She went home and called the car rental company to figure out where she could return it.

While she was on hold, she wandered into the backyard, and as soon as she stepped onto the deck, Sophia streaked across the lawn.

“Jenn-ah!”

“Hey, Sophia. What’s up?”

“Play-doh.” The little girl held out a grimy fistful of bright pink dough, dotted with grass and dirt.

“Awesome.”

“Eat it?”

Jenna chucked, some of her tension easing. “No, sweetie. Thank you, but I’m good.”

Sophia pointed at the phone pressed against Jenna’s ear. “Talk?”

Jenna held out the phone so the little girl could hear the on-hold music. Sophia wiggled her diaper-covered butt in a little dance, and that made Jenna feel good too.

But her grumpiness returned when the rental company customer service person came on the line and blandly informed her they would charge her a ridiculous return fee for a pickup anywhere near the peninsula.

She groaned and hung up. “I guess I’m driving to Toronto this afternoon,” she said regretfully to Sophia.

“No,” said the little girl.

“I know, right? I wish I could say that.” Jenna waved at Olivia, who was making her way across the lawn.

“Sorry. She slipped over here while I was hanging up laundry on the line. I didn’t notice she wasn’t playing behind me.”

Jenna shrugged. “That’s why both yards are fenced, right? It’s all good.”

Sophia shook her head. “No.”

Jenna laughed and replayed their conversation for her neighbour. “So now I’m driving to the city.”

Olivia gave her a sympathetic look. “How will you get back? Do you want Rafe to follow you? He’s got three days off starting tomorrow.”

“No, I’m good. I’ll grab the bus back. But maybe he could pick me up from wherever it stops?” With her luck, that might still be somewhere far-ish away from Pine Harbour.

“Of course. Just text me when you’re heading back and someone will meet you.”

“Chloe could probably do it…”

Olivia made a humming noise that told Jenna it would probably be a Minelli who showed up.

“Thank you,” she said, truly grateful for the kindness.

“Of course. Okay, Sophie-Dophie, time to say see you later to Jenna.”

Sophia shook her head solemnly. “No.”

“Story of my life.” Olivia sighed and hoisted the toddler onto her hip. “Here’s hoping she’s out of this no phase by the time I’m as big as a house.”

* * *

Jenna took advantage of the long drive and the car’s built-in Bluetooth to make some long overdue phone calls.

Jenna’s mother answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.” Jenna swallowed hard. “How are you?”

“Jenna.” Relief poured into how her mother said her name, but just as quickly, she bounced out of it. “Busy with the usual. How are you? What time is it there?”

About that… “I’m not in Turkey any longer. I’m back in Canada. Ontario, specifically.”

“My goodness.” Jenna heard a clatter in the background. Whatever her mother had been working on had now been set aside and she now had Eve’s full attention.

Great. “I’m looking for work here, actually.” Not a lie.

“So you’re not working right now?” That was always her mother’s fear, and Jenna understood the reasoning behind it. As a single mom from day one, Eve had always lived close to the edge of not having enough to make ends meet.

“I’ll be fine.”

“It’s a slippery slope if you start to dip into your savings.”

“I know. I’m living pretty low-cost at the moment, and it’ll only take a few weeks—” maybe months “—to get registered with the college. Then I’ll be able to pick up work quickly. And I’m staying in a friend’s place, so it’s fine.”

“A midwife friend? That girl in Toronto?”

Maybe deep down, this was why Jenna had waited to call her mom. Because now she wasn’t lying. “I’m on my way to the city right now, and I’m going to try to see Grace tonight. But no, I’m not staying with her. I’m up in cottage country.” Tell her, tell her, tell her… “I, uh…I met a guy.”

As expected, that was met with silence, then a long, loaded sigh. “Oh, Jenna.”

If she weren’t driving, Jenna would have closed her eyes and thunked her head against the steering wheel. She was thirty years old. Why did her mother still have to see her as a teenager liable to get knocked up at any second? “We actually met in Turkey, but he’s Canadian, too.”

