the pit of Gwen’s stomach as she sat next to Tim beside the bed.
Helen sadly smiled at her. “You look just like Melodie. She was such a sweetheart. I miss her and Pete so much.” She reached over and patted Tim’s arm. “Not that I don’t love you, Timmy, because I do.”
Gwen suspected his smile was forced. “I know, Helen. I understand.”
“I wish Jack would forgive Pete for what happened. It’s not healthy for him to hold hatred inside all these years. Especially when it was an accident.”
As Gwen opened her mouth in an attempt to steer the conversation in a different direction, a man appeared in the doorway, a small vase of flowers in his hands. He stopped short, his eyes locked on Gwen, his expression filled with shock.
Helen, despite the ravages of her Alzheimer’s, proved faster than any of them. “Pete!” She sat up and waved him in. “Come here! I want you to meet someone!”
He looked ready to run, but apparently forced his feet forward until he stood on the other side of the bed.
Gwen felt Tim’s shock and suspected his thoughts mirrored her own, that Helen wasn’t nearly as out of it yesterday as everyone thought she was.
“Pete Sacher, this is Tim Ellis, and Tim and Jack’s friend, Gwen Oxford.”
Pete nodded. “Hi.”
Tim and Gwen both nodded back and in unison said, “Hi.”
“I don’t want to interrupt you,” Pete said as he set the vase on the bedside table. “I’ll leave you alone—”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Helen admonished. “You’re going to stay and visit with me. I told you, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. I’ve missed you terribly.”
Looking decidedly uncomfortable, he sat in a chair on the other side of the bed. Gwen didn’t miss how he stared at her, apparently unable to take his eyes off her.
It would have creeped her out if she didn’t know why.
After an hour of mostly uncomfortable conversation, with Helen oblivious to the tension, Pete excused himself. Gwen, wanting to talk to him, also excused herself, leaving Tim to shoot her a questioning look as she took off after the man.
He quickly hurried down the corridor to the elevators. Before the doors could close on him, she rushed inside with him and caught his arm.
“Hi, Pete. Listen, please, can we talk?”
He shook his head. “I really should go,” he mumbled.
“Jack isn’t coming by until after work. Please? Let me buy you a cup of coffee or something.”
Finally, after another glance at her, he nodded. “Okay.”
Once settled at a far corner table, away from others in the cafeteria, she reached across and touched his arm. “Why did you come visit her?”
He sighed. “I loved her and Ed like my own parents. I heard from an old friend of mine that she was in the hospital, and that she’s…well, you know. She’s not going to be coherent for too much longer. I wanted a chance to talk to her and apologize when I knew she would halfway be able to understand me.” He pulled a napkin from a dispenser on the table and started shredding it into tiny pieces in front of him.
“Jack told me you were in jail.”
“I got out last year. I didn’t know he was back in town at first. I was afraid to contact his parents. I didn’t know if they’d even want to see me.”
“Helen said you told her it was an accident.”
Tears welled up in his eyes. He didn’t look at her, just focused on the growing pile of paper scraps in front of him. “I wasn’t driving,” he whispered.
“What?”
“It was still my fault it happened, though.”
Gwen tried to absorb that information. “Why did you tell them you were driving if you weren’t?”
He took a deep breath and finally raised his gaze to hers. “Jack never responded to any of my letters. I stopped trying after a while. I have a feeling he never read any of them. I tried to tell him in them.” He blew his nose on another napkin, then pulled a fresh one from the dispenser and started shredding it. “I had a couple of drinks at dinner. Mel took the keys from me.” His gaze seemed to shift from Gwen’s face to a point inside his own mind as he recalled the events.
“I was just screwing around. Had a good buzz on, feeling good, you know? Started playing around with her in the car while she was driving.” His voice softened even more. “I unbuckled her seat belt and started messing with her while she was driving. Then we rounded a curve and there was a damn deer standing in the middle of the road. She swerved to avoid it. We went off the road and rolled, and she was thrown from the car while I ended up behind the wheel.”
He closed his eyes. More tears squeezed out from under closed lids. “So it was still my fault, wasn’t it? I didn’t want people to know that’s how she died. It was easier to plead guilty and not put her family or Jack through that. He’ll still hate me regardless. I was drunk, I was screwing around with her, and she died because of me. End of story.”
Stunned, Gwen sat back and tried to absorb that. “You should tell Jack.”
“I don’t think I should set foot anywhere near him.”
