Chapter Eight
Running in a poodle skirt and snow boots with a baby on her hip was difficult, but Rumer managed. There was no way she was going to let Heavenly out of her sight.
She rounded the corner, barreling toward the bank of elevators that the twelve-year-old had already reached.
“Hold on!” she yelled, but the doors were already sliding shut.
“Dang it!” she muttered, darting forward and slapping her hand to call for another elevator.
To her surprise, the doors to the one Heavenly was in slid open. Heavenly was in the opening, her face wet with tears, strands of hair sticking to her damp cheeks.
“Thank God,” Rumer sighed, stepping onto the elevator and jabbing the button for the lobby.
“I’m not going back there,” Heavenly said, crossing her arms over her skinny chest. “You can’t make me.”
“Who said I was going to try?” Rumer asked, keeping her tone light. No sense adding her own emotions to the mix.
“You’re here.”
“And?”
“Adults always think they need to chase after kids and bring them back, but sometimes they just need to leave them alone.”
“Okay.”
“Why do you always do that?” Heavenly snapped, lifting a handful of her hair and then letting it float back down around her shoulders. A nervous gesture from a nervous kid who didn’t know the rules of the game they were playing, because she didn’t understand that they weren’t playing, that everyone didn’t use words or fists to manipulate and maneuver. That sometimes adults were exactly who they seemed to be, and that home really could be a safe place to land.
“Do what?”
“Agree with me.”
“That’s a good question, Heavenly. I’m glad you asked.” The doors slid open, and she hooked her arm through the tween’s, Oya still bouncing happily on her hip.
“See? You’re doing it again. Acting like I’m not a pain in the ass, even though I am.”
“First, I’m not acting like anything. This is the way I am. Second, you are a pain in the ass.”
Heavenly’s eyes widened.
“Just like most kids your age. I don’t hold it against you, because I was a much bigger pain when I was your age.”
“Right,” Heavenly snorted, and shrugged.
“Ask Lu.”
“Lu’s your grandmother. She won’t say a bad word about you.”
“Right.” Rumer snorted, and Heavenly’s lips curved in what might have been a smile.
“Will she?”
“She always tells the truth, and I always try to do the same. So, you want an answer to your question, and I’m giving it. I agree with you a lot, because you’re right. Sometimes life sucks. Sometimes things happen in families—”
“They aren’t my family,” she cut in.
“Legally, they are. And, from what I’ve seen, they are in every other way that matters.”
“They took me in because of Oya. We’re half sisters. Our birth mom wanted us together, and Sunday really wanted a baby in the house.” She shrugged as if it weren’t important, but Rumer knew it was. “If it hadn’t been for my mother getting pregnant, Sunday and Matt would have kicked me out a long time ago.”
“They told you that?”
“They didn’t have to. I just know it.”
“That’s your problem, Heavenly. You know a lot of things that aren’t true.”
“They are true,” she argued, her eyes narrowed, her fists clenched.
“It’s interesting that you think that, since I was standing next to you in the hospital room.”
“So?”
“Sunday wasn’t looking at Oya. She was looking at you.”
Heavenly swallowed hard, her eyes wet with tears she probably wouldn’t let fall.
“As a matter of fact, you and Moisey were both crying, but you were the one she was talking to.”
“She was confused.”
“You’re confused,” Rumer said gently. “And that confusion is making you do stupid things. Like run out on a family that obviously loves you.”
“Love is a stupid idea for stupid people.”
“Sometimes. And, sometimes it’s an answer to someone’s prayer. Your mother—”
“She’s not my mother,” Heavenly said, but there was no heat in her voice.
“In her heart, she is. She loved you guys enough to come back from wherever she was. Now, you’re going to have to love her enough to bring her the rest of the way home.”
Heavenly blinked, her expression softer than Rumer had ever seen it. “She has to make it home. The other kids need her.”
Not: I need her.
But, it was a start.
“Of course they do. They need you, too. So do I. Oya isn’t a lightweight,” she joked. “My arm is about ready to break off.”
Heavenly reached for the baby, pulling her into a hug.
“She feels light to me,” she murmured against the baby’s hair.
