Chapter 15

“After all she did, the lies, the death, and the wreckage, I still love her, you know? She’s my mom.”

Jax Teller, Sons of Anarchy

“When I married your father, he promised me we were going to have this amazing adventure, the two of us. That we were going to move to Canada and build a life better than either of our families could have imagined, and I believed him. I was a daft nineteen-year-old girl who’d never left Irish soil and who thought my job in the pub would be the most excitement I’d ever see. But then along came Jimmy O’Donnell, with his blue eyes and broad shoulders, and, oh my, but I was smitten.”

Was she smiling? Ro blinked hard and looked again, but by that time, whatever her expression had been a second ago, it was sober now.

“The first while was everything he’d promised; we had our wee flat over in Port Hardy, I got work as a waitress, and your da worked construction. He’d used all our savings to buy this piece of land out here in the middle of nowhere, and we spent every weekend clearing it and getting it ready to build.”

She stopped, wiped her nose again.

“ ’Twasn’t easy, and Jimmy was frustrated because I was feelin’ a little blue and I wasn’t strong enough to do some of the work, but we got it done. We moved over here just after my Ronan was born, and by that time your da had made a name for himself both as a carpenter and as a fishing guide, so I thought things would get easier, but they didn’t; they got worse.

“Jimmy was gone a great deal of the time, you see, either out on the boat or back in Port Hardy working, and I was here by myself with the baby and a shotgun for when the bears came. And they came a lot back then. There was no phone service yet, so the only way I could talk to anyone was over the radio. I was used to being around people and the noise of a city, you see, but when I told Jimmy I was blue, he told me to cop on, said I was just being a stupid girl, that I had my Ronan with me all day so there was no reason to be lonely or sad. By the time my Liam came along, your da had started to add on to this place and we had guests here more often, which was good because it kept him here, but it was mostly men, and they weren’t interested in talking to me about anything except when their next meal would be ready.”

Ronan pinched his lips together as tight as he could, not only to keep his comments to himself but to stop any kind of sympathy from escaping. He would not feel sorry for her. He wouldn’t.

“I was fiercely tired and anxious all the day, worried about your da out on the boats and about being alone here with two little boys. This was our dream, our adventure; I should have been happy but I wasn’t. ’Twas like I was numb most days, and when I wasn’t, I was pissed off—at Jimmy, at you boys, at the moon and stars, it didn’t matter. My mind wasn’t right, I know that now, but back then I just thought I was going crazy, because nothing ever made me happy. I was sad and empty all the time.”

She couldn’t have paused for more than a few seconds, but it was long enough, and when her red-rimmed eyes finally looked up, Ro moved closer to Finn, as if he could somehow protect him from what they all knew was coming.

“When I found out I was pregnant with my Finn, I wanted to die. I’m sorry, my boy, that was not your fault, but it’s how I felt. I was too embarrassed to tell my doctor that, because he was a friend of Jimmy’s, so I kept it to myself and waited for the sadness to pass. But it never did, and after you were born, it got worse again. Your da was too busy with this place, he didn’t have time to listen to me go on, especially when I cried—and I cried a lot.”

Ro didn’t dare look at his brothers. They all remembered that—how much Maggie cried all the time and how Da always told her to give over, that she was upsetting the boys.

“It was like a darkness that would hang over me for days and weeks, sometimes months, and then it would ease up, but it never fully went away.” It seemed as though she had to force herself to look at Finn, but she did it, and if Ro was going to cut her slack on anything, it was that fact right there. “That night, the night I left…do you remember what happened that day?”

Ro saw Finn’s jaw twitch ever so slightly as he shook his head.

“The three of you were out back playing ball; Ronan was at the bat and Liam was pitching. Struck him out, three pitches, and you started making fun of Ronan, telling him he swung like a little girl. It wasn’t anything the lot of you hadn’t done a hundred times before, buggin’ each other the way you always did, but I couldn’t stand it that time. It got inside my head like a bee and just wouldn’t stop buzzin’.”

It wasn’t until she said that that the memory came back to Ronan, not because it had bothered him that Finn called him a little girl—shit, they called one another worse things than that all the time—but because he remembered her walking around the kitchen, waving her hand around her head and muttering about the buzzing when there wasn’t anything near her. He remembered thinking for a second that she was crazy, but then he’d gone off to do something and forgotten all about it.