“You still love him.”
He slowly nodded. “But I know that’s in the past. Helen told me about Tim yesterday. Believe me, I’m not looking for a reconciliation with him. I know that’s not going to happen, and I’m not even going to try. I at least wanted to talk to Helen. She was like a mom to me.” He sniffled and blew his nose again. “She told me yesterday she knew about me and Jack and Mel the whole time.” He laughed. “Kids always think they
can fool parents. Doesn’t matter how old the kids or parents, the result is the same.”
He met her gaze again. “You do look just like Mel. I nearly crapped myself when I saw you sitting there.”
She rummaged through her purse and pushed a pen and notepad across the table to him. “Please, give me your phone number and address.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a feeling Tim is going to agree with me that Jack’s never gotten over this, and maybe what needs to happen is he needs to face this head-on and talk to you once and for all.”
He eventually took them and wrote his information before pushing them back across the table to her. “How long have you been with them?” he asked.
She sadly smiled. “Technically, I’m not with them. It’s a long story. Part of that story has to do with Jack never getting over what happened. So if I want a chance to be with them, I think Tim and I need to force Jack to face his past and move on.”
* * * *
Tim arched an eyebrow at her upon her return to the room. They said good-bye to Helen, and when they reached Tim’s car, he didn’t bother starting it. He turned to her. “Spill it.”
She told him the story. When she finished, he closed his eyes as he shook his head. “Dammit,” he whispered. “Fucking hell.”
“What do we tell him?” She didn’t tell him she’d gotten Pete’s information. She wasn’t sure if Tim would approve of her plan or not and didn’t want Jack to blame him if it blew up in her face.
He opened his eyes, but he sat back in his seat and stared out at the parking lot. “I don’t know the right thing to do here, babe.”
She told him about her conversation with Jack after their arrival. Then she reached out and touched his arm. “Tim, I don’t know if he can get past this unless he deals with it. I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering if he loves me because of a ghost or not.”
He shook his head, and she didn’t miss how his eyes looked moist, as if close to tears himself. “I know, sweetie.” He started the car and began backing out of the parking space. “I know.”
* * * *
She found Liam on the upper deck, the one leading from the living room. He wore sunglasses, a pair of baggy beach shorts, and flip-flops. He’d staked himself out a cozy work area under the patio table umbrella.
She sat at the table. He looked at her and pushed his sunglasses up onto his forehead. “Spill it, Gee.”
For the second time, she repeated what happened, except she revealed that she’d gotten Pete’s contact information. As she told the story, Liam chewed on his lip and looked out over the valley. “I don’t have any advice to offer,” he said, “except this. If you guys decide on an intervention, it could force Jack into a corner where he tells you all to go to hell. Everyone deals with shit that emotionally kicks their asses in their own way. Some people use anger. Some bury themselves in their work. Some people use hiding in their house and taking an alphabet’s worth of antianxiety meds.” He smiled. “Some move in with their sister.”
She finally smiled. “Not helpful.”
He shrugged. “I don’t have any advice. Can you love Jack for who he is, now, today, knowing he’s got issues? Can you love him the way he is? And here’s the other thing.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands on the table. “Let’s say for the hell of it he does have a confab with this guy. What does it solve? Does it answer the question for you, or does it leave you with more questions? And again, what if he opts not for healing himself, but taking a nuclear option and walking out on both you and Tim?”
He softened his voice. “I love you. My priority is you. I’m not making a judgment call about you and them, because I can see where, if this works out like one of your books, that you could be happy. I want that for you. But you’re first and foremost my little sister. That means it’s up to me to warn you that while it’s obvious Tim’s probably on board, I don’t want you getting your hopes up just to get them crushed again.” He winked. “I don’t think going to jail for beating up a cop because he broke my sister’s heart—again—would look good on my résumé.”
“So I just sit around and always wonder what the hell’s going on inside his head?”
He shrugged. “I’m going to play Devil’s advocate. What right do you and Tim have to force him to talk to this guy?”
Eventually she sighed and turned her gaze to the valley. “None,” she softly admitted.
“Exactly. The question is, where do you go from here? I think Jack really loves you. At some point you’ve got to be able to trust someone about what they say. If you can’t trust him to speak the truth, then can you really give him your heart?”