“And he’s from cottage country?” Eve didn’t need to spell out that she thought Jenna had followed a man to the middle of nowhere for what could only be a stupid reason like lust.

“It’s not like that.”

Eve made a noise that could have been a snort, but Jenna was choosing to hear it as a laugh so as not to be annoyed. “So…you didn’t chase a man halfway around the globe after falling for him in a whirlwind romance?”

Fine, it was exactly like that. Damn it. “His name is Sean. And he’s really lovely.” Not today, exactly, but in general. “Remember the pictures of the prime minister playing hockey? Sean’s the soldier who was the captain of the other team.”

“Ah.” So much loaded into a single syllable. Ah, well it’s your life to gamble with. Ah, well of course you’d be distracted by a handsome man in uniform. Ah, well at least he’s gainfully employed. “Speaking of that, did you ever follow up with those media contacts? I saw a doctor on the news the other day—”

“Mom—”

“Maybe that would be a good use of your time in Toronto.”

Hardly. A good use of her time in Toronto would be drowning herself in a bottle of red wine with Grace. Jenna decided that was enough sharing for the day. “I’ll keep you posted on the job search,” she said weakly. “What’s the latest from Annie?”

“She’s decided she likes boys again.”

“She never stopped liking boys, Mom. She’s bi.”

“I know that.” Of course Eve sounded defensive. Jenna wasn’t going there, either.

Jenna rolled her eyes. “Okay. Did she find a summer job?”

“Yes. On campus. It doesn’t pay much, but they’ll work around her summer class schedule.”

“That’s good. I’ll give her a call next.” In the distance, she saw a sign for a Tim Horton’s coffee shop. “I’m going to stop and get a coffee now. I’ve still got four hours of driving ahead of me.”

“Be safe, Jenna.”

She swallowed the retort that desperately wanted to spill out. Instead, she took a deep breath and jammed on her good-daughter hat. “Love you, Mom.”

After she re-caffeinated, Jenna called her baby sister. Annie had been another unexpected pregnancy. Their family was unconventional, but they’d made it work. Her mother had made it work.

Jenna didn’t tell Annie anything beyond what she’d told their mom—the marriage news could wait for a better time—but Annie’s general reception was warmer.

“Is that why you were so vague about what you did on your trip to Spain?”

“Maybe.”

“Jenna!” Annie laughed gently. “That’s awesome, actually. You’re always so responsible. It’s good to know that you do impulsive things from time to time.”

That conversation gave her the courage to call her friend Grace, who she’d gone to college with out in British Columbia, but who had moved to Ontario for love and was now working in Toronto.

It turned out Grace was free for the evening, so after Jenna returned the rental car, she hopped on the subway and headed downtown.

They met at a bistro on Queen West. Grace was waiting outside, her dark red hair piled high on her head in a bun. She was dressed down, in leggings and a long tunic, with three long silver necklaces hanging around her neck.

She hadn’t changed a bit.

“Hey, stranger,” Jenna said, holding out her arms for a hug. “It’s been too long.”

Grace gave her a good squeeze. “I’m so glad you called. I didn’t realize you were back.”

“I’ve been keeping it quiet for reasons.”

“Ooh, sounds interesting. Come on, let’s get some food and wine and you can tell me all about it. Are you staying over tonight?”

“I was going to catch the midnight bus…” She trailed off. She was going to say home. And it did feel like that, maybe. A tentative home, but yes, there it was. A little kernel of attachment to the place, not just the man. In the last week, she’d grown quite fond of Pine Harbour. “Back up north,” she finally said.

“Are you in a hurry to get back? You can stay at our place tonight if you want.”

“Maybe. Thank you. Let’s see how much wine we get into.”

They ordered, then once they both had a glass in their hand, Grace leaned back and opened the conversation up with a gleam in her eye. “So…what’s up north?”

“A man,” Jenna admitted. “But it’s complicated.”

“When is it not? Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes.” She stopped there, and they both laughed.

“More wine first?”

She shook her head. “I just want to be careful about how I lay the story out.”

Grace waved her hand. “How about I promise not to make any judgements? You tell me everything you want to tell me. I’ll just listen.”

