“So where do you want to start?”
“Your emotional damage from…” She bit her lip. “That linoleum today. Don’t you need closure?”
Chuckling, he looked at the sky. “Tip number one: never go for closure. You want to open all the dark, soft, wounded areas.”
“God, your job sounds like fun. And I thought stringing vineyard lights for atmosphere was challenging.”
“It can be fun,” he said. “Sometimes in those wounds, you mine gold.”
She regarded him through narrowed eyes, wondering where his gold was and how she could get it. “Then tell me why, Dusty Mathers, you were such a bad, bad boy and now you are a good, good man.”
“I think that’s a country song.”
“Nowthatwas a Tessa Wylie deflect,” she volleyed back. “Answer or I’ll make you swim laps around the boat.”
He laughed, but the smile disappeared after a moment. He turned a little, facing her, letting his fingertips graze her shoulder.
“Two words,” he said gruffly. “Dumpster fire. That’s the only way to describe my childhood.”
“I heard a rumor,” she said softly. “Dad drank and your mother…”
“What mother?” he scoffed. “My dad was a nasty SOB who once made my brother shovel dog poop with a soup spoon. In July.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. And my mom? Wasn’t even a ghost. Ghosts show up sometimes. She didn’t.”
Ghosts. She remembered the diary entry again. “It explains a lot of your behavior, Dusty.”
“Not all of it,” he said. “Crappy childhood is a good excuse, but as you love to point out, Iaman idiot.”
“Far from it.”
“I did one good thing in my life,” he said.
“Kelly?” she guessed.
His whole expression changed. “Yeah. She was the first, last, and only perfect thing that ever happened to me and I still can’t figure out how or why.”
Tessa turned toward him, the only sound the slosh of waves against the hull. “Tell me about her.”
He thought for a long moment. “I just did—she was perfect. Grounded. Brilliant. Warm. When she found out she couldn’t have kids, she just accepted it. When she found out she was going to die, she was more worried about everyone else than herself. She trusted God, her family, and, for some reason, me.”
“How did you meet?”
“We met when I was…well, let’s say I wasn’t the guy you see now. I was twenty-three, angry, hungover most mornings, but I’d gotten a job volunteering at a group therapy place for court-mandated teenagers.”
“Which are…”
“Kids who get told by a judge to get help for drugs, underage drinking, shoplifting, gangs. I’d been in a time or two in high school and got to be friends with the people that ran the clinic. I was trying to clean up my act, so they helped by giving me a job…ish.” He sighed deeply, lost in his memories. “Kelly was in her first year working for a mental health non-profit and she came in to do an audit. We spent five minutes together and I knew then and there I couldn’t live without her.”
Everything in Tessa just melted. “Oh. That’s…romantic.”
“Or I was being an idiot again,” he joked. “That woman taught me everything from how to fold fitted sheets, to paying taxes and making meals that weren’t frozen. She was the first grown-up I ever met who wanted to keep me and, honestly, she helped me become a real…man.” His voice cracked on that word.
Tessa’s throat tightened. What would it be like to not think anyone wanted you? That was an emotion Tessa never had, and for that, she was grateful.
“But she got sick,” he continued. “It was slow and ugly, an insidious blood disease that sounds like a toy but sure isn’t.”
