He set his sandwich back on the plate and crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you ever wonder if she gave us a thought?”
“She did.”
“Then why, Meg? Why was killing Dad and then herself more important than her children?”
Meg looked away. “She loved us, Mick. You don’t remember the good things. Just the bad. She loved us and she loved Dad too.”
He wasn’t the one with the faulty memory. He remembered the good and the bad. “I never said she didn’t. Just not enough, I guess. You can stick up for her for another twenty-nine years, but I’ll never understand why she felt her only option was to kill Dad and then herself.”
She glanced at her feet and said just above a whisper, “I never wanted you to know, but…” She returned her gaze to his. “Dad was leaving us.”
“What?”
“Dad was leaving us for that waitress.” She swallowed hard, as if the word were stuck in her throat. “I heard Mom talking about it on the telephone to one of her friends.” She laughed bitterly. “Presumably one of her friends who hadn’t slept with Dad.”
His father had planned to leave his mother. He knew he should feel something, anger and outrage, maybe, but he didn’t.
“She’d put up with so much from him,” Meg continued. “The humiliation of the whole town knowing about all the sordid affairs. Year after year.” Meg shook her head. “He was leaving her for a twenty-four-year-old cocktail waitress and she couldn’t take it. She couldn’t let him do that to her.”
He looked at his sister, with her pretty eyes and black hair. The same sister who’d protected him as he’d protected her. Or as much as they’d been able. “And you’ve known about this for all these years and you didn’t tell me?”
“You wouldn’t have understood.”
“What’s not to understand? I understand that she killed him rather than let him divorce her. I understand that she was sick.”
“She wasn’t sick! She was pushed too far. She loved him.”
“That isn’t love, Meg.” He grabbed his plate and beer and walked out of the kitchen.
“Like you would know.”
That stopped him, and he turned back and looked at her from the small dining room.
“Have you ever been in love, Mick? Have you ever loved someone so much that the thought of losing her ties your stomach up in knots?”
He thought of Maddie. Of her smile and her dry humor and the buckedtoothed kitten that she’d taken into her house even though she professed to hate cats. “I’m not sure, but I am sure of one thing. If I ever did love a woman like that, I wouldn’t hurt her, and I sure as hell wouldn’t hurt any children I had with her. I might not know a lot about love, but I do know that.”
“Mick.” Meg moved toward him with her hands palms up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
He set his plate on the table. “Just forget it.”
“I want the best for you. I want you to get married and have a family because I know you’d be a good husband and father. I know you would because I know how much you love me and Travis.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek on his shoulder. “But even if you don’t ever find someone, you’ll always have me.”
Mick drew breath into his lungs even as he felt as if he were suffocating.
Chapter 15
Maddie sat on her sofa, Snowball curled up in her lap, and stared into the blank screen of her television. Her stomach ached and her chest was so tight it hurt to breathe. She was going to be sick. She thought about calling her friends and getting their advice, but she couldn’t. She was the strong, fearless one of the group, but at the moment she didn’t feel so strong or fearless. Far from it.
For the first time in a very long time, Maddie Jones was afraid. There was no denying it. She couldn’t call it apprehension and move on. It was too real. Too deep, and too terrifying. Worse than sitting across from a serial killer.
She’d always assumed that falling in love would be like getting slammed into a brick wall. That you’d just be going along as usual and you’d get knocked on your ass and think,
Maddie slid her hand down Snowball’s small back and didn’t care that the cat’s fur clung to her black shirt and the lap of her skirt. She’d always thought that she couldn’t lie to herself about anything. Apparently she’d gotten better at it.
She’d fallen in love with Mick Hennessy and the minute he found out who she really was, she would lose him. And she didn’t have a clue what she was going to do about it.
Her doorbell rang and she looked at the clock sitting on a shelf above the television. It was eight-thirty. Mick was at work and she didn’t expect to see him until sometime around one.
She set Snowball on the floor and moved to the door. The kitten chased after her and she scooped her up rather than step on her. She looked through the peephole and got that little heated flush she now recognized. Evidently Mick had skipped work.
He stood on her porch wearing jeans and his Mort’s polo. She opened the door and stared at him standing there with the first shadows of night bathing him in a light gray and making his eyes a vibrant blue. As he stared at her across the short distance, elation and despair collided in her heart and twisted her stomach.
“I needed to see you,” he said and stepped across the threshold. He wrapped one arm around Maddie’s waist and placed his free hand on the back of her head. His mouth swooped down and he kissed her. A long drugging kiss that made her want to attach herself to him and never let go.
He pulled back and looked into her face. “I was at work pulling beer and listening to the same old stories, and all I could think about was you and the night we had sex on the bar. I can’t get you out of my head. Put your cat down, Maddie.”
She bent down to set Snowball on the floor and he shut the door behind him. “I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be here.”
She straightened and looked into his face. She’d never felt love like this in her life. Not really, not the stomach-lifting and skin-tingling kind of love. Not the kind that made her want to hold his hand forever. To leech herself into his body so she didn’t know where he stopped and she began. “I’m glad you came back.” But she had to tell him she was Maddie Jones. Now.
He pushed her hair behind her ear. “I can breathe here with you.”
At least one of them could. She rubbed her cheek into his hand, and before she told him who she was, before she lost him forever, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him one last time. She poured her heart and soul into it, her ache and joy, showing him without words what she felt inside. She kissed his mouth and jaw and the side of his throat. She ran her hands over him, touching and memorizing the feel of him beneath her hands.
