Chapter 8

James was sitting in his office, on the phone, casting a despairing glance at his desk, where paperwork was stacked in a mountainous landscape. He hadn’t slept very much in the past several days. Every time he thought he might get ahead of this chaos, his assistant came in with the next batch of files he had to take care of. Although he was already doing overtime, there weren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done.

There was just too much going on at the moment, and James was fighting on several fronts at the same time. The paperwork wasn’t the only thing driving him to distraction. There were also the phone calls that came at any time of day or night. Only last night, he’d spent ninety minutes on the phone with a business partner in Hong Kong, only to get up and drive to the office a few hours later.

So it wasn’t surprising that he was feeling like he’d been hit by a Mack truck today. In fact, he was only half-listening to the head of HR, simultaneously scanning his inbox and yawning without inhibition. He was extremely grateful when the door opened and his amazing assistant brought in a steaming cup of coffee. She knew when he was running on fumes. Mrs. Buchanan had been married for at least thirty years, but when she set the cup down on his desk and he smelled the delicious aroma, he could have kissed her. A coffee was exactly what he needed right now.

As soon as he’d wrapped up the call, he pounced on the coffee and rummaged through his bottom desk drawer, where he always kept an emergency candy bar. He devoured it with a ravenous appetite and was chewing the last piece when his phone rang yet again.

He sent a desperate glance at the ceiling, suddenly tempted to throw the damn phone out the window. But when he checked the number on the display, he did a double take. It was Barbara’s number.

After their most recent clash at Scott’s soccer tournament, there’d been radio silence. James had hardly been able to bear watching her get into another man’s car, and he still felt a lump in his throat at the thought that it probably wouldn’t be the last time he’d be forced to watch her leave with someone else. Even so, he’d never called Maggie Fraser after they’d eaten together at the Italian place and she’d given him her number. It simply hadn’t felt right. How could he have gone out with another woman when it made him feel like he was deceiving the woman he still loved?

No, he would never again do such a thing when it didn’t feel right.

That was what he’d done that cursed night in Toronto, and he’d paid dearly.

Swallowing the last bit of candy bar, he reluctantly reached for the receiver, and his gaze snagged on the three picture frames positioned on his desk to cheer him up when a day promised to be an utter disaster. One photograph showed Hamilton at six, on the day he’d started first grade. His wide grin showed a prominent gap between his front teeth that was so cute James started to grin every time he gave it even a passing glance. The next photo showed Scott at five, playing a turkey in a Thanksgiving play in kindergarten. It made James smile softly, remembering how his youngest had come away from his acting experience determined never to eat turkey again. And he hadn’t, to this very day.

The third photo, however, touched his heart every single day. It showed Hamilton, Scott, Barbara, and himself.

He should have put it away a long time ago but couldn’t bring himself to do so. He loved the perfect snapshot too dearly to banish it from his desk. The photo had been taken in the garden at Barbara’s parents’ house when Scott was only a few weeks old. They’d been sitting on a picnic blanket in the shade of a tree, Barbara holding tiny Scott in her arms, Hamilton nestling in James’s lap. The camera had caught the exact moment when little Hamilton pressed a kiss to his newborn brother’s small head. The warm smile on Barbara’s face, as well as his own, gave him a pang of despair. At the time, he was probably the happiest man in the whole wide world.

He cleared his throat and picked up the phone. “Hello, Barbara.”

“James.” She sounded hesitant. “Is this a bad time?”

Although his other lines had started to blink, he replied without a pang of guilt: “Not at all. What’s up?”

“The boys’ Boy Scout troop leader just called me.” She sighed softly. “Apparently, they’re trying to put together a camping trip over the school break. Friday to Sunday evening. I wanted to talk to you about it if you have a minute.”

“Of course.” James leaned back in his chair and dragged his gaze away from the picture. “What do the boys say about the idea?”

“What do you think?” She laughed briefly. “They’re both utterly thrilled. I wouldn’t be surprised if Scott asks for a tent for his next birthday so he can move out into the backyard.”

