Tom winked at his grandson. “God help us.”
Jack looked at the four Marines. “How about you?”
“We’ve got an empty rental,” Sam said. “Sudden cancellation. I can put them up there tonight, see them on their way in the morning.”
Jack doubted Grady Real Estate had a cancellation at the height of the rental season. But Sam was generous that way. As long as the impaired Marines stayed off the road tonight, Jack was happy.
“Great. Let’s get you home then,” he said to Luke.
He waited patiently while the groom said good-bye to his buddies with as much sentiment as if they were all going off to war again. Matt caught his brother in a fierce, short hug. Backs were slapped, arms punched.
Seventeen-year-old Josh collared his uncle with one arm around his neck. Something about the way they stood together, almost the same height, Luke’s blond head against Josh’s tawny mop, grabbed Jack’s throat and wouldn’t let go.
“Unc Luke.” Josh’s voice was muffled against Luke’s shoulder. “I hope you’ll be as happy as my dad.”
Ah, Christ. Jack’s eyes stung.
It should have been corny.
But seeing their closeness reminded him of what he’d left behind, his father, his brothers, his nephews and nieces.
And it recalled in a worse way the things he’d once counted on and never really had at all. His hand curled in his pocket as if he could hold on to his illusions.
He missed Frank. Not the partner who had betrayed him, but the friendship he’d thought they had. The trust.
He missed the life he had planned with Renee, back when he’d believed they could make it. The Sunday dinners, the baptisms and first communions, surrounded by her family and his.
If she’d gotten pregnant on their honeymoon, the way she’d feared, their oldest kid would have been a few years younger than Josh by now.
Moving forward? Or running away?
He had moved out. He’d moved on.
But tonight, watching Luke with his family, he felt his foot caught in the door of the life he’d left behind.
***
LAUREN SAT WITHher back to the headboard, surrounded by the story of her life—okay, the last eleven months—in the form of two hundred and eighty printed manuscript pages.
Reading over the hard copy helped her evaluate the work differently. Or maybe she was responding to the memory of Jack’s voice echoing in her head like a drumbeat, like a call to action, encouraging her heart to a fresh cadence, rousing her to life.All those feelings you say you don’t feel? They’re all in there.
But she hadn’t put them on the page. She turned down a corner to come back to later, frowned, read some more. The structure was good.If I move this bit here... The events were all there.That part with the therapist... The visit to the prison to see Ben...
Only the emotion, the way those events made herfeel, was missing.
And the emotion was everything.
Her pulse quickened. She started to make notes, slowly at first and then with confidence, scribbling in the margins, jotting on the backs of pages, inserting more sheets when she ran out of room. Writing as if she had nobody to offend and nothing to lose.
She worked until the words streaming across the page blended with the paper in shades of gray.
She blinked, distracted, and looked up. The light was gone. The sky outside her windows was dark. She took a deep breath. Good heavens, it must be... Her glance fell on the clock.Nine?
Shifting the piles of paper, she uncurled from the bed. Her legs trembled under her as she stretched her back and her fingers. Her stomach growled. She’d been up here forhours.
Writing.
She smiled.