Jenna shuddered, and it wasn’t until that moment that she realized how much she needed that. “Well…so…I met this guy. In February. He was kind, and smart, and tall.” She smiled as she remembered their first meeting in the food tent. “Really, really good looking. And we ended up travelling together. We went to Spain, and Gibraltar, and…we got married.”

Grace didn’t blink. She didn’t gasp, or drop her jaw, or freak out. She just waited.

Jenna’s heart hammered in her chest. “I fell in love,” she whispered, as the happy memories slid into the rougher ones. “And then he was injured.”

The rest of the story spilled out, between sips of wine and tugs on her hair. When she reached the bottom of her glass, Grace silently refilled it.

“And now I’m here, and he wants me to leave, but I know that’s the injuries talking.” That sounded thin, even to her own ears. “Well, I’m pretty sure it’s not what he wants, deep down.”

“Is it what you want?” It was the first time Grace had spoken since Jenna started.

Jenna gave her a startled look. “Being in Pine Harbour?”

“Yes. Are you where you want to be right now?”

She was where she needed to be. Want didn’t enter into it. But then she thought of how much she liked sharing a yard with Olivia and Rafe. Of cooking with Chloe, and how everyone—Dani, Dean, Liana, Matt, and the entire town—had taken one look at her and claimed her as one of their own.

She nodded, surprising herself. Yes, she was exactly where she wanted to be.

She missed working, but when she thought about returning overseas or finding a position locally, again her answer was surprising. She wanted to stay on the peninsula.

“Then don’t worry about what he wants, or thinks he wants. As long as you aren’t unhappy being there, let it play out. Give him space if he needs it, but it’s a free country. Even if he doesn’t want you in his face, you can share a town.”

That hurt her heart. “I…it’s hard to stay away from him.”

Grace leaned in and took her hand. “I can see that. You must love him a lot.”

“So much. It’s crazy, really. We only had two weeks together.”

“But then you had that time after you got married, when you thought you were coming back to Canada to build a life together.” Grace squeezed her fingers before letting go to empty the wine bottle into their glasses. “We’re going to need another one of these.”

Like magic, the waiter appeared with their food, and promised to return shortly with more wine.

“Have you thought about counselling?” Grace asked after they took a few bites.

Jenna shook her head. “He won’t go.”

“For you.”

She jerked her head up and looked at her friend in surprise. “Oh. No.”

“You should. You were traumatized, too.”

“I didn’t even know about the injury until weeks after it happened.” Three weeks in which she’d worried and fretted, but generally carried on with her life.

“But when you found out, it was new and raw for you. And I bet you didn’t get any chance to process that properly.”

“No, I guess I didn’t.” Sadness swelled again as she thought about the dead ends and road blocks she’d run into every time she’d tried to find out information about him, to get in touch and let him know that she was coming. In hindsight, the weeks after she found out, before she could leave the camp and fly to Sean’s side, had been deeply traumatizing—and she still couldn’t let herself relive that panic. “I really want to be strong for him through this.”

“It sounds like you are doing just that. Which is great. But everyone has a breaking point, and you can’t help him if you hit yours.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“Then take care of yourself while you give him the space to heal.”

“That’s…” Jenna played with her dinner. “Really smart advice.” She laughed. “I guess I needed to hear it from someone else.”

“Always the way. Now tell me more about this delightful little town. It sounds like quite an adventure, really. Small town living for the big city girl.”

Jenna told her about Mac’s, about meeting Chloe and Dani and Olivia, and all the Foster and Minelli men. She found herself waxing on about the landscape of the peninsula, too, and as she talked, she realized that yes, it was an adventure. Maybe not as exotic as Turkey or Spain, but wasn’t charging in to Pine Harbour, not knowing what she’d find, just as daring?

Her wanderlust had taken her to some strange and wonderful corners of the Earth this year. Pine Harbour was simply the least expected of those corners.

By the time they finished the second bottle of wine, and were weaving their way back to Grace’s apartment, Jenna had a Pine Harbour travel pitch down pat, and Grace was promising to visit towards the end of the summer.