James chuckled. He wouldn’t put it past his youngest to actually dream of a thing like that. “Yep, that sounds like Scott,” he mumbled cheerfully. “The whole thing sounds wonderful to me. I’d let the boys go, as long as it’s okay with you, too, and they want to.”

“Alright, then I’ll sign them up,” Barbara said calmly. “I’m sure it’ll do them good to have some adventures before school starts again.”

“To be honest, it’s probably the troop leader who’ll be having all the adventures, trying to camp with that gang for an entire weekend,” James said, amused.

“Oh, yes,” Barbara replied with a giggle. “I wouldn’t trade places with him for anything.”

James chuckled. “Me neither.”

“It was bad enough that time we took our two to that log cabin on Lake Patoha.”

“Lake Patoka,” he corrected her. “And I don’t know what you mean, that was a fabulous vacation.”

“Ha!” she shot back playfully. “Your bonfire almost burned down the entire cabin! And the mosquitoes were so bloodthirsty we had to stay inside most of the weekend.”

“Plus, you got that terrible rash after your surprise encounter with poison oak.”

Her groan was music to his ears. “Don’t remind me! It was the first—and the last—time I peed in the wild.”

James choked on his own laughter as he distinctly remembered his dear wife disappearing into a grove of trees during the long drive, because she couldn’t hold it in until the next town. She reappeared with a horrible, quickly spreading rash on her backside. He also remembered how he’d scoured the loneliest part of Indiana for a late-night pharmacy, to get her something for the terrible itch. He quickly suppressed the thought of how he’d brought back just such an ointment and applied it to the offending parts of her body with his own hands.

Apparently, Barbara was thinking about the same thing. It was one of their last vacations together.

“Do you have the date of the camping trip?” James asked, breaking the awkward silence.

“Yes,” she said quickly, audibly glad he’d changed the subject. “Not this weekend but the next.”

James glanced at his desk calendar and froze. His gaze traveled automatically to the photo on his desk in which they’d still been a happy family.

He swallowed the hard lump in his throat. “Barbara,” he said shakily, “are you sure you don’t want the boys with you that weekend?”

Her voice sounded brittle when she answered. “Of course I’m sure.”

“But … But …” He took a deep breath. “That Saturday is three years—”

“I know what happened on that date three years ago, James,” she cut him off with a snarl. “I was there, remember?”

“Barbara,” he groaned. “Don’t be like that. Please.”

Her voice shook with rage, but James knew that was a front, for she sounded choked at the same time. “Why do you have to bring that up now? It’s been three years, and I’ve long since forgotten all about it.”

That was a lie—and they both knew it.

Neither of them would ever forget that day.

“I just don’t think you should be alone that weekend,” he said in a deliberately calm voice. “The boys should stay with you.”

“And I don’t think you should talk about it!” she barked at him: “You weren’t interested in what was going on three years ago, so why are you suddenly so interested now?”

Her words were like a slap to the face.

Shocked, James fought against the unbearable pain that had suddenly gripped his entire body. “I wasn’t interested in what was going on?” he repeated hoarsely, balling his free hand into a fist. “Do you really think I didn’t care, wasn’t interested? Barbara …” He gasped for breath, agonized and hurting. “How … How can you say a thing like that? How the hell can you say that?”

There was dead silence on the other end.

James didn’t even notice, blind and deaf to everything as he struggled to get a grip. Her accusation had smashed into the wall of his reticence, a bulwark he’d trained himself to practice over those first few months so that he wouldn’t add to her pain. When his wife suddenly fell into a severe depression, he hadn’t allowed her to see his true feelings, his grief, because he didn’t want to add to her burden. But that was exactly what she was reproaching him for now. He felt suffocated, like a drowning man.

“How could you believe I wasn’t interested in Elizabeth?” he demanded in a voice full of agony. And then he hung up, because he didn’t want her to hear him cry.