“Would your mother want to stay here?”
I drew back again. His eyes were expectant. “My mother.”
“She’ll come visit, won’t she?”
I felt an inkling of unease—but what had I thought? Ofcourse,he was renovating the house with the idea that I would be here. On some level, I knew that. He had been very clear about his feelings for me, and there was only one direction those feelings would lead.
The reality, though, had a few thorns. “Edward—”
“Wait,” he cut me off and, squeezing my shoulder, returned to the screen. “It gets even better. Here’s the new garage. The old one is detached, but from what I hear of winters here, I don’t want anyone walking outside.” Anyone. He had deliberately said that, but being vague didn’t ease my qualms. “Jillian suggests adding an attached three-car garage that would be accessible through a mudroom off the kitchen.” When I looked at him, his expression was all innocence. “For resale value. Everyone here wants a three-car garage. I mean, isn’t that where they store the snowplow for the pickup, the riding lawn mower, and the canoe?”
I had to laugh—again laugh—at the image. He had nailed it.
And resale value certainly made sense. But I knew Edward. He was assuming I would be parking there.
Again I said his name. Again he rushed on, as eager as Lily would be showing me a sponge-art masterpiece from school.
“The pièce de resistance?” He pulled up a whole new page. Pointing the cursor to a small sketch in the upper left corner, he said, “The current carriage house.” He moved the cursor to the center of the page. It showed a structure that was reminiscent of the first, but gentrified. “Raze the old and build this. It could have a guest apartment upstairs, like if Liam had to stay here, which would not be my first choice. Your brother may be a great chef, but he can also be a pain in the butt. Downstairs,” he clicked to the next page, “a pottery studio.” I heard theta-dain his voice and would have stopped him then and there if he hadn’t already been moving the cursor from one spot to the next. “Work tables, a potter’s wheel, storage bins, sink. This end could be outfitted for finishing—tables, glazing supplies, and a kiln. Or two.” He was cautious at the end, looking at me now with those striking silver eyes.
“Edward,” I breathed.
“Kevin helped design it.”
“Edward.”
“This is a first pass. You can redesign it yourself. Redesign the entirehouseyourself.”
“Edward,”I pleaded, cupping his bearded jaw. Our eyes held through a silence, until I finally asked, “What are you doing?”
“Planning our future,” he said without a blink, a swallow, a breath.
“Now? Right now? With everything else that’s going on?”
His arm went more fully around my shoulder, drawing me that little bit closer. “Yes.”
“How?We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone next week.”
“No one ever does.” His voice toughened. “Isn’t that what we learned last time? Through no fault of ours—and, no, don’t look at me that way, Mackenzie, because thirty seconds one way or the other, and that accident would never have happened. But in that split second, everything changed, and I don’t just mean Lily’s death or the divorce. I mean the course of our lives.” The toughness eased. “But our new ones are better. They’re more honest. More meaningful. Even if we still had Lily, I would choose life here, but if things hadn’t happened the way they did, I would never have known it.” He stared at me. Gradually, his eyes moved to my bangs. Pushing them aside, he traced my scar with his thumb.
“I look awful,” I said. No makeup. Pale skin. Naked eyes.
“You look beautiful.” He leaned forward and kissed the scar. Then, returning to a place where he could see my whole face, he gestured toward the computer and asked a vulnerable, “Don’t you want this?”
“More than anything in the world,” I said, because it was seriously true. “But you’re showing me something I may never be able to have. Don’t you see? I could go to prison. If you’re drawn into the mess, your group could vote you out. You were taking a chance buying a home here in the first place, but if you leave town,” I gestured at the plans, “what’s the point?”
“I’m not leaving town. I’m staying here, and, worst-case scenario, if Shanahan gets you locked up, all it means is that you’ll miss the mess of construction and come back to something beautiful and new.”
“An ex-con,” I said, expressing the darkest of my fears. “A woman who has shared meals with felons and showers with murderers, one who has lost all dignity. And if you don’t want me then?” I asked.
He gave a disbelieving huff. “Christ, Maggie, haven’t we gotten past that?”
I paused. Actually, we had. Frowning, I looked away. The instant I’d asked the question, I had known it was wrong. But that was a change. When? Why?
In a flash of understanding, I heard my mother’s voice.He loves you, too,she had said, and it wasn’t that I needed her approval of Edward. But I trusted her judgement. That was why our estrangement had hurt me so much. Along with everything to do with mothering, it reinforced the idea, never spoken but implied, that my choice of life partner had been poor. She had never before shown any fondness for Edward, certainly had never praised him. That she did now registered.
But something else registered.He loves you, too, she had said, thetoobeing key.Sheloved me. Despite the accident, the loss of Lily and my father and my name, she did love me. It had been right there in the comfort she gave back at the Inn. She said she wasn’t good at that kind of thing, but she was. I had simply been too close to it to see it at the time.
That different feeling inside me? It had to do with healing. Something was intact where a ragged tear had been.
