“Because he doesn’t love me.” She yanked the band out of her hair, as if doing so would relieve the headache simmering at the base of her skull. “Because he’s going to leave as soon as he’s done here. Because the more I’m with him, the deeper in I get, and I can’t control how I feel the way I thought I could. I can’t be with him and not be in love with him.”

“Did you ask how he felt?”

“No. And you know what? I just wasn’t up to hearing the old ‘I care about you’ routine. Sue me.”

No one spoke for a moment. There was only the sound of Dana’s labored breathing, the hum of the paint machine, and the steady buzz of the sander from the other side of the house.

“You hurt him.” Malory stepped over, flicked off the machine. “Maybe his feelings aren’t as simple and weak as you think. The man I saw this morning had been cut straight down to the bone. If you wanted payback, Dana, you got it.”

She whirled around, vibrant with fury, trembling with insult. The roller fell out of her hand and left a dull gold smear on the drop cloth. “For Christ’s sake, what do you take me for? Do you think I’ve been sleeping with him just so I could kick him out and get back some of my own?”

“No, I don’t. I’m just thinking, if you really want that smooth stretch of road, you don’t get it by running somebody else into a ditch, then leaving him there bleeding.”

Dana heaved the hair band to the floor and wished viciously she had something more satisfying to throw. “You’ve got some goddamn nerve.”

“Yes, I guess I do.”

“This is my f**king spin on the wheel, Malory. I don’t need you or anyone else telling me who to let into my life, or who to close out.”

“Seems to me that’s just what you’re letting Kane do. He had a direction he wanted you to take, and you’re going right along with it. You’re not even asking yourself why he gave you the push.”

“So now I should stay with Jordan because of the key? You’re lecturing me about my own life, my own decisions, so I won’t risk screwing up your deal?”

Malory drew a long breath. It wasn’t the time for her to lose her temper, or, she decided, to blame Dana for losing hers. “If you believe that, you don’t know me, and more, you don’t know what it is you’ve agreed to do. So you can keep on painting, and congratulating yourself for avoiding all those bumps in the road, or you can stop being a coward and settle this with Jordan.”

Finished, Malory started out. “He shouldn’t be hard to find,” she called back. “He told Flynn he was going to see his mother this morning.”

Chapter Sixteen

HE brought her carnations. Tulips had been her favorite, but it was the wrong season. Still, she’d liked simple flowers the best. Tulips and daffodils, rambling roses and daisies. The carnations were simple, it seemed to him, and feminine in a soft, old-fashioned pink.

She’d have appreciated them, made a fuss, and put them in her good vase—the one her mother had given her some long ago Christmas.

He hadn’t thought to buy anything to put them in, so the florist’s paper would have to do.

He hated the cemetery. All those stones and markers popping out of the ground like a crop of death in gray and white and black. All the names and dates inscribed on them were as much a reminder that no one beat fate in the end as a memorial to a lifetime.

Morbid thoughts, he supposed, but this was the place for them.

The grass was bumpy and weedy, so the green was marred with brown patches where it had worn away, spindly where it hadn’t been clipped close enough to the stones. Others had brought flowers to their dead, and some of the offerings were faded and withered. Some solved this remembrance of death by laying artificial blooms at the markers, but the bright colors struck him as false.

More lie, he thought, than tribute.

It was too windy here on the north end, and too cold, without the shelter of the small grove of trees to the east or the sunny rise just to the west.

He’d had the marker replaced a few years before with smooth white granite. She’d have considered that a foolish expense, but he’d needed to do something.

It held her name. Susan Lee Hawke. And the span of her life, that short forty-six years. Beneath, in script, was the line he’d paraphrased from Emily Dickinson.

Hope perches in the soul

She’d never lost hope. She’d lived her life believing in the power of hope, and faith, leavened with good, hard work. Even when the sickness had eaten away her beauty, had whittled her down to brittle bones she’d had hope.

For him, Jordan thought now. She’d had hope for him, believed in him, and had loved him without qualification.

He crouched down to lay the flowers on her grave.

“I miss you, Mom. I miss talking to you, and hearing you laugh. I miss seeing that look in your eye that told me I was in trouble. And even when I was, you were there for me. You were always there for me.”

He stared at the words on the stone. It looked so formal. She’d always been Sue. Simple, straightforward Sue.

“I know you’re not in there. This sort of thing, it’s just a way of letting other people know you were around, that you were loved. Sometimes I feel you, and it’s such a strong feeling it’s as if I could turn around and there you’d be. You always believed in stuff like that, in the possibilities of what we are.”

He rose, slid his hands into his pockets. “I’m wondering what the hell I am. I’ve screwed up. Not everything, just one vital thing. I’ve got the one thing I always wanted, and I lost the one thing I didn’t know I always needed. I’d say maybe it’s cosmic justice. Maybe you just can’t have it all. But you’d give me that look.”

He gazed out toward the hills she’d always loved, and the way the sky held a strong blue over the flame of the trees. “I don’t know if I can fix it. Fact is, I don’t know if I should even try.”

He closed his eyes a moment. “It hurts to be here. I guess it’s supposed to.” He touched his fingers to his lips, then pressed his fingers to the stone. “I love you. I’ll come back.”

He turned, and stopped when he saw Dana standing on the edge of the access road, watching him.

He looked so sad, she thought. More than that, it was as if the sorrow had stripped away his defenses and left the emotions behind them open and raw. It was painful to see him this vulnerable, to understand that they both knew she’d caught him unguarded in a moment meant to be private.