All Fall Down Read online

  “Sunshine, that’s—”

  “I don’t have to go anywhere with him,” she put in quickly. “I know it’s not really appropriate.”

  Dating wasn’t something she’d ever even heard about until she came out into the world. In Sanctuary such a thing didn’t exist. When she was a little girl, she’d thought about what it would be like to be the one true wife. Nobody else could marry until Papa found her. When she got older…well, by the time Sunny was old enough to even care about boys, she’d already had Happy, who’d been a blessing to her in so many ways.

  After Happy came, John Second had left her alone.

  “Why wouldn’t it be appropriate?” Chris asked.

  She turned her head toward the blare of cartoons coming from the den. Then she looked at her son, still so diligently coloring. She touched his hair.

  “Because.”

  The silence between them was perfect, no need to speak for the sake of speech itself.

  Happy looked up. “Mama?”

  “Yes, my sweetheart.”

  “Are you going away?”

  Sunny shook her head. “Of course not.”

  “I think going to dinner and a movie would be fine,” Chris said.

  Sunny’s smile twisted, and so did her fingers, linking with each other. “I really like him, Chris.”

  “Then you should go.”

  Happy frowned. “Mama, you said no.”

  “Just out with a friend, that’s all,” she told him. “But you’ll stay here with Liesel and Chris, and that will be fun, won’t it?”

  Happy nodded, looking solemn. He showed Chris the picture he’d been working on. “The lady was pushing Peace, and I thought she was pushing her down, but Liesel says it was just for fun.”

  That sounded like a story, but not one Happy wanted to continue, because he hopped down from the chair and left his crayons and book behind to go in search of the cartoons. Chris and Sunny sat in more quiet, something that had been awkward eased between them.

  “We’ll want to meet him first, of course,” Chris said after a pause.

  Sunny laughed. “You will?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “But…you don’t mind? Really, you think it would be okay?”

  Chris reached across the table to take her hand, stilling her twisting fingers. He cupped both her hands with his. “I think it would be okay, Sunny.”

  A key turned inside a lock, something inside her she hadn’t known could even open. Sunny drew in a hitching breath that hurt her throat. Her eyes stung. Her lips moved, forming words she didn’t even know she wanted to say aloud until they forced their way up from her throat in a guttering rasp.

  Chris pulled her chair closer to him. He hugged her hard. One hand stroked down her back, over and over, slowly. Her mom had done that for her, a long, long time ago, when Sunny was very small. She missed her mom more than ever.

  This was so different from that first time, in the dark. Sunny closed her eyes and pressed her face to the front of his shirt while she fought to keep herself from shaking in her grief. When his hand moved along her hair, it was too much. She wept.

  It felt good; she knew then why crying had been so discouraged in Sanctuary. Not because it made you weak, but just the opposite. Holding in your sorrow was what weakened you. Hiding your feelings never kept you from having them.

  She cried for just a few minutes, but hard enough to wet the front of his shirt. Chris gave her a napkin from the table, and she blew her nose. Wiped her eyes. She didn’t move away, though, and he didn’t push her. They sat like that for what felt like a long, long time.

  “Wendy said she knew you in school.”

  “Yeah, I knew Wendy back in the day.” Chris rubbed slow circles on her back.

  “She said…she knew my mom, too.”

  The motion of his hand slowed, then stopped. “Yeah. She knew your mom, too.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  It seemed like a normal enough question for her to ask. He’d been married to her mom, after all. Even if it had been a really long time ago, even if they’d gotten divorced and he’d married Liesel, that didn’t mean he couldn’t miss her.

  “Papa always said the people we love leave a spot on our hearts,” Sunny said when Chris didn’t answer right away. “When I was small, I thought he meant like a bruise on an apple. I was sort of silly.”

  “It was just like a bruise on an apple.” Chris’s hand moved again, this time up and down, before he let it rest between her shoulder blades for a second. Then he pulled away to look her in the face. “I loved your mom very, very much.”

  He paused. Lowered his voice. “Don’t tell Liesel I said that.”

  Sunny pondered that. “She won’t ask me if you said it, I guess. So…I wouldn’t have to lie or anything.”

  “I don’t want you to lie. Just… She wouldn’t be happy to hear I said that.”

  “But even if she’s not happy about it,” Sunny said, “it’s still true.”

  Chris laughed with a grimace. “Yeah. I guess so. But I love Liesel, too. Don’t want her to be upset, right?”

  Sunny thought again. “No. Of course not.”

  Both of them looked up at the scrape of shoes on the tile floor of the hall. Liesel came through the arched doorway to the kitchen, her face red and gleaming, her hair stiff with sweat in the front and great rings of it under her arms. She went straight to the fridge to grab the pitcher of lemonade and poured herself a tall glass, drinking it down without a word.

  Chris moved away from Sunny without saying a word, making a space between them. She took the hint and moved, too, got up to take the mugs to the dishwasher, where she almost bumped into Liesel putting away her glass.

  “Did you have a good run?” Sunny asked.

  Liesel looked at her without expression. “It was good. Not long enough. But good.”

  She looked at Chris. “I’m going up to take a shower and get to bed early. Sunny, you work tomorrow, right?”

  Sunny nodded, but Liesel wasn’t looking at her. Instead, she pushed past Sunny and barely gave Chris a nod before leaving the kitchen and them behind. At the table, Chris let out a long, slow sigh.

  It seemed there should be something for Sunny to say, the silence not as perfect now as it had been just a little while ago. Without a word, Chris got up and left the kitchen, heading toward the den. Then she was left alone.

  Chapter 32

  While helping Christopher’s mother clear out some boxes in preparation for her move to New Jersey, Liesel had found a whole box of Christopher’s high school memorabilia. Stuck in the very bottom was a white faux-leather album filled with wedding photos. None of them professional, not like Liesel and Christopher’s posed portraits with every stray blemish and those few extra pounds erased. These were snapshots of a much younger Christopher and his beaming bride in a dress covered in frills and lace.

  Trish had been so…pretty. In those snapshots, Liesel saw her husband in love with the sort of woman she’d never been and never would be. They’d cemented to Liesel that she was not the first woman her husband had loved enough to marry. She’d never, until now, even wondered if he’d never loved her as much.

  Her mother had always said you never heard anything good when you listened at doors. Liesel had discovered that, all right. And what could she have said to her husband about it? Trish was not only long gone from his life, but she was also dead. That there was a living, breathing reminder living in their house with them was whose fault? Who’d wanted it? She had. And now she had to, as Christopher had so sweetly pointed out to her, deal with it.

  “Christopher said a boy from work asked you to go out with him. When are you going?” Liesel tried to keep her voice light, unaccu