When was the whole town not talking?
“But I get it now,” Jack said. “I forgive you.”
I could feel anger rising in my chest. “Forgive me? For what?”
He stepped closer, making my heart race in a way I wished it wouldn’t. “I forgive you for not being able to be with me the way I want to be with you. I’ve thought about it, and I understand it a little more now. You have a lot to lose.”
“I have a lot to gain, too,” I said quietly.
He raised his eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
I shrugged, right as Sloane walked through the doorway. I studied her face to make sure she hadn’t overheard anything about her grandmother. She definitely hadn’t.
“Hey, Jack,” she said. She kissed Biscuit on the head, taking her from Jack. “Hey there, little Biscuit girl. Let’s go play in the backyard with the kids.”
Biscuit started panting like she knew she was in for some fun.
“I’d better go play with the kids too,” I said. “Doesn’t matter. You have Georgia now.”
Jack shook his head. “I do,” he said. “But let’s not forget that I came back to Georgia for a different girl.”
As I listened to the laughter outside the back door, I realized I’d come back to Georgia for a different girl too. Three of them, in fact.
TWENTY-ONE
more sisters
sloane
I knew from our first lunch together that I’d never met anyone like Adam and that I never would again. Even in those first few days, maybe even in those first few seconds, I knew this was a man unlike any other. He’d quit college to fight for his country; he always had and always would put the needs of others before his own.
That thought woke me in the middle of the night, roused me from a deep sleep as surely as a hand shaking my shoulder. Adam had always put others before himself. What if he was putting others before himself now, too? What if he sacrificed himself for his friends? What if they were the ones who came home instead of him?
I remember being pregnant with AJ, how I knew something would change between Adam and me, how I felt almost sad that I was no longer his only true love and sole focus. I feared he would love this baby more than he loved me and that things between us would be different.
I know Adam loves our boys, but his love for me has never changed, never darkened, never dimmed. If anything, giving him those children made Adam love me more. I feel that. Even now.
As the sun rose, I fell asleep thinking that, no matter how much he felt the urge to sacrifice, Adam would come home to me because I was the one he was always fighting for.
THE NEXT MORNING IN the well-groomed backyard with the boys laughing with Preston, who was having some very serious tummy time, Grammy in a chair on the screened porch, Emerson and Caroline standing beside me, the night before and all those worries seemed so far away. The tears had dried for now. Adam would come home. Emerson would be OK. The sun would keep shining. All would be right with the world.
Emerson walked up the steps to the porch to sit with Grammy, and I turned to Caroline and whispered, “What do you think Jack meant when he told Mom he understood how much she had to lose if they were together?”
“What?” I could see Caroline squinting through her cat-eye sunglasses. I was in a pair of old sweatpants and a T-shirt, while she was in a beautifully pressed linen dress and wedges, her idea of casual wear.
“I just walked in the living room, and I heard Jack tell Mom he forgave her for not wanting to be with him now. That he understood how much she had to lose.”
Caroline shrugged. “I don’t know, Sloane. I’m not in the business of old-people relationships. I can’t even keep my own husband off reality TV.”
She smiled, which made me happy. After Caroline, Emerson, and I had sat down and watched James with Edie Fitzgerald on Ladies Who Lunch, after the tears and seeing how my always strong, always together sister was so very broken, I truly hadn’t believed there was any chance they could get back together. But she had persevered. Her New York friends were livid. They thought she was weak. But Caroline trying to fix her marriage wasn’t weakness. It was strength, the kind of strength not many people possess. But that was Caroline.
“Maybe he meant since it was so hard for her to lose Dad?” Caroline asked.
“Maybe,” I said, but that didn’t make sense. Sure, it was possible for Mom to lose Jack if they were together, but he wasn’t dying. Not as far as we knew, anyway. She wasn’t in imminent danger of losing him. Any fool could see he was madly in love with her.
Caroline pulled her glasses down her nose and peered at me over the top of them. “All I’m saying is I told you there was more to the story.”
“Mommy, watch this!” AJ called for maybe the four hundredth time in the past ten minutes. I smiled. I was here. I was watching. I would always want to watch. I felt guilty for feeling like I wanted a break. But this was the vicious mom-guilt cycle.
“Let me see, buddy!”
He twirled around in the yard and then fell down, laughing. Taylor piled on top of him, trying to emulate his twirl and fall. Soon, we were all laughing. I felt that catch in my chest, that near suffocation that I shouldn’t be laughing, not when Adam’s fate was so up in the air.
I looked back toward the screened-in porch where Emerson had Grammy crying with laughter. Emerson could tell a story like no one I’ve ever met. It made sense, really. Of all of us, she was the most Southern.
“This