“You just kept on,” she said, “like the three of ya always did, but something in me snapped that time and scared the living bejesus outta me. It was like there was a voice in me head telling me to shut you up, to cover your mouth until you stopped making noise.”

Maggie’s voice barely got above a whisper, but somehow it weighed the air down, making it hard to breathe.

“I never touched you,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “But I came close, and I tell ya, that put the heart crossways in me chest. I knew I had to get away or I was going to hurt you, and I couldn’t bear the thought of hurtin’ my Finn. I don’t remember all of what I said that night, my boy, but none of it should have been said a’tall. What I do remember was horrid, and I know I can’t ever take it back or make you un-hear it, but I swear to you, my Finn, on my very soul, that none of it was your fault. You didn’t make me leave. ’Twas me; I wasn’t right in the head.”

Scorching fire burned Ronan’s eyes and throat as Finn choked out the question the three of them had wondered so many times over the last twenty-one years.

“Why didn’t you ever call or come back?”

“Oh, my boy, I wanted to. Every day I wanted to pick up the phone, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t understand what was going on in my head, so how could any of you? You were all so young. And I knew if I called, Jimmy would cry like he did when I left, and I couldn’t…I couldn’t bear it.”

She fingered the edge of her mug, then pushed it to the middle of the table.

“I took the bus from Port Hardy to Vancouver and walked straight into the first hospital I could find. I stayed there for quite a while up on the psychiatric floor. They gave me med’cine and I talked to people—the nurses, the doctors, some of the other loonies there—and I was getting better, I really was. But then there were cutbacks at the hospital, and because the doctors didn’t think I was a danger to anyone, they let me go, even though I told them I wasn’t ready. And I wasn’t.

“I had no money and nowhere to go, and my medication ’twas fiercely expensive, so I had to stop taking it. I ended up living in the shelters and out on the street, and I’m not tellin’ you that so you feel sorry for me, boys, I’m tellin’ you so you understand why I didn’t phone. I couldn’t have you boys knowing your ma was nothin’ but a bum living on the streets. Year after year I ended up back in hospital a bunch of times, but they couldn’t keep me and I didn’t want them to, because it made it so much worse when they put me out the street.”

Ronan felt Finn flinch, but when he turned to look at him, Finn just shook his head.

“And then one day I was walking by one of those computer and telly stores, like, and hand to God, I don’t know what made me stop, but I did. One of the tellies inside was on a sports channel and they were on about the baseball draft, you know. What did I care about baseball? All it did was make me remember my last day here with you boys, so I started to leave, but suddenly there was my Liam putting on that Detroit jersey, and you were all right there with him. You boys and your da—you all looked so very handsome, so grown up, and I knew then that no matter what had happened in the past, I had to find a way to get right. It was seeing you boys that did that for me.

“ ’Twasn’t easy, and I ended up in my dark place so many times, but after a few more years I met the most lovely doctor in the whole world. She spent so much time talking to me about my depression, helping me find the med’cine that was right, that didn’t leave me feeling worse or sick to me stomach. I went to her clinic most every day and she worked with me, put me on to a couple other head docs who helped me get right. She gave me a job in her clinic and let me sleep in one of the exam rooms for a couple months until I found me own place. Weren’t nothin’ fancy, but ’twas a start. And every day I longed for my boys, but I knew I’d been away too long, and the longer I put it off, the harder ’twas. Cowardly for sure, but I feared you would hate me, as you do, and as you should, and I wasn’t strong enough to deal with that. I just…I couldn’t have it.”

It was on Ro’s tongue to say that they didn’t hate her, but he swallowed it back because he’d spent way too many years convincing himself he did hate her, and he wasn’t about to give that up so easily.

“I swear to you, my boys, what you’ve said about your da…about him hurting you…” Maggie pressed a clean tissue over her face and sobbed the same gut-wrenching way she’d done the night she left, and just like then, not a single one of them moved to comfort her, not even when she lowered the tissue and pressed both her hands over her chest.

“It rips me that my Jimmy would raise his hand to you that way, that I made him do it, and that I wasn’t here to stop him. Sure an’ I’ll never forgive myself for what we’ve done to you.”

She balled her hand and pressed it tight against her mouth as she turned her gaze to Ronan.

“You’ve got every right to be angry with me, my Ronan.”

It took him longer than he liked to swallow the lump knotted in his throat. “I’m not the only one who’s pissed here, Maggie.”

