She swept into the room and closed the door, or would have—if his arm didn’t catch the door before it latched. He pushed back on the wood, forcing it open in a match of strength she had no hope of winning. But rather than come inside and settle himself on one of the chairs, he stopped in the doorway, his burly form so tall he had to duck his head.
“You can go into the room, that’s fine. I’ll wait out here and visit with Megan and Claire. You can leave the doctor’s office, that’s fine too. I don’t mind following you, or talking in a blizzard, or doing any other number of things to get you talk to me. But how quickly I finish my business in Eagle Harbor depends on you.” His gaze swept quickly down her, but not in a romantic way. He may as well have been a clerk taking inventory: blonde hair—check; teeth—check; four limbs—check. “Because you and our daughters are the reason I came back, and I’m not leaving town again without you.”
He’d come back forher? This man who’d abandoned her and their daughters, leaving them with only the money she kept stashed in the jar in the kitchen?
Why?
“I’m happy here.” That was the easier thing to say. The thing that didn’t open up a conversation between them the way asking why would. The trouble was, her statement wasn’t quite true since she was planning to relocate her seamstress shop to Chicago next summer. But she was happy enough in Eagle Harbor for the winter. “I wish you well with your life, wherever you live, and whatever it is you’re doing.”
She swung the door shut again, though she knew he’d stop it from latching a second time, but what else could she do? Howelse could she convince him that the door was shut on their past, even if he refused to let the physical door between them close?
Sure enough, the door bounced off the tips of his shoes and sprang open, leaving him to stand there and cross his arms. “It’s been five years. You can’t tell me you don’t have questions, something you want to say to me.” He dipped his head toward her, his voice turning softer. “That you haven’t thought about what you would say to me a hundred different times and a hundred different ways.”
“Possibly, Thomas. Right after you left. Maybe even a year after you were gone. But not anymore.” It only proved how much she’d changed in his absence, proved how he didn’t know her nearly as well now as he once had. “Now please leave me alone. My daughter’s sick, and she needs me right now, whereas you haven’t needed me for five years.”
“I’m not leaving you alone until we talk.” He gripped the top of the door with one hand and the trim lining the doorway with the other. “I don’t care where, but there are things we need settled between us. Today.”
He was still as demanding as always. Still insistent on getting his way. She may have changed while he was gone, but he hadn’t seemed to change at all. Oh, sure, he’d ask politely for what he wanted at first, toss her a smile and wink and try charming her into it. And if she refused, well, then the demands would start.
“I said no.”
“Ma,” a small voice sounded from the bed.
She glanced over her shoulder at Olivia, who watched them with large, moist eyes and a trembling jaw. She was nearly oblivious to Dr. Harrington using a candle with his otoscope to see inside her ear.
Something hard and tight fisted in Jessalyn’s chest. Claire was too young to remember Thomas, and Megan hadn’t evenbeen born when he’d left. But Olivia had been five. Was that old enough to have memories of her father?
Yes, if the way she watched Thomas was any indication.
She turned back to Thomas, and the determination in his eyes and stubborn set to his jaw only squeezed the vise around her heart. If she didn’t listen to him now, he’d make good on his promise to follow her home. At least here they could talk behind closed doors, without Olivia hearing more than she already had.
She swept her gaze down him, the tall, muscular form that had once been so familiar to her, the blue eyes and blond hair that were so similar to her own. Did he have any idea how heartbroken she’d been when he left?
Hopefully her heart would survive a final conversation. “Fine, we can go into the other room.”
Chapter Three
“Let’s go.” Jessalyn’s eyes glittered with unshed tears, but she turned away from Thomas and stomped across the crowded parlor toward the room where the doctor had examined him earlier.
Thomas glanced at his daughter lying still while the doctor looked at her ear with an odd contraption that attached to a candle. He rubbed the back of his neck. Maybe he’d been too demanding by saying they needed to talk right away. Didn’t Jessalyn want to wait until the doc had finished his examination?
But she’d already entered the sickroom and closed the door behind her all but a crack. He looked back at Olivia one more time, her angel blonde hair spread against the pillows the doc had piled behind her. She was big now, much bigger than he’d imagined. Somehow in his mind she’d stayed five years old the entire time he’d been gone, and Claire had always been a baby.
He’d visit with Olivia after he talked with Jessalyn, maybe even pull the doctor aside and ask for a report. And then he’d visit with Claire and Megan, the daughter he’d never even spoken to. He’d already missed Claire’s first steps and Megan’sbirth and Olivia’s first day of school. So much of their lives gone without him being a part of it. How did he begin to catch up? An ache started in his chest, almost as painful as the one in his shoulder, except the one in his shoulder had a medical explanation.
Jessalyn poked her head out the door. “Are you coming?” The words were so full of prickles, she might have sent each one scurrying across the room on the back of a porcupine.
Because she doesn’t know the full story. She thinks that I abandoned her and stopped writing after those first two letters.
He headed toward his wife, stopping to grab the soggy letter he’d left drying by the woodstove before he entered the room and closed the door.
In the time it had taken him to cross the parlor, she’d made her way to the window, where she stood peering into the storm that would soon be covered by the gathering dark.
How often had he seen her do that very thing before? Summer, autumn, winter, spring, the curtain drawn aside and her face peeking out the window to watch the weather. And she looked so very much the same while standing there. Her elegant green dress wasn’t made of silk or satin or any other fine fabric, and yet she was as stylish and put together as one of the women living on Prairie Street in Chicago. A ribbon cinched tightly about her narrow waist, an extra splash of lace around her collar and sleeves, the row of double buttons that started at her neck and went clear down to the ribbon. She’d always been able to take a nickel and somehow make the coin go as far as ten dollars.
Her hair was done up in an elegant twist at the back of her head too, yet another thing that hadn’t changed. No simple bun or sloppy knot for Jessalyn. Somehow, she’d learned to do her own hair as masterfully as any lady’s maid in Chicago.
She turned from the window and startled when she saw him. “Sorry. I must not have heard you come in.” She crossed theroom, her gaze sweeping down him for what had to be the fifth or sixth time that afternoon, as though she couldn’t quite believe he stood before her. “You have me alone now. What is it you need to say?”
