Chapter Nine
“YOU’VE GOT AN extra bounce in your step this morning,” Scott said to Sarah when she carried Lila into the kitchen at the crack of dawn the next morning. He was leaning against the counter in sweats and a white T-shirt, holding a coffee mug in one hand. His hair was damp from the shower. “I guess your date went well?”
“Mm-hm. Very well,” she said, trying not to sound like a schoolgirl with a crush, which was difficult considering she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Bones since he’d kissed her good night last night. Their kisses had gone on and on, even better than the daydreams she’d had as a young girl when she’d watched the magical moments of others and then written about her own. She set Lila in the high chair and put a handful of Cheerios on the tray. “I hear you were sneaky and helped with the lights on his boat.”
She still couldn’t believe Bones had a boat.
Scott sipped his coffee, watching her with a curious expression. “He’s a pretty romantic guy.”
“You can say that again.” She gave Lila some juice and began mixing ingredients for blueberry pancakes. Romantic, thoughtful, a mind-blowing kisser, and more… “Thank you again for watching the kids. You wore Bradley out. He’s still out like a light.”
“I had some help. The girls and I took them for a walk.” He made her a cup of coffee, eyeing the pancakes. “I have physical therapy in forty minutes. Think you can squeeze in a few extras for me?”
“Always.” She poured batter into the pan.
Scott pressed a kiss to Lila’s head. “Morning, peach.” She held her hand out, offering him a palmful of sticky cereal. He chuckled. “No, thank you. You eat that. I’ll wait for your mama’s delicious pancakes.”
“I don’t know about delicious, but then again, I can’t remember what anything other than allergen-free foods taste like.”
“You’re not missing out on much,” he said as she cut up a pancake for Lila and then handed Scott a plate for himself. He touched her hand, which he did when he wanted to slow her down. “Did you tell Bones the truth?”
After he’d blurted out information she’d rather have told Bones herself, she’d asked Scott not to talk about their past until she had a chance to tell Bones what their lives had been like. “Most of it.” She turned back to the stove to flip her pancakes. She hadn’t even told Scott everything she’d been through. Some ghosts were better left buried.
“Sarah, nobody is going to judge you because we had shitty parents.”
She knew that wasn’t true. She sat down beside Lila with her coffee and pancakes. “I guess you don’t remember how I was never allowed to go to birthday parties or playdates. Or how eventually kids stopped asking. Other families might not have wanted to get involved, and they turned a blind eye, but I don’t believe for a second that they didn’t judge us. Or at least me.”
He speared a piece of pancake with his fork and pointed it at her. “They were ignorant. Bones isn’t.”
“I know. I told him about Mom and Dad. I told him about how we all left.” She took a bite and watched her daughter shove a tiny fistful of pancake into her mouth. She couldn’t imagine ever feeling anything but love for her children. “Do you remember how old we were when things went bad? Was there ever a happier time? I always wondered if maybe there was an incident, something that changed how they treated us.”
“Dad was always a prick, and Mom was always a bitch. It’s a wonder we both didn’t turn out to be more effed up.” He finished his pancakes and sat back. “What I want to know is how Josie ended up worse off than either of us.”
Scott had gone through so much after the accident, they hadn’t talked about Josie’s odd visit in any great detail. Sarah had wanted to lately, but it was like jumping into a volcano of awful possibilities. “Did you ever find out where she went after she left? Or who she left with?”
“No. We were lucky to track her down at all. I looked for both of you for so long, but I had no idea what state you were in, much less what city. I was relying on word of mouth because, you know, I couldn’t afford a PI back then. You used that girl’s license, so now I know how you went invisible. I assume Josie did the same thing. Paid under the table, living in shelters, making her way by whatever means she could. I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably say it until the day I die. I wish I’d never left you two that night.”
She gazed at him across the table, pain and love swallowing her up. “I’ve thought the same thing about my leaving Josie. But one thing I’ve learned is that wishing something didn’t happen won’t make it go away. You helped both of us with the money you put in the account. And you know Dad would have had you arrested if you’d come back or if you’d tried to take us with you. I have no doubt that he would have done the same to me if I had taken Josie.”