“Don’t I know it, but I also know it was hardest on you, my oldest: You were always the one who looked after your brothers when you saw me so sad. You were the one who had to be a grown-up before you shoulda been, and I knew even as I left that night that ’twould be you who made sure they were looked after. You thought your da and I were so daft that we didn’t know you took punishment for the two of them as often as you did, that you’d say it was you who’d broken the window or carved that curse word into the bar, when it wasn’t. ’Twas your brothers, but you said it was you so they wouldn’t catch the trouble for it. You’d a done anything for those two, but who did you have to look out for you? Weren’t no one, was there?”

“I was fine.” He ground the lie out between clenched teeth and refused to look at either Finn or Liam, even though he knew they were both staring at him.

“You couldn’t possibly have been fine,” Maggie said, sniffling. “Finn was a handful as a lad, always getting into something, always pushing the line, but he never stopped, because he knew you and Liam would have his back no matter what.”

Finn and Liam both started fidgeting, but not Ro. He wasn’t going to let her get to him.

“It’s called being a family, Maggie.”

“ ’Course ’tis, but who had your back, my Ronan? If what you say about your da is true, then I wager you done what you could to save Finn from a few of those beatings, didn’t ya?”

“What the hell else was I supposed to do, Maggie? He was just a little kid.”

“Aye, but what about Liam? I imagine you took some for him, too, am I right?”

“That was different; Liam’s arm was his ticket out of here, so I couldn’t let Da do anything to jeopardize that.”

“Right you are, my Ronan, you couldn’t, because you were always the protector, whether you were protecting your brothers from me or your da, or whether it was me you were protecting by keeping them two away when I was trapped in my dark place. It’s what you always did. It’s who you are.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Aye, but I do. That day I saw you all on the telly, ’twas you that was crying—not your da, not even Liam. ’Twas you because you knew you’d done your job. I don’t know how you did it, but you’d a done whatever was needed to help Liam get to where he was, and those tears you were crying, those were because you were so proud of him, am I right? That’s what it feels like when you love someone more than you love yourself, my Ronan.”

Ronan clenched his jaw tighter, refusing to answer, but Liam let out a gush of breath as he staggered toward the nearest chair.

“Jesus, Ro, she’s right.” He banged his elbows down on the table and wrapped his hands around his head. Finn slid down the counter until he was sitting on the floor with his knees tucked up to his chest.

“We always thought you were just a bossy pain in the ass,” Finn said quietly. “But you were being the parent because we didn’t have one. How the fuck did we never notice that before?”

“Who cares?” Ro bellowed. “This isn’t about me; it’s about Maggie.”

“Aye,” she said. “ ’Tis, and maybe I shouldn’ta come—”

“Ya think?”

“But when Luka approached me, I knew to be sure that ’twas the Almighty himself giving me this chance, to tell you all how very truly sorry I am for”—she hiccuped on a sob, then shook her head, as though trying to shake more of them away—“for not being the mother you all needed and so rightly deserved, and especially for everything I said that horrible, horrible night. I was sick, aye, but the words still came out of my mouth and into your ears, and no matter how many times I say it, no amount of sorries can ever take that back or make it right.”

“So…what?” Ronan asked. “What do you want from us?”

“Nothin’. I don’t want a damn thing from you, my Ronan. I honestly don’t. I know you’ve got yourself a good life here, and I know ’twas selfish of me to come and intrude on it this way, but I finally realized I’m not gettin’ any younger, and if there was even the slightest chance that one or all of my boys could find it in their hearts to forgive me, then I needed to take that chance. And if you can’t, I respect that, but at least I know I tried.”

Silence blanketed the room with a weight Ronan had never felt before. Neither Liam nor Finn had to say anything—Ro already knew what they were thinking, because Kate and Jessie had made them soft, and once a man let himself get soft over a woman, he opened himself up to trusting everyone. And that’s where Ronan had made his mistake.

He’d let himself get soft over Hope, and this was what she’d done to him. She’d not only dragged their pain back into their lives, but she’d done it for ratings, and that was just too much. So Liam and Finn could feel bad for Maggie all they wanted; Ronan wasn’t biting.

Yeah, it was awful to hear what Maggie had been through, it really was, but he couldn’t let himself care. Not now. It was going to take every last ounce of strength he had to close up the gaping hole in his fuckin’ heart, the one Hope and Maggie had just ripped open, and he didn’t have it in him to focus on anything or anyone else.

