If he had to convince her that what had leaped up between them was good and real, maybe it wasn’t quite as good and real as he thought it was.
Besides, who knew love’s dagger more intimately than him? If he felt this bereft about losing Krissy after only knowing her for such a short time, didn’t that prove what he had felt since the death of his parents? That love could cripple the strongest man?
Jonas tried to convince himself it was good that she had taken this step—declared a need for space—before it deepened even more.
He had the awful thought she might be hitchhiking. If that was the case, he had to find her for her own safety.
Besides, he realized, after the joy of last night, he could not face his family. He quickly packed his things and made his way out to the parking lot. He got in his car—the car he suddenly hated—and drove away before anyone could see him, ask painful questions, put him on the spot.
He scanned the road for Krissy. She couldn’t have been gone long, and she could not have gotten far. But she was nowhere to be seen.
When it became apparent he would not find her, he finally stopped and sent his sister a quick text.
Something has come up for Krissy.
He remembered her planning an exit strategy well before all this had unfolded into such a spectacular disaster.
She’s had an emergency. Can you look after the dog for now?
Then he turned off his phone before Theresa could answer. He resisted, just barely, the impulse to toss it away in a fit of fury and frustration.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
KRISSY LAY ON her couch. She was in her wedding dress. She had developed a terrible habit of wearing it around the house, as if she was taking some satisfaction in the fact it made her feel even worse, if that was possible.
She hadn’t combed her hair yet today, and the dress had an ice cream splotch on the front of it. Prone, she trailed her hand with the spoon in it over the edge of the sofa until she hit the rim of the ice cream bucket. She dug the spoon in and lifted it to her lips.
Another splotch melted onto the dress.
She had to pull it together. Ice cream for breakfast wasn’t good for the baby. The drugstore earliest alert pregnancy test kit had confirmed what her heart already knew.
A baby.
She was going to have Jonas’s baby.
It made her so happy, and so sad at the same time. She would not repeat her parents’ horrible story, a baby binding them together long after the passion had fizzled to ugly, wet embers.
Still, she had thought Jonas would call or drop by unexpectedly, hadn’t she? Just to check on her? Just to make sure she was all right? Just because he loved her to the moon and back and couldn’t stay away?
She had told him to leave her alone. He was just following instructions. She burst into tears and then tried to staunch the flow. All this emotion could not be good for the baby!
Krissy heard a vehicle pull up out front. Could he have come, after all? She got up off the sofa and flicked back the curtain. The sunlight hurt her eyes.
Not Jonas. It was a moving van. How could she have mistaken that deep rumble for the sound of his car? That was the nature of hope, perhaps, wanting something so badly it filled in the blanks with imagination. This was what her secret longing, her secret hope, had always been, even when she denied it: someone to love her. Someone to give her the family she longed for.
Two burly men were getting out of that van, sliding open the rolling door on the back of it. Good grief. Today was the day they were bringing the boxes from her aunt’s office. Had she known that? Did she have it marked on a calendar somewhere? It was summer. There was no school to keep her on schedule. No routine. The days were sliding into one another, and her responsibilities—keeping her grass cut, opening her mail, answering messages—had fallen completely by the wayside.
No one missed her.
That was how totally pathetic her life was. Why try to hide it from complete strangers? She went and opened the door. If her state of dishevelment, and her wedding dress, shocked the deliverymen, they certainly didn’t show it.
She showed them where the basement door was, then ignored them as they carried boxes up and down the stairs. When had she become this person? She simply didn’t care what they thought of her as she took up her reclining position on the couch.
“Ah, miss?”
“Yes?”
“We’re all done. If you could sign this?”
She sat up and took the clipboard and signed.
“This fell out of one of the boxes,” he said, handing her a file. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She had some money lying on the coffee table left over from a pizza delivery, and she handed it all to him as a tip.
Then they were gone, and she stared at the two items in her hand. One was an envelope, and the other was a file that had Jonas Boyden written across the front of it in a thick black Sharpie in Aunt Jane’s block printing.
Krissy realized how hungry she was for any smidgen of information about Jonas. How had he answered the questions on the Match Made in Heaven application? What did he do for fun? What did he consider the most important attribute in another human being?
But she forced herself to be disciplined, to calm the hammering of her heart by opening the envelope instead. Inside it was the purchase agreement for her little carriage house.
She remembered how pleased her
