“Will you make pie?”

“Pie?”

“Yeah, pie. I think I could get Momma to eat your pie. She hasn’t been eating much.”

We’d resumed our earlier position; Drew’s arm was on my shoulders, mine around his torso. This time we were taking the direct path back to the house.

We hadn’t stayed long in our field of flowers because I felt anxious about getting back to check on Momma, and it was time to get dinner started.

“What kind of pie? Does she have a preference?”

“You’ve never made my momma pie before?” For some reason this surprised me. Drew made fantastic pie. It was pie that should be shared.

“No. I guess I haven’t. But she made me her lemon meringue pie a few times. I guess if I’d had to choose between any of my pies and hers, I would have picked hers.” He scratched the back of his neck then his beard. “Maybe I’ll try to make her lemon meringue.”

“Hey, that would be great.” I smiled up at him. “I think she’d really like that.”

“Well, don’t you two look cozy?” Beau called from a few feet away. Neither of us had noticed his approach, and we stumbled to a stop.

My brother smiled, glancing between Drew and me. “Mind if I join you?”

Without waiting for a response, Beau slipped his arm around my waist and encouraged me to do likewise with him. He then propelled the three of us toward the house, walking as a unit.

“I need to clean out the barn; it’s getting too messy to pull the cars in.” Beau spoke over my head at Drew then shook his head. “By the way, it’s nice to see you two getting along so well. I was a little worried at first after I heard about the titty-twister episode. Real big of you, Drew, to let all that go.”

“Hey! He was the one who woke me up at six in the morning.”

“Settle your mettle, woman. I’m just saying it’s nice to see you guys behaving like brother and sister is all.”

I felt Drew stiffen beside me, his hand on my shoulder flexed. I stole a glance at him and found his handsome face marred with a pensive frown. We walked several more paces in strained silence before Drew cleared his throat and slowed our steps.

“Beau,” Drew said, and his tone brought the three of us to a stop. “It’s not what you think.”

My eyes widened and I faced Drew, gave him my very best what-the-hell-are-you-doing face. He ignored me.

Beau gave both of us a perplexed grin and stepped away, holding his hands up. “No, Drew. Man, I wasn’t thinking that at all. I would never think that. Like I said, brother and sister.”

“Beau, it’s not like that.” Drew said this slowly, his arm on my shoulders tightening.

“Oh God,” I said on a quick exhale then closed my eyes.

“Drew, man, I know.”

“No. Beau, listen to me. I have feelings for your sister that are not brotherly.” He paused, his hand dropped to my waist, and he pressed me against his side.

My blood pressure spiked. I couldn’t open my eyes. The silence was just too awkward, too awful. Furthermore, I didn’t understand why he’d done it. He could have just walked along saying nothing, agreeing to nothing, contradicting nothing.

“Wait…wait, wait, wait….” I heard Beau huff. “Are you saying that you and Ash, that you two are….”

“Yes,” Drew said. “That’s right. And I respect you and Ashley too much to mislead you.”

Beau huffed again, and I opened one of my eyes to peek at my brother. Beau was looking at me with incredulous worry.

“Ash….” He took a step closer to me, his tone solemn. “I like Drew and all, he’s done a lot for us, but are you sure about this? No offense, Drew.” He shot a look at Drew then back at me. “What do you have to say?”

I glanced at Drew, found him watching me with his quicksilver eyes, his expression open, unguarded, and trusting. I couldn’t help but smile at him.

“Yes,” I said to Drew then faced my brother. “Yes, Beau. The answer is yes. Yes, I have no sisterly feelings for Drew. Yes, we’re getting along just fine, better than fine, way better than fine. But thank you.” I stepped away from Drew and reached for my brother’s shoulders, standing on my tiptoes to give his cheek a kiss. “Thank you for caring what I think.”

He smiled down at me like I was crazy. “Ashley, of course I care what you think. You’re my sister. If you’re not happy, then I’ll make sure….” His eyes slid over to Drew’s. “I’ll make sure no one is happy.”