Maggie had been right about one thing—Ronan had never had anyone to help him, not even when she was around, and yet he’d survived. He’d survive this, too, the same way he always did. By himself. By walling that hole up and pushing on.

He had his brothers, he had Jessie and Kate, he even had JD, and they were the ones he cared about. They were the ones he’d keep behind the wall with him. And pretty soon he’d have a niece or nephew to love and spoil rotten.

He didn’t need anyone else. Not his mother and not Hope.

Finn let his head fall back against the cupboard, the bang making them all jump a little. “So what do we do now?” he asked. “We’ve got a lodge full of guests and three days of filming left to get through.”

“Fuck if I know,” Ro grunted. “But I need to get shit started in here if we have any hope of feeding people tonight.”

Maggie pressed her tissue under her nose for a few seconds, then lifted her chin. “I won’t be staying, my Finn. I told Luka that I would come but I wasn’t makin’ any promises. Don’t much like her anyway, so as soon as the helicopter can come back, I’ll be away.”

Liam’s head came up at the same time as Finn sat forward, and even though they both looked as if they had something to say, neither did. And there was no way in hell Ronan was saying anything.

“You boys have work to do,” she said. “And I don’t want to keep you from it, nor do I want to make it awkward for you out there, so if you don’t mind, might I sit here until the helicopter comes back for me?”

“Oh, I don’t—” Ronan started, cut off by the look Finn shot him.

“It’s probably best if she stays here, Ro, unless you want to come up with some happy bullshit story about what’s going on, because I sure as hell don’t need to get into the truth out there with a lodge full of strangers.”

“Finn’s right.” Liam pushed to his feet, tucked the chair under the table, then gripped the back of it as he set his gaze on Maggie. “You have to understand, this is a lot to take in.”

“Aye.” She blinked slowly, her head bobbing in a barely there nod. “And I can’t expect any of you to be welcoming me into your lives, but if you’ve a mind to it, I’d like to leave me address and phone number. That way if any of you should feel the need or want to talk to me again, you can. Anytime. And if you don’t want to hear from me again, I understand.”

Liam’s mouth set in a tight line as he tipped his head toward Jessie’s office, indicating that Finn and Ronan should follow him. Once inside, he slid the pocket door closed and leaned against it while Ro and Finn prowled the cramped space.

“Holy fuck,” Liam breathed. “What do we do?”

“We can’t stay in the kitchen much longer,” Finn said. “Jessie’s out there all alone.”

“And Kate.” It was all Liam said, but it was enough. They’d left poor Kate on her own; God only knew how sick she still might be.

“Go,” Ronan said, forcing himself to focus on the one thing he could without losing his mind: the Buoys. “I don’t know what the fuck Luka and Hope were thinking, but I do know we can’t deal with it right now. We’re going to put Maggie and that fuckin’ Luka on the first Helijet we can get and then we’ll carry on like normal. The film crew’ll be out of here on Thursday, and then we can start to figure out what we’re going to do, if anything.”

“What do you mean ‘if anything’?” Liam asked. “We have to do something; you heard her, Ro, she was sick.”

“Yeah, I heard her, and I’m sorry, but I can’t just erase twenty-one years over a cup of coffee. It doesn’t work like that.” He tipped his chin toward the door. “Go on; you guys need to get out there with the guests.”

Liam reached for the door handle, then stopped. “I get it, Ro, you’re pissed. We’re all scrambling. But before you go and slam the door on her, you need to try and imagine how hard it must have been for her to come up here after all this time. I’m not saying we should all hug it out and act like the last twenty-one years never happened; I’m just saying I think we need to consider what those twenty-one years were like for her, too, before we make any decisions.”

“Fine.”

Liam could talk all he wanted; the only thing Ro could let himself consider right now was whether he’d offer three kinds of salmon tonight or two. Anything else would be too much.

“Okay.” Still Liam didn’t move. Instead, he looked down at the floor for a second before dragging his eyes up to Ro’s. “About Hope.”

“Don’t.” His whole body rigid, his teeth ground together, it was all Ro could do not to lose his fuckin’ mind right there. He wasn’t about to start talking about Hope to anyone. Not yet.

“But she—”

“One more fuckin’ word,” Ro growled, “and you’ll be sipping steak through a straw. Just. Leave it. Alone.”

