RaeAnne Thayne – Brambleberry House: His Second-Chance Family (страница 8)
She shrugged, which he took for assent. He unwrapped the cord and heard a crunching kind of thud inside. Uh-oh. Not a good sign. With a careful look at her and a growing sense of trepidation, he pulled the blanket away and winced as Julia gasped.
Despite her obvious efforts to protect the dollhouse, the piece hadn’t traveled well. The construction looked flimsy to begin with and the roof had collapsed.
One entire support wall had come loose as well and the whole thing looked like it was ready to implode.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though the words seemed grossly inadequate.
“It’s not your fault. I was afraid it wouldn’t survive the trip. Oh, this is going to break Maddie’s heart. She loved that little house.”
“So did you,” he guessed.
She nodded. “For a lot of reasons.” She tilted her head, studying the wreckage. “You’re the carpentry expert. I don’t suppose there’s any way I can fix this, is there?”
He gazed down at her, at the fading rays of the sun that caught gold strands in her hair, at the sorrow marring those lovely features for a lost treasure.
He gave an inward groan. Dammit, he didn’t want to do this. But he was such a sucker for a woman in distress. How could he just walk away?
He cleared his throat. “If you want, I could take a look at it. See what I can do.”
“Oh, I couldn’t ask that of you.”
“You didn’t ask,” he said gruffly.
She sent him a swift look. “No. I didn’t.”
“I’m kind of slammed with projects right now. It might take me a while to get to it. And even then, I can’t make any guarantees. That’s some major damage there. You might be better just starting over.”
She forced a smile, though he could see the sadness lingering in her eyes. Her father had made it for her, she had said. He didn’t remember much about her father from their summers in Cannon Beach, mostly that the man always seemed impatient and abrupt.
“I can’t make any promises,” he repeated. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much, Will.”
Together, they gathered up the shattered pieces of the dollhouse and carried them to his truck, where he set them carefully in the back between his toolbox and ladder.
“I’m happy to pay you for your time and trouble.”
As if he would ever accept her money. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s see if I can fix it first.”
She nodded and looked as if she wanted to say something more. To his vast relief, after a moment, she closed her mouth, then returned to the U-Haul for the last few boxes.
BETWEEN THE TWO of them, they were able to carry all but a few of the remaining boxes from the U-Haul up the stairs, where they found Sage and Julia pulling books out of boxes and placing them on shelves.
“You’re all so wonderful to help me,” Julia said, gratitude coursing through her as she smiled at all three of them. “I have to tell you, I never expected such a warm welcome. I thought it would be weeks before I would even know a soul in Cannon Beach besides Abigail. I haven’t even started teaching yet but I feel as if I have instant friends.”
Sage smiled. “We’re thrilled to have you and the twins here. And I think Abigail would be, too. Don’t you think, Will?”
He set down the boxes. “Sure. She always loved kids.”
“She was nothing but a big kid herself. Remember how she used to sit out on the porch swing for hours with Cara, swinging and telling stories and singing.”
“I remember,” he said, his voice rough.
Color flooded Sage’s features suddenly. “Oh, Will. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t, Sage. It’s okay. I’d better get the last load of boxes.”
He turned and headed down the stairs, leaving behind only the echo of his workboots hitting the wooden steps. Julia turned her confused gaze to Anna and Sage and found them both watching after Will with identical expressions of sadness in their eyes.
“I missed something, obviously,” she said softly.
Sage gave Anna a helpless look and the other woman shrugged.
“She’ll find out sooner or later,” Anna said. “She might as well hear it from us.”
“You’re right,” Sage said. “It just still hurts so much to talk about the whole thing.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Julia said quickly. “I’m sorry if I’ve wandered into things that are none of my business.”
Sage glanced down the stairs as if checking to see if Will was returning. When she was certain he was still outside, she turned back, her voice pitched low. “Will had a daughter. She would have been a couple years younger than your twins. Cara. That’s who I was talking about. Abigail adored her. We all did. She was the cutest little thing you’ve ever seen, just full of energy, with big blue eyes, brown curls and dimples. She was full of sugar, our Cara.”
Had a daughter. Not has. An ache blossomed in her chest and she knew she didn’t want to hear any more.
But she had learned many lessons over the last few years—one of the earliest was that information was empowering, even if the gaining of it was a process often drenched in pain.
“What happened?” she forced herself to ask.
Sage shook her head, her face inexpressibly sad. Anna squeezed her arm and picked up the rest of the story.
“Cara was killed along with Will’s wife, Robin, two years ago.” Though Anna spoke in her usual no-nonsense tone, Julia could hear the pain threading through her words.
“They were crossing the street downtown in the middle of the afternoon when they were hit by a drunk tourist in a motorhome,” she went on. “Robin died instantly but Cara hung on for two weeks. We all thought—hoped—she was going to pull through but she caught an infection in the hospital in Portland and her little body was too weak and battered to fight it.”
She wanted to cry, just sit right there in the middle of the floor and weep for him. More than that, she wanted to race down the stairs and hug her own precious darlings to her.
“Oh, poor Will. He must have been shattered.”
“We all were,” Sage said. “It was like a light went out of all of us. Will used to be so lighthearted. Like a big tease of an older brother. It’s been more than two years since Robin and Cara died and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him genuinely smile at something since then.”
The ache inside her stretched and tugged and her eyes burned with tears for the teenage boy with the mischievous eyes.
Sage touched her arm. “I’m so glad you’re here now.”
“Me? Why?”
“Well, you’ve lost someone, too. You understand, in a way the rest of us can’t. I’m sure it would help Will to talk to someone who’s experienced some of those same emotions.”
Julia barely contained her wince, feeling like the world’s biggest fraud.
“Grief is such a solitary, individual thing,” she said after an awkward moment. “No one walks the same journey.”
Sage smiled and pressed a cheek to Julia’s. “I know. But I’m still glad you’re here, and I’m sure Will is, too.”
Julia was saved from having to come up with an answer to that when she again heard his footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, he came in, muscles bulging beneath the cotton of his shirt as he carried in a trio of boxes.
He had erased any trace of emotion from his features, any sign at all that he contained any emotions at all. Finding out about his wife and daughter explained so much about him. The hardness, the cynicism. The pain in his eyes when he looked at Maddie.
She had a wild urge to take the boxes from him, slip her arms around his waist and hold him until everything was all right again.
“This is the last of it. Where do these go?”
Her words tangled in her throat and she had to clear her throat before she could speak. “The top one belongs in my bedroom. The others are Simon’s.”
With an abrupt nod, he headed first to her room and then to the one down the hall where Simon slept.
He returned to the living room just as the doorbell downstairs rang through the house.
“Hey, Mom!” Simon yelled up the stairs an instant later. “The pizza guy’s here!”
Conan started barking in accompaniment and Julia rolled her eyes at the sudden cacophony of sound. “Are you sure about this? The house was so quiet before we showed up. If you want that quiet again, you’d better speak now while I’ve still got the U-Haul.”
Sage shook her head with a laugh. “No way. I’m not lugging those books back down the stairs. You’re stuck here for a while.”
Right now, she couldn’t think of anywhere she would rather be. Julia flashed a quick smile to the other two women and Will, grabbed her purse, and headed down the stairs to pay for the pizza.
Simon stood at the door holding on to Conan’s collar as the dog wriggled with excitement, his tail wagging a mile a minute.