Momma hadn’t woken up since I’d left to go butcher the roosters, which meant she also hadn’t eaten anything.

We still hadn’t heard from my father.

Drew went to work on the pie as soon as we arrived home, but I couldn’t sit still. My neck itched and I felt like I had bees behind my eyes all through dinner. The food, Jethro’s meatloaf, which was usually exceptionally tasty, was like sawdust in my mouth.

I insisted on doing the dishes, mostly because I needed to be moving around, I needed to be doing something. I finished in record time then set my mind to reorganizing the spice drawer.

When Joe, the night nurse, arrived, I followed him into the den. Cletus was there, sitting on my cot in his pajamas and reading what appeared to be a scientific journal.

Drew was also present. He was reading to Momma from the book The Neverending Story. I managed to give him a small smile, and the smile he tossed back did a good bit to both increase and settle my nerves.

“She still hasn’t eaten?” Joe asked this to the room, his voice quiet and concerned.

“No, she hasn’t,” I said, and my eyes met Joe’s. “Is it time for a tube?” I already knew the answer to this question.

Before Joe could respond, Drew said, “She doesn’t want that. It’s in her living will. She said she doesn’t want a feeding tube.”

My gaze darted to his. His eyes held an apology, but the set of his jaw told me it wasn’t negotiable.

“On Monday she was laughing and joking around.” Cletus said this from the cot. “Why is she so quiet? It’s only been five days.”

“Maybe she’s just tired,” I said, but it sounded completely lame.

I looked her over. A small sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead and upper lip. I laid my hand from temple to temple to check her temperature. She was cool.

“She doesn’t have a temperature,” Joe said. I could feel his eyes on me.

I nodded then addressed my next words to Cletus. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re in my spot.”

Cletus shook his head. “Nah. This is my spot tonight. You’ve been hogging it, and I want it.”

“Cletus….”

“Don’t look at me that way, baby sister. I’ll tell you what, if you can lift me up and carry me to my bed, then you can have this one. As it is, I’m tired and ready to sleep.” As though to punctuate his words he yawned and waved us toward the door. “Now get out of here. I already beat Joe at chess sixty times this week.”

“It was twelve times.”

“Yeah, might as well have been sixty.” He yawned again. “Go on, get.”

Joe chuckled as he left. Drew stood, placed his book on the wooden chair, and crossed to me. I wasn’t watching him. I was focused on and thinking about the perspiration covering my mother’s upper lip. It didn’t make any sense. The room was cool, but not cold. She felt cool, not clammy. I didn’t get it.

Drew fit his hand in mine and tugged on it, leading me out of the room. Once the door closed behind us, he pulled me down the hall, to the stairs, and up to my room. I followed him, still thinking about Momma’s lip and forehead, thumbing through my brain and all the possible causes for her sudden sleepiness and lack of interest in food.

I wondered if I should wake her up to eat the pie. I was pretty sure she’d be interested in pie.

“Hey…where you going?” Jethro called after us, rousing me from my thoughts.

“I’m taking Ashley to bed,” Drew responded without turning to look at my brother or stopping our ascent up the stairs.

“Oh.” I saw Jethro nod, his gaze watching us. Abruptly his eyes narrowed and he planted his hands on his hips, but he said nothing else.

Drew led me into my room and closed the door behind us. I was tired. I was also distracted. So when Drew turned and kissed me—a soft, lingering closed-mouth kiss that made me forget what I’d been thinking about and where I was—my hands twisted around his neck and I kissed him back, pressing my body to his.

We did this for a while. He kissed me. I kissed him back. He seemed to be holding himself on a tight leash, because he was controlling the intensity level by withdrawing every so often and placing feathery kisses on my neck and collarbone. His hands stroked and massaged my back, yet never felt anything but frustratingly comforting.

However, when the back of my knees hit the bed and I fell backward, and he climbed onto it and loomed above me, the room—and everything else—came into focus.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute….” I pressed my hands to his chest as he hovered over me, bending to bite my neck. “What are we doing?”

