***
Liam was in my living room. His new heavy boots lay just inside the door; his new flannel shirt and sturdy jeans covered his body on my sofa; his new Ragg socks warmed his feet, which were propped on the edge of my coffee table. Jonah was beside him, acknowledging my arrival by opening one eye before closing it and going back to sleep, but the cats came running.
“Thatwas fun,” Liam said. His mouth moved, but not much else. He was satisfied, but clearly tired. He had earned that right.
I wasn’t sure I had earned a thing, but I must have been subconsciously holding it together for the sake of getting safely home, because one foot in the door and I was emotionally wiped. Toeing off my boots, I crouched down to greet the cats and just kept on going until my butt hit the floor.The problem wasn’t only my legs. My whole body felt drained. It often did, after one of my chest episodes—panicepisodes, okay, it waspanic,when the past came rushing back so fast that emotions clogged my veins, slowing the blood flow—but this one had been extreme.
The last thing I wanted to do now was talk.
Correction. The last thing I wanted to do was to think about what Edward had said. And here was Liam, so at home in my home and, just then, the perfect distraction.
“You did good,” I said with a hand on each cat.
“So did you, Maggie.” He shifted his head on the back of the sofa just enough to aim his apparently-not-so-tired voice my way. “I kept thinking you’d be in to check up on me, but every time I looked around, there you were with someone else. It’s like you know absolutely everyone in town, which I guess makes sense, small town and all, but you didn’t have so many friends growing up.”
“I had friends.”
“Not so many.”
“Maybe you just never saw.”
“True.” He frowned, pensive. “Five years is a big difference. Why do you think Mom waited so long to have a second?”
“Two miscarriages,” I said, but if my brother heard, he didn’t seem touched. I’m not sure a guy could grasp the sense of failure that a woman felt when she had a miscarriage.
Sure enough, he babbled right on. “When I was in elementary, you were in middle. When I was in middle, you were in high. When I was in high, you were gone. You never brought friends home.”
No, I hadn’t brought friends home. My mother worked, and although I helped out, dinners were an effort, making an extra mouth an added imposition. Once I got to college, friends usually lived in another state, which would have meant spending the night with us, which would have been just as unwelcome. My father liked his evenings quiet.
Liam rolled on. “You had friends at the wedding, but we didn’t know them, and anyway, they were different from the ones tonight.”
“Artists,” I said with a smile. “Artists are unique.”
“Your friends were just bizarre.”
“They were not. Their artistry was just different from yours, and you weren’t an artist back then, so you had nothing to say to my friends. Devonites are diverse,” I added, returning to the present as Liam’s phone dinged. “They’re good people.”
He glanced at the phone but set it down again.
“Edward,” I muttered.
“Oh-ho, no. Edward’s past texting me. He’d text you directly.”
“Then who?”
“The guy is totally hung up on you, Maggie. He was with you more than not. Didn’t you notice?”
To answer him, I’d either have had to acknowledge it or lie, but I didn’t want to discuss Edward at all. “Okay, so who’s texting—uh, oops, calling you?” I asked as his phone jangled in a different way. I had heard both of his ringtones enough by now to tell them apart.
Liam glanced at the screen and, this time, gave a sharp grunt before setting it aside unanswered.
“Someone you met tonight?” I asked. “Someone you liked? Didn’t like? Butted heads with?” I couldn’t imagine who that might be—actually, I could. “Oh, cripes. Lizzie Steele?”
Liam made a face. “Whatisthe problem with that woman?”
“Loneliness. She’s thirty, give or take, moved from Pittsburgh—”
“—to Devon two years ago to market organic breakfast muffins in a smaller, more upscale community, blah, blah, blah.” He had clearly heard the same story the rest of us had. “Is she self-absorbed or what?”