“Yeah, but now we know there were other options. We could have gone to social services or the police.”
Sarah finished her pancakes and put her dishes in the sink. Then she wet a washcloth and cleaned Lila’s hands. “That’s true, but even if someone had told us to do that, would you have done it? Because I know for a fact I wouldn’t have. I’d have been too scared that they wouldn’t believe us and then we’d suffer even more.”
She lifted Lila from the high chair and set her down by her toy bucket near the glass doors, so she could clean up from breakfast. Scott began washing the dishes as she cleaned Lila’s tray.
“Did you tell him about Lewis?” Scott asked.
“Not specifics, but he knows he exists and that things weren’t good. I’m a lot to take in, Scott. I know you don’t think so, but I’ve got two kids, another on the way, a past that should scare off anyone in their right mind, and I have trust and intimacy issues. As much as I like and trust Bones, which I do, it’s scary for me to believe he doesn’t have some kind of fake persona, because that’s all I know.”
He gave her a pitying look that quickly turned to disbelieving. “It’s not all you know. I’ve never been fake a day in my life.”
“You know what I mean. I’m trying to stop thinking that way, at least about Bones and his family. But when something has shadowed so much of your life, it’s hard to go against the grain.”
“Try harder, Sarah. I trust the guy completely, or he wouldn’t be anywhere near you or your kids.” He went back to washing the dishes. “Dixie asked if the kids ever see their father.”
An icy chill skated down Sarah’s spine. “Over my dead body.”
“Let’s not go there.” He handed her a towel to dry the pan he’d washed.
“Do you think Josie will ever come around?”
He shrugged. “From what you said, she was a mess.”
“I know. I’ve been wanting to ask you something.” Every time she’d asked him about his personal life, he’d blown her off, but after last night, she wanted answers. “Why did you give up your job on the rigs and let me move in with you? I know you said you wanted to move here because of Josie, but you never hesitated to start over. Until last night, I never wondered why that was. I just accepted it. I figured we both wanted to rebuild what family we could. You know, two broken people trying to make ends meet. But when Dixie was flirting with you, I realized you’re more than my brother, Scott, and you’re not broken like I am. You’re open about what we went through, and you don’t seem to have as many issues letting people into your life. You’re a good-looking, smart guy who had a great job. Why on earth would you give it all up for a job at a marina, and why are you still alone, Scott?”
Lila squealed, drawing their attention. She’d pulled herself up against the patio door, watching a squirrel eating from the feeder. When they’d first moved in, Lila had been enamored by the squirrels in the backyard. They’d hung a squirrel feeder in the tree closest to the house, and now she watched them nearly every morning.
“That’s a squirrel, Lila,” Sarah said, even though she knew there was no way her little girl could say that complicated word. She waited for Scott to answer, but he was silent for so long, she had a feeling he wasn’t going to.
Bradley toddled into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and leaned against Sarah’s legs.
She lifted him into her arms and kissed his cheek. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”
“Can I have pancakes?” Bradley asked with a yawn.
Scott set the pan on the stove again with an amused expression. “I’m not alone. I’ve got a squirrel-loving niece and a pancake-eating nephew. Life is good, sis. I’ve got no complaints.” He dropped a kiss on Bradley’s head and said, “How late do you work tonight?”
She wondered if her son and daughter had saved Scott from whatever he didn’t want to talk about and took some comfort in that thought. “I’ve got an early shift,” she answered, wondering if Bones would be helping Scott with the basement tonight. She quickly chided herself for becoming so needy overnight. The man had a life, and so did she. “Nine to five. I was thinking we could grill out tonight. Bradley loves chicken kabobs.”
Bradley confirmed with a nod.
“Kabobs it is. I’ve got to swing by the store to pick up paint for the basement and stop by the carpet store to finalize the installation for next week, but I should be home by six or so.” He raised his brows like he was waiting for her to say something.
“What…?”
“Just trying to decide if I made a mistake or not,” he said too casually.
She set Bradley down. “Go play, honey. It’ll take me a minute to make the pancakes.” Bradley joined Lila by the toys. She grabbed the mixing bowl and said, “What did you do?”
“Yesterday I told Bones I didn’t need his help with the basement tonight in case your date didn’t go well.”