“Kissing, he whispered in my ear then licked my earlobe.

I shivered, swallowed, and squeezed my eyes shut. “I don’t think we should be doing this.”

“Why?” He continued to kiss, lick, bite—repeat.

“Because I….” I breathed out a ragged sigh. “Because I’m worried about Momma.”

He stopped his sweet ministrations and lifted his head, his eyes moving over my face. He seemed to be considering me as well as what I’d just said.

After several long moments, he lay on his side next to me and threaded his fingers through the long locks.

“I know, Sugar. I was just trying to distract you.”

I turned on my side and faced him. “You were doing a good job.”

His lips twisted to the side and he watched me, his hands moving in my hair, then he surprised me by saying, “I’d like to sleep here with you tonight.”

I opened my mouth, but didn’t know how to respond because I wasn’t sure what he was asking.

Reading my mind, he added, “Just sleep. I just want to sleep.”

“Oh.” I nodded my understanding, thinking about just sleeping next to Drew and finding that I quite liked the idea. The thought of hugging someone all night long was really appealing, especially if that person was Drew. It would be like having a big, strong, Viking man-pillow.

I realized he was still waiting for my answer, so I leaned forward and brushed a kiss against his mouth. “Yes. That would be nice. Thank you.”

His eyes narrowed as I drew away. “You need to stop thanking me.”

“I can’t help it.” I kissed him again then whispered against his mouth, “I was raised with manners.”

I awoke abruptly for no reason in particular and was startled by the surrounding darkness. It took me about ten seconds to figure out that I was in my room—not in the den—and that Drew was next to me, fast asleep.

He was warm and solid, and our limbs were knotted in perfect chaos. His arms were around my torso. My arms were around his neck. His head was on my breast. One of his legs was between mine, and our calves were hooked around each other.

It felt divine.

So I relaxed into the feeling for several minutes before searching for the clock on the nightstand; I found it, and next to it was Drew’s leather notebook. I looked at the brown binding, studied the Norse symbols on the front, and found myself wondering what was inside. I’d witnessed him writing in the book from time to time and somehow doubted it contained field notes.

Shaking myself, because what Drew wrote in the notebook was really none of my business, I glanced at the clock. It was just before 4:30 a.m. and, despite my current epic levels of snuggly comfort, I felt like I had a stone in the pit of my stomach and a bug in my ear.

I was gripped by a desire to get up.

Despite the carefulness with which I tried to extract myself from Drew, I woke him.

“Ashley,” he started awake, saying my name before he’d left his dream state, his arms tightening around me.

“Shh…Drew,” I whispered. “I need to get up.”

He peered up at me as though confused by the sight of my face. “Ashley?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Drew, you’re in my bed. We fell asleep.”

“Oh.” His hand slid down my body—from waist to thigh—as though checking to see if I were real.

His confusion made me wonder what he’d been dreaming about if he’d said my name upon waking but was surprised to see me there.

“Why’d you wake me up?” He asked my chest.

I wrinkled my nose at him. “I didn’t mean to. I was trying to get up without disturbing you; it was an accident.”

“Oh…” Again, he said this to my chest. His hand caressed its way up my body until it rested on my ribs just below my breast. “This is a really nice way to wake up.” This time he spoke mostly to himself, but his eyes didn’t budge from my boobs.

Growing warm around my neck, I tamped down the desire rising within me and tried to sit up. “Drew, I need to pee. Remove your arms before my bladder explodes.”

He reluctantly released me, falling back onto the bed with a heavy flop as I stood. “On second thought, we shouldn’t do this again,” he muttered.

I reached for my robe and shrugged it on. “Why not?”

“Because…reasons,” he growled.

I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling, my eyes moving over his bare chest and stomach, illuminated only by the faint glow of the moon and starlight streaming in through my window. He was right, of course. Waking up tangled together wearing very few clothes—it wasn’t a good idea. Not if I was planning to walk away when all this was over and return to my life in Chicago.