Grace’s partner Alex was waiting up for them. He’d made Jenna a bed on the couch, and she passed out as soon as she lay her head down.

* * *

She didn’t wake up until noon the next day.

Oh, her eyes hurt. She squeezed them shut and—

Was it possible that she had invited random strangers on Queen Street to visit Pine Harbour?

With a groan, she rolled off Grace’s couch and stood up. Yep, definitely hung over.

“Good morning,” Grace said quietly from the kitchen behind her. Jenna turned around and waved gingerly as Alex silently held up a carafe of coffee.

“Yes, I need that, please.” She dug out her phone. No messages, not that she’d been expecting any.

As Alex poured her a cup, she checked the bus schedule and then squinted at the time. “There’s a bus I can catch in ninety minutes.”

“Perfect,” Grace said. “I can drop you at the bus station when I head uptown to check on a client this afternoon.”

They didn’t talk about Sean again, and Jenna was grateful for that, too. She’d appreciated Grace’s listening—and advice—more than she could say, but there was something lovely about the normalcy of just drinking coffee and making small talk with an old friend.

But her husband wasn’t far from her mind—nor was the fact that, since she’d slept over in the city and the bus home was the milk run that stopped in every small town, dropping off packages at the same time as they picked up people, it would take eight hours to get back to Pine Harbour. She wouldn’t get in until ten o’clock at night, and Sean would be passed out for hours by that point.

She didn’t know why she felt guilty about missing a day of visiting. He probably didn’t care in the least.

* * *

Sean’s truck sat out front all day, but Jenna didn’t show up.

That burned at him, even though he knew he deserved it. So he was an asshole to Dean and Liana, who didn’t deserve it. Especially not Liana, but not Dean either.

His older brother pushed him up against the wall and told him to be nice to his wife or else. Sean understood. He may have only had a wife for two months, but she’d been his everything. And now he couldn’t be anything to her.

He went back to bed.

When he woke up in the morning, nauseous and seeing auras from a migraine, he realized he’d forgotten to take his medication the night before. After he threw up, he told Dean Jenna couldn’t come over.

She did anyway, and he pretended to be asleep. She lay down on the couch in his room, and at some point, he drifted off for real.

When he woke up, she was gone.

He ignored the ache in his gut.

The next day she brought him breakfast, and he couldn’t bring himself to be a jerk again. It was exhausting.

“Driving a truck is interesting,” she said.

As far as conversations went, it was deliberately benign. He didn’t miss that. She wasn’t pushing him—as he’d requested.

He still bristled. “How so?”

She took a long sip of coffee before answering. “Well,” she said dryly. “I’m much higher up.”

“And that surprised you?”

“Jesus, Sean,” she snapped. “It wasn’t a serious statement.”

He blinked at her.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. Because he knew she was.

Something he’d noticed since the accident was that his voice didn’t sound right to his own ear. Nobody else had said anything about it, but he always felt a weird distance when he spoke. Like he was listening to someone else.

She gave him a tight smile. “Want more coffee?”

“I’m fine.”

“How’s your head?”

“Better today.” He tried to make himself stick to the two word answers. They were safer.

“I’m going to Owen Sound. Could I pick anything up for you while I’m there?”

“No.” He hesitated. “Watch the speedometer. It sticks right around the speed limit.”

Eight extra words to an answer and her face softened. “Thanks.”

Damn it. She was unrelentingly sweet to him. Even when she’d just snapped at him, it hadn’t lasted.

He hated that her pity overrode everything else.

Hated that she didn’t look at him the way she had in Spain.

God. He missed that desperate way she’d needed him. The way her gaze had gone lusty and hazy. Horny Jenna was the most beautiful vision in the world.

But he’d never get that look from her. At some point, the sweetness would fade, and in its place would be resentment. And he couldn’t handle that.

What a selfish thought, jackass.

Although, it wasn’t selfish to want more for Jenna than brittle conversations about cars and coffee. He could give her a little more. It was the least she deserved.