“You know what Lu always said to me when I was a teen and causing her more trouble than any one kid had a right to?” She put her hand on Heavenly’s shoulder, steering her back toward the elevators.
“What?”
“She said that love made the heaviest burden easy to bear. Coming from Lu, that was a big deal.”
“Why? Is she mean?”
“No. Not mean. Strict. But, you’ll figure that out when you meet her Saturday.”
“Are we still doing that?” She frowned, jabbing at the elevator button impatiently.
“Of course. Lu needs the help, and you’ve got the right temperament for that kind of work.”
“The free-labor kind?” she asked, her snarkiness returning.
Thank God!
“The I’m not going to puke when I smell something horrible kind.”
“I’ve smelled way worse than horse sh . . . poop. My mother had twenty cats and two dogs. They crapped all over the place, and she never cleaned it up. I tried, but there were a lot of them, and only one of me.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. That sucks.”
“Not really. It’s what I was used to. I didn’t know any better until they took me away and put me in foster. The house there was clean. The people stunk, though.”
“Literally or figuratively?”
“If you’re asking if they really smelled bad, the answer is no. They were just bad people.”
“Then, I’m doubly sorry.”
“Everyone is sorry. No one can change it, so how about we talk about something more interesting?”
“Like?” Rumer asked, letting the thread of conversation go. It was the first time Heavenly had opened up about her past, and Rumer filed the information away. She’d take it out and look at it later. Right now, she needed to get Rumer back up to the room.
Sunday had opened her eyes.
She had.
Rumer still couldn’t quite believe it, but they’d all seen it, and then they’d all heard her speak.
She jabbed the button to call the elevator.
Seconds later, the door opened and Sullivan was there.
She wasn’t sure why she was surprised, but she was sure her expression reflected her shock.
It didn’t matter.
He wasn’t looking at her. His focus was on Heavenly.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he said.
“I can do whatever I want.”
“You’re twelve. You can’t. The end.” He touched her shoulder, and she shrugged away.
“Sunday is awake now. Only she can tell me what to do, and most of the time, I don’t listen.”
“Bull crap.” He took Oya, grabbed Heavenly’s hand, and pulled her onto the elevator.
They were two opposing forces constantly pitched against each other. Rumer could have intervened, but she figured the best thing to do was let them work it out.
They were family, after all.
Whether Heavenly wanted to admit it or not.
Rumer stepped into the elevator behind them, anxious to get upstairs, to see how the other kids were doing. They shouldn’t have been left unsupervised. Sunday might have opened her eyes and spoken, but that didn’t mean she could keep an eye on four kids.
“You know what the problem is?” Heavenly said, hands on her hips, eyes flashing.
Don’t take the bait, Rumer wanted to say, but Sullivan had already bitten.
“What?”
“Moisey was right,” Heavenly muttered. “You’re a liar.”
“Everyone lies sometimes,” he responded. “And, if you’re still pissed about what you heard me say to my brothers, you need to get over it.”
“I’m not pissed about anything,” she replied.
“Then why do you keep giving me attitude?”
“You’re not special. I give everyone attitude.”
Sullivan blinked, and then he laughed. Not a little chuckle or a quiet snort. This was full-out amusement that pealed through the elevator and landed right straight in the region of Rumer’s heart.
She tried to ignore it.
God knows she did!
But, Heavenly’s lips quirked in a tiny little smile, and Rumer couldn’t help thinking that Sullivan’s response had been just exactly right.
She was as impressed by that as she’d been touched by the way he’d comforted Moisey, and no matter how many times she told herself to stop thinking about how different he was from other men she’d known, no matter how many times she reminded herself that he was just another guy who was bound to disappoint, she couldn’t stop wondering if she’d been wrong all these years. If maybe her problem with men had nothing to do with the Truehart curse and everything to do with the people she’d chosen to give her heart to.
She followed Heavenly and Sullivan as they stepped off the elevator, and she would have let them get ahead of her, allowed them to walk into the room without her.
This was their family, after all. Their miracle. She planned to give them space to enjoy it as a closed unit—no outsiders cluttering the landscape and getting in the way.
