Weaving a hand into my hair, Edward angled my face so that he could look me in the eye. “You won’t be going to prison, baby. There would be a riot in that courtroom if the judge buys into Shanahan’s case. You have a ton of friends, not the least being Jillian Russ, who drew up these plans extra fast because she thinks you’re the best. So do half the people in this town.”
“Only half?” I asked, trying to make a joke, to lighten things up, to do anything that might explain why I was believing what he said.
“The other half don’t know you. Once they do, they’ll adore you, too.”
“Well, there’s another point,” I said. “Once Grace’s past hits the news and Shanahan does his thing, my secret’s out. What’ll the good people of Devon think of me then?”
“They’ll respect you even more,” he said without missing a beat. “Seriously, Maggie. How can you not see that? They’ll be just as amazed as me that you were able to pick yourself up after a tragedy like that and rebuild a life. And you have. People here respect the hell out of what you’ve done since coming here. They told me this at Town Meeting when they saw us together. I was with your mother when Joe Hellinger told her what you do for his patients. Joyce thinks you’re one of the Spa’s greatest assets, which is accurate, according to online reviews. Cornelia loves you like a daughter, granddaughter, whatever, and your buddy Kevin? He thinks you hung the moon. I see the ways you’ve helped Grace and Chris—and don’t tell me people here will think less of her for what happened in Santa Fe. They won’t blame her for that any more than you do. So no, Devon people won’t be fazed when they hear about the accident. They know how much you give of yourself. You putyouinto everything you do. They see that.”
When his eyes grew too intense, I looked back at the plans. Something still didn’t feel right.
Trying to figure out what it was, I said, “You want kids.”
“And if they come…” Voice trailing off, he brought the cursor to the last unexplained space in the master bedroom wing. It was a small room, with a closet and a new small bathroom.
A baby’s room. The breath caught in my throat. A baby’s room was real. I wasn’t ready for that.
“What if I can’t?” I whispered.
“Then we won’t.”
“You’d be happy with that?”
“No. But better no child than no you.”
And what could I say to that?
“Do you know,” he said, “that when a couple loses a child, up to eightypercent of those marriages end in divorce? I don’t want to be one of the eighty percent.”
“We already are.”
“Not here,” he said, tapping his heart. He looked into my eyes, looked deeply. “Do we love each other?”
I nodded.
“That’swhat matters, Maggie. None of the other stuff is as important as us. Family matters.Wematter.”
And so he knocked down that argument, too. I was running out of options, but something was still off.
Feeling vaguely frantic, I asked, “What about my pets?” If we were talking about the future, my pets played a role. “You don’t like cats.”
He surfed through the plans again. When a detail of the kitchen appeared, he enlarged a small insert.
I leaned in, then glanced back at him. “What is that?”
“A pet-feeding station.”
“Built in?”
“Better than tripping over food bowls. I told Jillian we had three pets. She has a setup like this in her own house.” When I stared at him in disbelief, he said, “It isn’t that I don’t like cats. I just don’t know them, but they’re yours. They matter. And then there’s your cabin.”
“I love my cabin.”
“Which is why we keep it. If you’d rather have your potting studio there, we can do that too.”
“But I like going to Kevin’s studio.”
“Then go there.”