“Oh,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment.
“I can text him.” Scott reached into his back pocket.
“No. It’s fine. I want to finish the curtains tonight anyway. Besides, we have a date tomorrow. We’re taking the kids to his friend’s farm to see the animals before I go to work.”
“Nice. Kid dates are the equivalent to meeting your parents.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you have physical therapy to go to? Or are you going to stand around here making me nervous all morning?”
“It’s kind of fun to see you all”—he pursed his lips and then spoke in a high-pitched voice as he said, “I’m not secretly wishing Bones were here.”
She shoved him toward the living room, laughing. “Go. Please. I forgot how pesty a big brother could be.”
After Scott left, she fed Bradley and got the kids ready to go to Babs’s house. Nana Babs, she corrected herself. Not for the first time, she wondered about her own grandparents. She couldn’t remember ever meeting them. Her parents had never mentioned them. They’d simply acted like they didn’t exist. She’d always wondered if that was because they were nice, normal people who wouldn’t approve of how they were treating Sarah and Scott, or if they were as bad as her parents had been. She pushed those thoughts away, glad her children had nice women who cared for them and treated them like family.
As she gathered her purse and keys, she realized she didn’t worry about Babs, Red, or Chicki shedding their skin, and she wondered what that said about her. Did she want a mother figure bad enough to accept what she was having such trouble accepting in Bones?
She locked the door behind them and stepped off the porch.
“Look, Mommy! Presents!” Bradley ran toward the car, on top of which were gift bags, two pink and one blue. He jumped up, trying to reach them. “Hurry!”
“Hold your horses, buddy.” Mommy needs to pick up her jaw from the ground.
She didn’t have to see the cards to know they were from Bones. She picked up the blue bag, which had a little white tag hanging from the handle that read, To B-boy, Love, Bones in careful script. Her heart squeezed when she peeked inside and saw two farm animal books.
“Is it for me?” Bradley asked.
“Yes. It’s from Bones.” She hadn’t yet told him about their date tomorrow, just in case something came up and Bones had to cancel. But she should know better. The man really did stick like glue.
“Books!” Bradley plopped down on the grass and began leafing through one of the books, chattering about each of the animals, and it dawned on her that Bones had seen Bradley playing with his toy animals so often, maybe Saturday wasn’t just a last-minute thought after all.
Lila squealed, reaching for the bags. “Mamama!”
“There’s one for you, too, Lila boo.” She reached into the smaller of the two pink bags and handed Lila one of the cloth books it held. They were also farm animal books, and she was touched that Bones had thought to get Lila’s in cloth, since she was teething on everything these days.
She got the kids settled into their car seats and then retrieved the last pink bag and read the tag. For you, darlin’. Let’s never let your dreams die. Love, B.
She sat in the driver’s seat and peered into the bag. Her heart thumped harder at the sight of several notebooks. She took them out one by one and admired them. The first was white with She believed she could so she did written in pink across the front. The second notebook was light green and white, with blue lettering that read Let your dreams be bigger than your fears. The third was a regular red spiral notebook like she’d used in school. There were three big, uneven stars of varying sizes above the words Sarah’s Stories of Hope written in gold marker. Beneath that, written smaller and in black was, We’re going to make them all come true. Xox, B.
Her chest constricted as she spied gold and black Sharpies in the bottom of the bag, along with a pack of fancy black pens. She wanted to cry and laugh at once. Out of everything she’d told him last night, he’d held on to the one piece that had been the most important to her.
“Go, Mommy. I want to show Nana Babs my books,” Bradley urged.
“Okay, honey.” She set the gifts on the passenger seat and vowed not to let the darkness and hurt Lewis had caused overshadow the beauty of Bones.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Sarah sat in the courtyard behind the salon with her notebooks and pens, eating lunch and thinking about the stories she used to write. She’d been just a young girl escaping her awful life by disappearing into little-girl fantasies. Now the thought of writing stories for herself seemed silly because she knew the truth. As a girl she’d caught only moments, glimpses of people’s lives. As an adult she knew glimpses were like pictures posted on social media—carefully posed and chosen. They were propaganda. Just like her young-girl stories. Back then it had been Sarah doing the selecting of captured images, as if she were stranded on an island and collecting scraps for a raft. She’d looked away from boys talking smack and fights between young couples, choosing to remember only the most stable, hopeful images.