But, Sullivan stopped on the threshold, gestured for her to come.
“I thought I’d give you guys some time alone,” she said.
“Sunday has six kids. Alone never happens.”
“You know what I mean. Time with just your family.”
“You want to know the truth, Rumer? You’re as much a part of it as I am. I spent most of my adult years avoiding Benevolence like the plague. I visited Matt and Sunday once a year. Less if I could find an excuse to do it. When I showed up here after the accident, I’d never even met Oya. I’d seen Heavenly once, and the other kids barely knew who I was.”
“You’re still family.” She tried again, but she was moving toward his outstretched hand, wrapping her fingers around his, feeling the warmth of his palm against her skin.
And, God!
She knew this was a mistake. Every bit of it.
“Family,” he murmured, as he pulled her close, his thumb running along the pulse point in her wrist, “is only ever exactly what you make of it. Come on. I want to hear what the nurse has to say.”
He tugged her into the room, and she went, because she had to. Because that was the way she’d always been, following the sweet words and the pretty phrases all the way to another broken heart.
* * *
Sunday didn’t say another word. No matter how much the kids talked to her, no matter how many times the nurse asked her name or if she knew where she was, she didn’t speak. She did keep her eyes open. They were hazy cornflower blue rather than the bright vivid color he remembered.
Currently, they were half closed, the lids hiding most of the iris. He’d have thought she was out again, but when the neurosurgeon asked her to open her eyes, she did.
“That’s it, Sunday. Good job,” the doctor said in one of those singsong fake voices Sullivan would have hated if he’d been the one lying in the bed.
Maybe she hated it, too.
She shut her eyes as if she were trying to shut out the world.
“Mommy?” Twila said, pushing past the doctor and sticking her head close to Sunday’s face. “Don’t go back to sleep, okay?”
Sunday opened her eyes.
She looked . . .
Confused. As if she had no idea where she was or who was talking to her. Sullivan’s heart sank.
That would be a mess. Sunday waking up and not knowing her kids. He’d thought through a lot of scenarios. He and his brothers had been planning for almost every possibility. They hadn’t planned for that.
Rumer touched his shoulder, levering up so that she could whisper in his ear. “Whatever you do, don’t panic. We don’t want to freak the kids out.”
She sensed it, too.
Which made him worry even more.
“Mommy?” Twila tried again, her little hand resting against Sunday’s face, their noses so close they were almost touching. “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you, sweetie,” Sunday rasped, reaching up, slowly, carefully, her fingers brushing wisps of hair from Twila’s forehead. “I won’t go back to sleep.”
The words were there, the sweet touch, but she still looked confused. Maybe a little alarmed.
Rumer touched Twila’s arm. “I think your mother is still really tired. Since this has been such a wonderful visit, how about we go on home and let her rest?”
“But, what if she rests for weeks again?” Maddox asked. He’d been hanging back, standing near one of the walls, shy for the first time since Sullivan had arrived in town.
It was Milo who’d moved close, was eyeing Sunday with the same confusion she seemed to have.
“You’re different,” he said bluntly, thick locks of nearly white hair falling over his eyes as he leaned closer. “Did aliens take away our real mom? Are you an imposter?”
“Milo! That’s enough,” Rumer said, taking his hand and leading him away from the bed. She knew. Sullivan knew. Apparently, Milo knew, too.
Sunday’s eyes were open, she was talking, but she hadn’t come back to them. Not the way everyone had hoped.
“Rumer is right,” he said, pulling a handful of bills from his wallet. It could have been sixty or a hundred. He had no idea. He didn’t care. He wanted the kids out before they all clued in to whatever Milo had. “This has been a great visit, but we don’t want to wear your mother out.”
“It was a good visit, because I opened the curtains,” Moisey claimed. She’d put on her coat to cover the ripped dress, but he could still see the tracks of the tears on her cheeks. “Moonlight got on Mommy’s face, and that healed her. I know it did.”
