“Explain the situation,” he urged softly. “Ask her not to mention the accident.”
“She’ll say I’m hiding.”
“Confess to it. Be honest. She’s feeling things that you hadn’t known, like the religion thing, so maybe she’ll talk more if you do. Explain your fears. Get her invested in this. She’ll be pleased to be drawn into the loop.”
I wasn’t sure. The meek Margaret down there on the sofa was an enigma. And that was only one of my doubts.
Edward got the others, too. Propping an elbow behind him, so that he was angled my way, he whispered, “You’re also wondering where in the hell to put your mother in your house, because there’s only one bedroom, which is upstairs, and the downstairs is small. If Liam is there, he may get in the way, but if he moves out, she’ll feel isolated. Once you get past PT and doctor’s appointments and Spa treatments, she’ll be alone up there on your hill with not much to do or see and maybe or maybe not loving the forest like you do.”
“Not. When my Girl Scout troop did an overnight in the woods—”
“I didn’t know you were a Girl Scout,” he said, pulling back with a captivated half-smile.
Unable to resist, it was still so new, I ran a fingertip over his mustache. “I was more artsy than the other girls, so I didn’t really fit in. That’s why Mom volunteered for field trips.” I dropped my hand. “She didn’t fit in either. She did the cooking. That’s it. She’s never been into nature.”
He straightened and grinned. “Then she needs to stay at the Inn.”
The words came so fast on my thoughts about Mom in the great outdoors, that it was a minute before they sank in. “The Inn,” I finally said. “Oh, no. I was thinking I could rent a place in town.”
“Why? The owner’s suite is mine to use or not. I have my house, and if that weren’t a major mess, I’d have both of you stay there. It’s bigger than your place. But it’s still raw, and it would be just as isolating. The Inn is ideal.”
“That’s yours, Edward. We couldn’t—”
“Of course you could.” His pale blues were intent. “The suite has two bedrooms, so you could stay there with her. It has a living room, plus a kitchenette, which she could use or not. Housekeeping would be in to help twice a day. She could call for room service whenever she wanted or come down to one of the restaurants, and it’s a hell of a lot closer to the Spa than your house is for when you have to work. She could have PT in the suite. She could use the pool at the sports center. She could access everything without having to use stairs.”
“It’s too much,” I scolded.
“What? Cost? There’s no cost, no effort, no inconvenience.”
“Theoffer.You don’t need to do this.”
“Need has fucking nothing to do with it,” he whispered with force, then grew beseeching. “It’s the perfect solution, Maggie. The suite is empty, it’s on one level, and it’s accessible to anything she might want to do. There’s even a separate elevator.” He added a singsong to his lure. “You could have your pets there with you.”
“Me?Ican’t live at the Inn.”
“Why not? It’d beat driving back and forth a dozen times a day, and she’d be more comfortable with you there. Even just for a week? Two, maybe, until you see how she does?”
But the offer was way too generous. Edward didn’t owe us anything. We were the ones who had hurt him, not the other way around. “She doesn’t deserve it. Neither do I.”
His whisper held sound now, and the sound was angry. “So we’re all feeling the blame, but it won’t move us forward. Let itgo,Maggie. I’mtrying to on my end, but you have to try on yours. Guilt is pointless. What happened is over and done.”
That quickly we were in the past—but not—with the pain of it hovering—but not. It was like a screen was superimposed on it, showing sneak peeks at a future I hadn’t imagined when I took up with Devon, and the pain was the possibility that it wouldn’t come.
“Is it?” I asked. “The past, over and done? Is it ever?”
“Ever changed? No. Ever accepted? Yes. It becomes who you are. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
I wanted to believe him. He must have sensed how badly, because, with one lithe move, he was on my stair, pulling me to his side. I closed my eyes for a minute and breathed him in. His mouth touched my forehead with the barest grazing of beard before lowering until I tipped my head back and we were forehead to forehead, breath to breath. When he finally kissed me, it was featherlight, more soothing than heated, but just as precious. It spoke of a connection that went beyond chemistry. I could have basked in it forever.
“Just think,” he teased against my lips, typically male in the end, “if you stay at the Inn with your Mom, you can meet me in my office after hours.”
I swatted his middle. “You can think about that in the middle of a family crisis?”
“I can think about it any time. One look at you”—he breathed a rising whistle—“and there it is.”
“You’re bad.”
“Not always.”