Maybe that’s why I’d woken up so suddenly with a hard feeling in my belly. Maybe my brain and my stomach were in cahoots, trying to warn me against my heart.

The thought made me sad and flustered, so I quickly left the room without another word and took two steps toward the bathroom, but then stopped. I stood motionless in the upstairs hallway until the count of ten, because a sense of foreboding was nagging at me.

Impulsively, I changed courses and descended the stairs, walked down the hallway to the den, and pushed open the door.

It was quiet except for the sound of Cletus’s gentle snoring and the beeping of Momma’s machines. Of course, I knew the name of the machines and what their beeps meant from my schooling, training, and years as a floor nurse; but now, attached to and monitoring my mother, they became just beeping machines.

I inspected the room for some sign or source of my disquiet, and I realized that Momma was awake.

I crossed to her, smoothed the hair back from her forehead with one hand, and reached for her fingers with the other.

“Momma,” I whispered. “Are you okay? What can I get for you?”

Her eyes were wide, but she struggled to swallow. I released her for a quick minute and opened the cooler by her bed where I kept her ice chips. I filled a cup and brought it to her lips. She accepted a few gratefully, closing her eyes and sighing.

I felt a stab of guilt that I’d been upstairs snuggling up with Drew, and she had been down here thirsty and awake. I vowed that I would sleep only on the cot from now on.

“I’m so sorry, Momma. I should have been down here.”

She shook her head, her voice barely above a whisper. “No, baby. I just woke up. Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“I know that look.” She paused and inhaled. I could tell that she did this with effort; she then said, “You’re feeling guilt about things you can’t control. Never feel guilt for things beyond your influence.”

I gave her a brave smile as I smoothed her hair. “All right. I won’t do that anymore if you promise to eat a slice of pie. Drew made your lemon meringue.”

Her eyes closed as though she couldn’t keep them open, but her mouth curved slightly at my words. “That sounds great, baby. It’s a deal. You go get me a piece.”

I set the ice chips down on the table and turned to leave, but then stopped when I heard her say, “Ash, wait.”

I walked back to her. “What’s up? Do you want something else with it?”

“No, baby. I just wanted to tell you I love you.”

“Oh.” I nodded, gave her a little smile, leaned forward, and kissed her forehead. “I love you too, Momma, to the stars and beyond.”

She gave me her little smile again, her eyes still closed. “Just like always.”

I squeezed her hand and whispered, “Okay, I’ll be right back with the pie.” Then I turned to the door and made my way to the kitchen.

When I opened the fridge, I found that only two pieces of pie remained. That irritated me. First of all, I hadn’t had a piece of pie yet, and the pie was my idea. Secondly, those charlatans I called brothers knew that the pie was meant for Momma.

I scooped a slice out and placed it on a plate, then decided to hide the rest of the pie in the back of the fridge so she could have a second piece later.

Pleased with my efforts to conceal the last slice, I grabbed a fork and the pie, walked back to the den, and crossed to her bed.

“Momma, I have your pie,” I whispered. “I haven’t tried it yet, so I don’t know if it’s as good as yours, but it sure is pretty.”

She didn’t move.

I watched her for a minute, wondering if I should wake her, then noticed that the machines weren’t beeping.

I didn’t come to the realization all at once.

Rather, I stared at the flat line on the small monitor for several seconds…maybe even a minute before I recognized what it meant. When I did, the world went silent.

There is a stillness that accompanies the death of a loved one. Everything becomes quieter, but it’s not just sound that is dimmed. Movement, action, perception, emotion—everything is distant and removed.

Maybe the stillness was because I’d been so busy leading up to this moment. After waking up from the shock of her diagnosis and facing reality, I’d thrown all of myself into her care and the care of my family.

But now—reality being the flat line on the monitor—she was gone. The subjects and tasks that had filled my waking hours for more than a month went with her. The pie in my hand was meaningless, and the world felt like a strange and foreign place.

I was at the bottom of a lake. I was drifting. I felt like I could hold my breath for years. And I was beyond the reach of all the things that mattered before, but suddenly seem so trivial in the face of death.