“There’s no way moonlight got anywhere near her, Moisey,” Heavenly said. She didn’t call her “dweeb,” and Sullivan wondered if she sensed the change in Sunday, too.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
“Girls,” he chided, his heart galloping in his chest, his mind racing in a million different directions. “That’s enough. I’m going to give Rumer money so she can take you all out to eat. You can have whatever you want.”
“Ice cream?” Milo asked.
“After dinner,” Rumer responded. Thank God she was talking, because his pounding heart had moved up into his throat, and he wasn’t sure he could get the words out.
Sunday remained silent, watching as he handed Rumer the money and helped the kids get on their coats. The doctor pulled a chair over next to her and said something Sullivan couldn’t hear. She didn’t react. Not a nod. Not a blink. She was watching the kids like they were a beam of sunlight after a long, dark night. The longing, the hunger in her face made his stomach ache and his damn heart hurt.
When the hell had this happened?
When had he gone from being a guy who didn’t want or need any connections to a guy who couldn’t seem to prevent them?
Rumer grabbed his hand, tugging him a few feet from the bed and from the door. “Do you want me to bring them home after dinner?” she asked.
“That’s probably for the best,” he managed to say. “I’ll call someone to give me a ride.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll have my aunt come to the house. She’ll be fine with the kids for a few hours.”
“Rumer—”
“This is what you’re paying me to do, remember? To step in, to figure things out, to make sure the house is running smoothly while Sunday recovers.”
“I’m paying you to help at the house. Not coordinate every aspect of my life.”
She shrugged, her narrow shoulders jutting up against the soft material of her sweater. “There’s no limit on what a jack-of-all-trades should do.”
“Yeah. There is, but right now, I can’t think of what they should be.” He glanced at Sunday, and then at the kids—lined up like perfect ladies and gentlemen, staring at their mother like she really was an alien creature.
“It’s going to be okay, Sullivan,” Rumer said softly.
“What’s your definition of okay?” he replied, his heart still slamming against the wall of his chest, his muscles tense with the need to do something that would change the situation.
She cocked her head to the side, her eyes silvery gray in the overhead light. “The family. Together. Creating something beautiful out of the ashes of what they had.”
That was it.
Just a few words, and then she levered up on her toes again, pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. You can fill me in when I get here.”
“Come on, kids,” she said. “Let’s go get some food. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
She walked out of the room, and the kids filed in behind her, waving to their mom and calling good-byes and I-love-yous.
He could hear them long after they’d disappeared, their voices carrying down the otherwise quiet hall. Eventually, they faded away, and he was left standing in the silent room, the money still in his hand, Rumer’s kiss still on his cheek.
He touched the spot where her lips had been, feeling like every kind of fool, because that quick peck on his cheek had felt like more than any sensual caress he ever had.
“Is she your wife?” Sunday asked, breaking the silence.
Surprised, he shook his head. “She’s helping with the kids while you recover.”
“My kids,” she said as if she were trying the words on for size.
“Yes.”
“And Matt’s.”
He nodded. She remembered her husband. Maybe she did remember her kids.
“Is he here?”
Dear God. He was going to have to tell her.
“You and Matt were in an accident,” he began, but before he could get the words out, she shook her head.
“Never mind. I don’t want to know.” She closed her eyes, and he walked to the bed, lifted her hand.
“Sunday—”
“Let her rest,” the doctor said, standing up and putting the chair back against the wall. “There will be time enough to explain things when she’s remembered a little more.”
“Exactly what does she not remember?” he asked, following the doctor as she walked to the door.
“She says she has some vague memories of the kids, but . . .” She glanced at the bed and frowned. “If I had to guess, I’d say she doesn’t remember anything.”
“Damn,” he muttered, and she sighed.
“That’s the risk with these kinds of injuries. More than likely she’ll get most of the memories back. Eventually. For right now, we just need to keep things calm. We can’t demand more than she can give.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“No family ever does, but we want our loved ones back, and sometimes we push a little too hard. I’m going to get occupational and physical therapy in here tomorrow. She has almost no function on her right side. Very limited reflexes in her extremities, but that might be from residual swelling from the spine injury. We’ve also got a great memory care team that can work with her. My suggestion is that you keep the kids away for a day or two. Maybe bring them back Friday or Saturday.” She walked into the hall, offered one of her rare smiles. “This is good progress, Mr Bradshaw. Even if it doesn’t look like it. Try to be happy. There are a lot of people who would lasso the moon to have what your family does.”
