“Actually, business is booming, Cal,” Sam replied, folding her arms behind her head and offering Cal a smug smile.“That apartment can stay empty for a long time.”
Nate was torn between the desire to laugh, because hell if Sam didn’t amuse him when she was being smug on purpose, and just a bone-deep worry for his brother.
That worry was the norm these days, but it didn’t make it any easier.
Then there was the uncomfortable fact that he didn’tloveSam having the escape hatch of that empty apartment upstairs.Sure, living together in his house was going great, but that didn’t mean Nate knew how todependon great lasting.
But it probably wasn’t ahealthyfeeling to want her stuck with him because she had a renter either.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”Nate asked.
Because Cal might have said he was moving home, but no one quite knew what that entailed.Surely if he was back from Texas, talking about renting apartments, he had a better handle on it now.
Cal shrugged.“I’ve got a decent nest egg and time to figure it out.First step, passing the Montana bar.And having my own space.”
Nate sighed.Cal wouldn’t be Cal without that dogged stubbornness.“When are you going to tell them?”
“Once I sign on the dotted line.So, what do you say, Sam?”
Chapter Two
The Harrington Cabin
Jill stared atthe email with a little pit of dread in her stomach.One not usually associated with her agent saying she loved her most recent proposal and was ready to send it out once Jill gave the okay.
There was, unfortunately, one more okay she was going to have to get first.And, sure,technicallyCal had told her last year that he didn’t care if she used traumatic amnesia in a book.But he hadn’t been in a great place when he’d said that.
Aly said he was doing much better ever since his father’s sentencing.He was even moving back home.
Somehow, that made it worse.He would behere, and Jill had used histraumato fuel her fiction.Permission or not, she felt awful about it.
Worse, though, she was damn proud of that proposal.She wanted to write the book.The characters had become so real so quickly, so easily, those first fifty pages had fallen out of her.
She’d never dealt with this mix of creative excitement and personal guilt before, and there were no easy answers on how to deal with it.
“Snow.”
Jill looked up at her grandmother as she stepped into the kitchen from the back door.Ever since she’d testified against Benjamin Bennet and managed to speak a few words, Grandma spoke every once in a while.Usually just random words, in her rasped, uneven voice.
Maybe Jill should take that as a positive.Tell Sam not to bother finding out the truth.Did the reason Grandma had been mute for Jill’s entire life matter if she wasn’t mute anymore?
But Jill saw the ghosts in her grandmother’s eyes.Heard them when she mumbled in her sleep at night.
Jill had watched Cal Bennet struggle—really struggle—through everything he hadn’t remembered witnessing and thendealingwith it.She only wanted her grandmother todealwith whatever had hurt her so deeply.
Was that wrong?
Jill just couldn’t believe it was… but sometimes she doubted involving Sam was the right answer.
Jill had done her due diligence before going to Sam, though.She had been Grandma’s companion and nurse and helper and whatever else the woman had needed for the past three years.She had asked questions, demanded answers.
And gotten stonewalled by the woman she loved so much.
Jill had even interrogated her father on what he knew about Grandma’s muteness, but it had begun when he’d been out in Boston on his medical residency.He called it a gradual lack of vocal conversation that he hadn’t really understood was happening until much later, until it wastoo late.
He had no theories.No ideas.Nothing had happened to the family around the time she’d lost her voice, at least that Dad was aware of.
Sam wasn’t coming up with anything either.It was just dead ends and more questions.