Liam’s gaze moved past him to where Finn stood, but Ronan didn’t budge.

“Are you gonna be okay with her?” Finn asked. “With Ma, I mean.”

“I’m fine.” He wasn’t even close to being fine, and they all knew it, but what choice did they have? “Just go.”

Neither one of them seemed overly keen to leave Ronan alone with Maggie, but after a long moment, Liam slid the door open and led Finn back through the kitchen.

“We, uh…” Liam hesitated, swiped his arm across his cheek, and sighed.

“Aye,” Maggie said. “You have your work, and I won’t be delayin’ you any longer from it.”

Finn moved over beside Liam and the two of them stood there, as if they were in a stupor for a second. Finally, Finn blinked, shook his head a bit, and elbowed Liam toward the door. And then it was just Ronan and Maggie in the kitchen, listening to the rain pound the skylight.

Every emotion he’d managed to cage up in the last hour or so started pushing to get out again, but Ro wasn’t having it, and the only way to keep everything locked up was to keep his mouth shut until he could get a grip on things.

So while Maggie sat at the table, Ronan went about preparing for supper orders. Salmon, halibut, ribs, steak, pasta, salads, desserts, and all the side dishes he might need were prepped and ready to go, and still neither one of them said a word.

Jessie poked her head in twice to see how he was doing, both times giving him her best unspoken “bullshit” look when he assured her he was fine. He took JD outside, but the dog wasn’t interested in being out in the rain, even though it had slowed quite a bit, so Ronan went back into the kitchen and wiped everything down again.

There was nothing to do now but wait for the orders to start coming in. With a dish towel hanging over his shoulder, he folded his arms over his chest, leaned against the counter, and asked the question that had been bugging him since he realized who she was.

“Where’d the name Peggy Flynn come from?”

It was the first thing spoken between them in over an hour, and yet Maggie didn’t seem the least bit surprised he’d asked.

“Peggy’s just another form of Margaret, like Maggie was, and Flynn was me best friend’s name back home. I began usin’ it the first time they released me from hospital, because I thought it would be a good idea to start new with everything. And then after Liam made the ball team, I didn’t want anyone to connect him to someone like me, so it made more sense to be Peggy Flynn.”

“Did you change it legally?”

“Aye. And before you say it, I know the paperwork would make it easy enough to connect me to all of you. I knew it long before that Luka tracked me down, but at the time I wasn’t quite drivin’ on all cylinders.”

Ro squeezed his eyes shut tight for a second, trying to focus on one question at a time.

“How would she even know about you?” The question was out before his brain snapped down on it. There was only one way Luka would know about Maggie, and that was if Hope had told her. He’d seen Hope’s notes, had seen Maggie’s name right there on the page under her questions about the guest rooms.

“At first I thought—or maybe I just hoped—that one of you boys had asked her to find me, because she showed me photos and some video of this place, of you boys, and of the pictures you have hangin’ in the white cabin. All these years and you still have that god-awful photo of me.”

Damn Jessie for making them keep that picture up.

“But the more Luka talked, the more I realized you boys hadn’t asked her at all, did ya?”

Ro didn’t answer.

“By the time I figured it out, it didn’t matter to me anymore who ’twas that came lookin’. All I knew was that if I didn’t come now, if I didn’t look you in the eye and tell you I’m sorry, I never would.” She pursed her lips a little before continuing. “ ’Twasn’t like I didn’t know where this place was, and after I taught meself how to use the Google, you were all easy enough to find, but I was too scared to do anything. God help me, I’m still scared, my Ronan.”

The sudden ring of the phone made Ro start, but it also gave him an excuse to get away from her before he fessed up to how scared he was, too, or to how many times he’d searched her name online. There were plenty of Maggie and Margaret O’Donnells, but none of them were her.

“Thank you for calling the Buoys,” he said, knowing he sounded robotic but unable to change it. “This is Ronan…yeah, hi…Great…Yeah, okay, send the bill to Luka—you have her info, yeah? Good. See you in a bit.”

He put the phone back in its cradle and walked straight past Maggie toward the door to the pub. He pushed it open just wide enough to stick his head and shoulders through. Jessie was down at the other end of the bar, taking an order from a guest, but she hustled toward Ro as soon as she was done.

“Helijet’s on its way,” he said quietly. “Can you get someone to make sure Luka’s on the dock, ready to go?”