She walked into the hall, her brisk footsteps fading just like the kids’ voices had.
He walked to the chair and settled into it, his hands shaking as he shoved the money back in his wallet, useless adrenaline coursing through his blood.
He wanted to fix this, damn it, but he couldn’t, so he pulled out his phone and texted both his brothers, letting them know the latest. Then, he sat in the silent room, watching as Sunday slept and the moon that he’d insisted would never be seen outside the window appeared above the building next door.
If he’d believed in signs and symbols, he’d have believed that was one, but all he’d ever believed in was hard work, honesty, and integrity. Magic and myth were great for some people. He preferred cold hard facts.
Right now, the facts were that Sunday had come out of the coma. That she probably didn’t remember her kids. That someone at some point was going to have to explain that her husband was dead.
He figured he’d be the one to do that, because it would be a couple of days before his brothers arrived, and he doubted she was going to stop asking. She and Matt had been the couple everyone admired in high school. They’d been prom king and queen, couple most likely to last forever. They’d been the kind of people that everyone had liked. They weren’t part of any clique except their own—the two of them and then the world. That’s the way it had always seemed to Sullivan.
Now, after years of being part of that, Sunday was going to have to figure out how to go it alone. He didn’t know her well enough to know how she’d handle that, but he knew this: He and his brothers weren’t going to let her flounder. They’d give her whatever support was necessary until it wasn’t necessary anymore. Eventually, she’d be able to run the farm again, or she’d be ready to sell it.
A shame since it had been in her family for generations, but her choice to make.
He lifted her hand, and she opened her eyes, staring at him for a moment as if she were trying to reach for a memory, figure out who he was.
When she didn’t speak, he did. “I’m Sullivan. Matt’s brother.”
“I know,” she replied. “And, I want to know why you’re here, and he’s not, but I don’t want to know today. Maybe not even tomorrow, so you can stop looking so worried.” She touched her head and grimaced. “Can you turn off the light? I’ve got a headache.”
He did what she asked, letting velvety blackness settle over them. It was too dark to see much, but he grabbed his sketch pad, found his pencil, and then he sat in the silence, the pencil moving quickly as he sketched the outline of the bed, of Sunday, of the window and the waning moon.
And somehow, the pencil added another shape—a shadowy form, sitting on the ledge of the window, staring at the moon. At first, he thought he was sketching a child. Moisey maybe, but the figure was too large to be a child, the shoulders too broad.
He held the sketch up to the blue-gray light that seeped in from the window, and his pulse jumped. No. It wasn’t a kid. It was Matt. His baseball cap on backward, because he thought it was funny, his feet bare because that was the way he preferred it, his face turned away so that Sullivan didn’t have to see his sorrow or his joy.
“Knowing you, you’re having a blast,” he said, halfway expecting his brother to answer.
A strange thought and a stranger sketch. He tended to zone out when he was drawing, but he usually knew what direction his pencil would head. He couldn’t remember ever sketching something he hadn’t intended. Then again, he couldn’t remember ever being as tired as he’d been the past couple of weeks.
Taking care of six kids and a farm was taking its toll, and the sketch was evidence of that. He closed the pad, laid it on the table, leaned his head back against the chair, and closed his eyes. Rumer wouldn’t be back for a while. He might as well catch up on some sleep.
“Sunday,” a man said, and Sullivan’s eyes flew open, his gaze jumping to the window as if he might see Matt sitting there.
There was nothing, of course. Even the moon had disappeared, drifting above the buildings and out of sight.
It had been his imagination or, maybe, someone talking in the hall, discussing weekend plans. That was the easiest explanation and the one that made the most sense, so he’d stick with it and forget the strange feeling he had that he and Sunday weren’t alone, that the window ledge wasn’t empty and that the sketch was the exact antithesis of everything he believed in. Not just pencil on paper, black and white, clear-cut and unarguable—a secret message from a brother he loved.