“I love him,” she said as she felt tears prickling her eyes. “I love both of them. And I missed them so damn much, you know that.” She stood and walked over to the railing and stared out over the valley. “I don’t know if I can trust like that anymore. Not after Dickweed, and not after what Jack said to me that day. I have to be sure before I can make the commitment. Every time I put my heart out there, I get hurt. I’m sick of it. Part of me wishes I’d never gotten involved with them because it hurt so fucking much.”
She turned to him. “Don’t take this the wrong way, bro, but I’d rather spend the rest of my life alone with you than spend it with them and wonder every day if Jack really means what he says.”
* * * *
Below them, on the lower deck, Tim stood with his eyes closed and his heart pounding as he listened to her and Liam talking. He knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, and he hadn’t meant to, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t lose her again. He damn sure didn’t want to lose Jack.
If it took forcing a showdown between Jack and Pete to bring this festering boil to a head once and for all, that’s what he’d do. If it backfired…
Well, he hoped Liam and Gwen would find room for him in the RV.
Chapter Sixteen
Gwen retreated to the safety of the RV to work. She put on her headphones, the expensive noise-cancelling ones Liam had given her that Christmas, plugged them into her iPod, and hunched over her laptop at the table. She lost herself in her work, finally escaping into her latest fictional world where maybe she couldn’t totally shape things to her liking if the characters rebelled, but it allowed her a chance to quit thinking about Jack and Tim and Pete’s eternal grief and guilt.
That’s why she screamed when she felt a touch on her shoulder several hours later and looked up to find Liam standing there, and surprised to see it was nearly dark.
Heart racing, she slid her headphones down around her neck. “Jesus H. Christ, you scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry. Tim said dinner’s almost ready.”
She glanced out the window and realized Jack’s truck now sat in the driveway. “How long’s he been home?”
“About an hour.”
She stewed. “Nice of him to not come say hi,” she muttered.
Liam slid into the other side of the booth. “Okay, quit that, right now. Stop the passive-aggressive bullshit. That’s the kind of stuff Mom likes to pull. He asked me if it would be okay if he came out here, and I told him I thought you were working so maybe he should wait until you took a break so he wouldn’t interrupt your work.”
She wanted to get petulant, grouch back at him, but knew he was right. “Sorry.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell him sure, go ahead and interrupt her, but I thought after the morning you had you needed to blow off some steam.”
She switched off her headphones and her iPod and slid them across the table, out of her way. “What do I do? Do I tell him about Pete?”
“I can’t tell you that. I don’t know. This is one thing I wish to hell I could fix for you, sis, but I can’t.” He reached over and grabbed her hands and squeezed them. “Believe me, if I could wave a magic wand over it for you, I would. I hate like hell seeing you hurting. At some point, you have to quit being scared to take a chance and go for it. That’s what you told me, isn’t it??
??
“I took a chance and it got my heart broke once already by him.”
“Yeah, and he’s apologized, right?”
Part of her wanted to avoid the risk of getting hurt again. Just hide out in the RV for a few days and then leave when Jack and Tim were at work. Not say good-bye, just put them in her rearview mirror as a “lesson learned” chapter of her life.
She also knew that would hurt just as bad as Jack’s words to her that afternoon.
“Why didn’t you tell me you called Jack and chewed him out?”
Liam shrugged. “Honestly? I was really pissed at him. And I figured if I told you, considering all the shitstorm of stuff we were dealing with about Amy, you might have gotten pissed at me, too, for interfering.” He smiled. “It’s hard for a big brother not to look after his baby sister.”
That earned him a smile. A few months ago, she would have been pissed. He was absolutely right about that. “Thank you, bro,” she softly said.
“Hey, anytime. You ready to go inside and quit hiding now?”
She saved her work, shut the laptop down, and followed Liam into the house. Tim had outdone himself. The house smelled delicious. She didn’t spot Jack, but Tim grabbed her as soon as she walked into the kitchen and pulled her into his arms where he gave her a long, sweet kiss.
Gwen fought the urge to break down and cry. She didn’t want to lose them.
Tim guided her down the hall to the smaller guest room and pulled her inside. “Talk to me, sweetie,” he softly said. “Please?”
She rested her forehead against his chest. “I can’t right now. I’m sorry. I just need to sort stuff out.”
“He does love you, babe—”
She pushed away. “He needs to tell me all this himself. He also needs to decide why he loves me.”
“Does it matter?”
She whirled on him. “Yes it fucking matters! Put yourself in my place and then imagine looking forward ten, twenty years from now wondering still if you’re loved for who you are, or for who you look like!”