She was no longer in an unsafe house. Her babies were safe, she’d reunited with at least one sibling, she had friends, and she and Bones were getting closer every day. Her life was incredibly happy at the moment. What more could she possibly hope for?
As she put pen to paper, images of her father tearing her notebooks to shreds, red-faced, veins plumped up like snakes on his neck and arms as he’d yelled at her, made her hand tremble, her breathing still. She set the pen down as a realization dawned on her.
There was only one thing she really wanted. One thing she craved more than anything else in the world. But how did a person write a story about something as intangible as peace of mind?
BONES STOOD IN the middle of Got Toys?, the biggest toy store in Peaceful Harbor, with his motorcycle helmet under one arm, studying an article on his phone about the effect of toys on children and trying to ignore Dixie’s tapping foot.
“This isn’t that hard,” she snapped, shifting her helmet to her other arm and jutting out her hip. “Just grab a stuffed animal and a noisy rattle.”
Bones shook his head. “The right toys enhance cognitive development.”
She peered over his shoulder at his phone. “Are you seriously reading about that right now? Shouldn’t you have geeked out before this?”
He shoved his phone in his pocket and strode back toward the entrance, leaving Dixie to try to catch up.
“Where are you going?” she called after him.
“We need a cart.”
“A cart?” Dixie hurried next to him. “What are you buying her, a playhouse?”
Bones stopped walking and pulled out his phone. “The kind for a yard or for dolls?”
“Are you shitting me?” She grabbed his arm and hauled him toward the front of the store as he navigated to an article about playhouses. “She’s one. Do not buy her a playhouse.”
“It looks like that’s better for three- and four-year-olds.” He pocketed his phone again and set his helmet in a basket. “We need blocks, balls, stacking cups, musical toys, dolls, stuffed animals, and action figures.”
“Anything else, Santa Whiskey?”
He glared at her as she put her helmet beside his with a chuckle.
“She’s a girl. You know that, right?” she asked as he pushed the cart toward the ball aisle.
Ignoring her smart-ass comment, he chose a big rubber ball, another the size of a grapefruit, and a smaller one made out of cloth. “Come on, the stuffed animals are two rows over.” As he pushed the cart, he said, “When she pretends to give her friends a bath, or feeds them, she’s practicing the things that will help her make sense of the world.”
“And of course every little girl needs action-figure friends, because they might end up with a Special Forces bestie in preschool.”
“It’s a good thing you don’t have children.” He picked up two stuffed animals, then glanced at the aisle directory. “Ah, strollers. She needs one for her dolly.”
“Dolly?” Dixie snort-laughed. “You are pussy whipped.”
“Nice mouth on my baby sister. And no, I’m not. Sarah isn’t like that. She’s the least demanding and most caring, selfless woman I know. I’m not pussy whipped, Dix. I’m…”
“Falling for her,” Dixie suggested.
Falling? Hell, he’d fallen off the edge of a cliff the day he met her. “Something like that.”
He picked out a pink toy stroller, and as they headed for the doll aisle he stopped to pick up a doctor kit.
“Now she needs medical supplies?”
“It’s for B.”
“Bullet?” Dixie said absently, eyeing a bearded guy who was scoping out bicycles at the end of the aisle.
“You think Bullet needs a toy doctor kit?” Bones yanked her in the opposite direction, grabbing the cart on the way.
“Ow! I meant Bradley. Sorry.”
“Put your eyes back in their sockets.” When they reached the next aisle he released her.
“News flash, Bones. If I want to look at a hot guy, I’m going to do it.”
“News flash, Dix. Not on my watch. Nothing good comes from that.”
“What do you want me to do? Put on a frilly dress and wait for a guy to ask my daddy for my hand?”
“Sounds about right to me.” He laughed and headed for the block aisle.
“Or maybe I’ll just crash my bike in another town and see who comes by to rescue me. Maybe I’ll get lucky and meet someone’s brother who’ll go gaga over me.”
“Is that before or after you tell them they’re doing everything wrong?”