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“I learned a sickroom feels every movement.”

That was true. Too true.

“Josiah?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You sat with him like this?”

“Often.”

“Did he hate it?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did you?”

She did not answer right away.

He liked that about her. She did not throw words at a question to make it go away.

“At times,” she said.

The answer moved through him in an odd way. He had expected her to say no. He had wanted her to say no. A woman like Eden should not hate sitting with someone she loved. That seemed wrong.

It also seemed honest.

“What times?”

“When I was tired and no one noticed. When he was cruel from his own pain and everyone excused it for the same reason. When I wanted to walk outside without listening for my name.” She looked down at her hands. “When I thought feeling any of that made me selfish.”

Jesse swallowed.

The bed felt narrower suddenly.

“You weren’t.”

“No. I know that now. Mostly.”

He heard the mostly.

“Your mother doesn’t know?”

“Know what?”

“That needing ain’t owning.”

Eden’s gaze lifted to his.

He wished he had said it better. He wished he had not said it at all.

“My mother is afraid,” Eden said.

“That ain’t no.”

“No,” she agreed. “It is not.”

The front door opened. He heard voices drift in, then lower. Jesse caught Bass’s rumble and Emily’s softer answer. Good. Bass had brought her back. Or she had brought him. Hard to tell with those two.