“I’m…” He swallowed. “My brothers are forcing me outside today.”

She lifted one eyebrow. Oh?

He sighed. “Jake’s coming to pick me up. They’re trying to trick me into walking more,” he grumbled, “by making me needlessly get in and out of his truck and push my walker to his front porch.”

Her eyes crinkled as she laughed. “I’m sorry.”

“Gotta give them something.” He refused to go to outpatient physio, which was an ongoing bone of contention, with his brothers and his family doctor. And he’d liked sitting outside with Jenna.

Fresh air was as much of a compromise as he felt like giving them this week.

“That’s the spirit.” She winked. “And I really do think it’s a good plan. You’re putting up with a lot today. Pushy brothers, me snapping at you.”

“You’re entitled to a bit of snapping with all of this.”

She shook her head and gave him another smile. “Okay, I’m off. Good luck with the sunlight and the overbearing brothers.”

Getting downstairs was a chore. He went down on his ass, but there was something about his visual field changing so quickly as he descended that made his head spin. So he took his time, even though he was painfully aware that Jake was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, baby Calvin fussing in his baby carrier.

Jesus, Sean had more crap than the baby did. Walker, medications, a neck brace for the car ride.

Jake didn’t have time for this shit. Between juggling a full time business and a young family, the second-oldest Foster brother had the least amount of spare time of any of them.

“Sorry you got stuck with me today,” Sean muttered.

Jake shrugged it off. “We’ve got all day. I don’t have anything to do today but hang out with my boy and you.”

They made an odd trio as they slowly made their way out to Jake’s truck, Calvin fussing, Jake bobbing up and down to sooth him back to sleep, and Sean slowly plodding along beside with his walker, which he hated so fucking much.

When they arrived at Jake’s place, Tom Minelli was waiting on the front step. If it had been anyone else, Sean wouldn’t have immediately gone on guard. But Jake and Tom, out of all of their two-family band of brothers, had something uniquely in common. They, too, had been overseas, in Afghanistan. An ugly, messy tour that had seen many casualties.

Ah, fuck. Well he couldn’t just sit in the damn truck. Jake had already hopped out, and had carried Calvin, sleeping in his portable car seat, inside.

When he returned and hauled Sean’s walker out of the back of the truck, Sean accepted that whatever awkward conversation they were about to have might as well happen in a more comfortable seat.

He carefully slid out of the truck and made his way to the porch. His shoulders burned by the time he got there. From leaning. He was a mess.

Tom had been watching him patiently.

Sean sat and gave his friend a mock-jovial grin. “So. What’s going on?”

Jake stood in front of him and crossed his arms. “What do you think is going on? I love you—we all do—but you’re being an asshole. This is an intervention.”

So they weren’t beating around the bush. Fine.

“You were already a pain in Dean’s ass before Jenna arrived, and this last week has been even worse. Maybe we should have done this sooner, but it’s clear we can’t wait any longer. It’s time to talk about what happened.”

“Says you.”

Jake swore. “Yes, says me, you ungrateful shithead.”

Sean gave him a deliberately bland look. “You have a way with words.”

Tom stood and held out his hands. “Guys, let’s do the intervention first before you beat each other up.”

“I couldn’t beat him up even if I wanted to,” Sean muttered under his breath.

Jake leaned in and shoved his shoulder hard. “That right there. That’s the fucking problem. You should want to beat me up, and you could if you wanted to.”

“You don’t fucking understand.”

“Yes, I do.” He gestured to Tom. “Both of us do. We’ve been there, remember? We’ve done our tours overseas. We’ve been in the sandbox when everything was going to shit. We’ve been in the middle of firefights, and we’ve seen guys die. And when we came back, we put our lives back together and got on with fucking living.”

“You weren’t injured, though.”

“Not physically. But nobody comes out of that unscathed. For fucks sake, you have a wife. We all thought when she showed up that it would be a turning point for you, but not a negative one.”

“I didn’t ask her to come.”

“Yeah, we’re all figuring that out. What the actual fuck, man? You made vows to her.”