Jessie nodded solemnly as she handed him the dinner order she’d just taken, but by the time she turned to the guests, she was once again sporting her perfectly crafted smile.

“Give me two seconds,” she said to the guests in the room. “I’ll be right back.”

Ronan left her to it and set to work on the orders he finally had.

“Your ride’ll be here in about fifteen minutes,” he said to Maggie. “If you need help getting down to the dock, I can arrange—”

“Don’t be daft,” Maggie said, pushing to her feet. “I know damn well where the dock is, and I’m not so old that I need help gettin’ there.”

She pulled a notepad and pen out of her purse, scrawled something on it, then ripped the page out and slid it under her still-full mug.

“I know I was the first woman to break your heart,” she said quietly. “And for certain, that’s a scar not easily healed, but I hope one day you can try to understand what my mind was like and try to forgive me, Ronan. I won’t be contactin’ you or your brothers again unless you tell me that’s what you’re wantin’.”

The kitchen door flew open and in stormed Luka, with Kate hot on her heels.

“Now, you listen to me,” Luka said, jabbing her finger at Ronan, who refused to move and instead stood staring back at her, unblinking. “You and I have a signed contract that says I can bring one guest of my choosing here each week to be part of this show, so if you think for one second I’m going to let you bully us out of here, Ronan, you are sadly mistaken.”

“Oh, shut your bloody mouth.” Maggie clicked her tongue as she shrugged into her jacket. “Who the hell d’you think you are, stompin’ in here like that and tellin’ my boy what he can and cannot do on his own land?”

If it had been anyone else saying that, Ro might have given her a fist bump, but it was Maggie, so he forced his expression to stay neutral, unimpressed with either of them.

“Well,” Luka huffed. “We have an agreement.”

“Aye, you have an agreement with me, as well, and guess what?” Maggie’s eyes, so much like the ones Ro saw in the mirror every day, dared Luka to speak. She didn’t, so Maggie kept going. “You can shove that agreement right up your arse. That helicopter will be here shortly, and unless you’d like to swim home, I’m going to suggest you take a seat on it with me.”

Kate, still a little pale, stood in the middle of the kitchen, eyes huge and mouth hanging open until Ronan hooked his finger under her chin and nudged her mouth closed again. It took some effort, but he managed to keep his voice low and even.

“I’m not kidding, Luka, contract or no contract, if you use one word of what my brothers or I said in this room today—”

“The video belongs to Hooked.”

“You’re right,” he said, nodding briefly. “It does. But unless you’re looking for a legal shitstorm the likes of which you can’t even imagine, you’d best think twice before you include any of the audio.”

Without another word, Maggie pushed Luka’s bag into her arms, then lifted her own and nodded.

“We’ll be leavin’ you now.”

“Uh, right.” Still wide-eyed, Kate waved them toward the pub. “I’ll take you through this way so you’re not tripping over JD.”

“JD.” Maggie snorted quietly as she walked past Ronan. “For the love of Peter and Paul, please tell me the animal’s not named after a bottle of whiskey.”

“No, no,” Kate said, laughing nervously. “It stands for John Doe; he was a stray, you see, and…”

Ronan didn’t hear anything else, because they’d already disappeared into the pub and his mind had shut out everything except the fact that, after all these years, Maggie had just walked in and out of their lives again.

Maggie.

And she wasn’t the raving bitch he’d turned her into in his mind; she wasn’t even the constantly tired, sad, and disinterested person he remembered from his childhood. She’d been upset sitting there at the table, sure, but it was completely different from what she used to be like.

Back then, her sadness made it seem as if everything was hopeless, as if she was barely holding on by the skin of her teeth. But seeing her now, crying the way she did, it wasn’t anything like that. The tears she cried today were full of remorse and regret, but they weren’t hopeless. If they were, she never would have come, and she sure as hell wouldn’t have left her address and phone number on the table.

He hadn’t yet touched the piece of paper she left and wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to. Touching it would make it real, and he couldn’t deal with that right now. Just as he couldn’t deal with knowing that Hope had been a part of this and that she hadn’t left on the Helijet with Luka and Maggie. She was probably in the great room, talking to the guests as she did every week and acting as if she hadn’t just destroyed him.

No. He couldn’t deal with that, either. All he could deal with was this moment and the salmon he was broiling. Or, rather, burning.

“Shit.”