“That wasn’t me!” Sean’s voice cracked, but something else cracked, too, and he finally heard himself.

For the first time since the explosion that had torn his world apart, he heard himself and he recognized his own voice.

Jesus Christ.

He sounded desperate. Pathetic. Angry.

He hung his head.

“What do you mean, that wasn’t you?” Jake said slowly, dropping to a squat in front of Sean.

“I don’t know.” A lie. He knew. He just didn’t want to say it again.

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Tom interjected. “Sean, where do you see yourself landing? You can’t stay at Dean’s forever.”

He knew that. He didn’t want to be dependent on his brothers. But he didn’t have an answer to that question. He couldn’t see into the future. He couldn’t imagine a future now.

When he didn’t answer, Jake threw his hands in the air and again muttered something about having a wife. That word sliced through him like a hot blade.

Tom looked at Sean. “Look, your brothers have their own perspectives. But I’m telling you — you gotta commit to a rehab plan for yourself. Get healthy for yourself. You can’t do this for Jenna. But you gotta ask yourself, what do you want? Because right now, you’re just driving a wedge between you and everyone who loves you.”

“I just want to be left the fuck alone. It’s all that I want.” That rang hollow. It wasn’t all he wanted. But what he wanted wasn’t possible. What he wanted had been stolen from him. In a single, awful, life-ripping moment. His universe had literally exploded, and how dare they expect him to already be trying to put the pieces back together?

It was the worst kind of jigsaw puzzle. There were pieces missing. Pieces torn in half. Pieces crushed into a pile of dust.

It would always be incomplete.

Tom and Jake had no idea what that was like, because their lives were whole again. They may have experienced some of the same fracturing reality, but their pieces hadn’t been blown apart in the same way.

“I don’t know what you guys were trying to accomplish here. What I know is that no two circumstances are the same. Before I was injured, I thought I was invincible. I bet Jenna’s life on it. I hitched her wagon to mine on the cocky-as-fuck belief that I’d see her on the other side, a war hero with legit swagger. Instead I’m half a man with a fucked-up brain.”

Jake stared at him. “And yet she’s here, isn’t she?”

“I don’t know why.”

“Then you’re an idiot, because she doesn’t act like she thinks you made a bad bet.”

Tom cleared his throat. “Or you need us to help you see that even though you’ve done your level best to be an asshole, she’s stuck around. She knows what she’s up against, too.”

She didn’t, though. She didn’t know how broken he was inside his head.

“I see what you’re doing, Sean,” Tom said, giving him a sober look.

Did he? Because Sean wasn’t completely sure. He felt like he was flailing out in some uncoordinated attempt to fight the world, to fight his new reality. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“You’re trying to isolate yourself.”

Maybe he was. He kicked at his walker.

“It’s not a plan, though. It’s a sign of depression.”

“I’m not depressed. I’m angry.”

“The two are not mutually exclusive.”

Sean looked at Jake. “Tell him I’m not depressed.”

Jake gave him a pained look. “You’re not yourself.”

Jesus. He knew that. He’d never be that guy again. It wasn’t a temporary thing. “Traumatic brain injuries will do that to a guy,” he muttered.

“That’s not what I’m saying.” His brother sighed and sat down beside him. “Sean, you’re so angry about what happened to you that you’re forgetting it could have been so much worse.”

“How the hell could it—”

“We could have lost you.” Jake turned his head and gave him a hard look, his eyes glittering dangerously. “You could have died. And we are all so fucking grateful that you didn’t. Your wife is, too. When are you going to stop feeling sorry for yourself and be glad you’re alive?”

Sean stared at his brother. He would have preferred a punch in the face. “Fuck,” he finally said.

“Yeah.”

Tom sat on the other side of him. “It’s okay to miss your old life. But you have a new life that’s going to stretch in front of you for decades. Make it count.”

Because others had lost that chance.

He was an asshole.

He needed to do something. Fix this, somehow. Enough leaning on others. Fucking hell, enough leaning, period.

He couldn’t cling to the memory of what had once been. It was time to move forward. It was time for a plan.