Copper Lake Confidential

chapter 9



Bedtime was running twenty-one minutes and counting. Yes, Stephen was timing it. Though normally patience was one of his virtues, he didn’t have much of it at the moment, but not in a bad way. It was anticipation, really, rather than impatience. He wanted to see Macy. Wanted to spend more time alone with her. Wanted to touch her.

He really wanted to kiss her.

He thought back to his first kiss ever. Seventeen years old, high school graduation. He’d been what his mother called a late bloomer. Totally clueless about style and most everything else, thick black-framed glasses, more interested in books than people, all his friends high IQs and low human-interaction skills.

The girl had been home from college for the summer, partying with the local kids, and in the instant before her mouth touched his, he couldn’t have cared less whether she kissed him. Ten seconds later, he’d discovered a new aspect of life, and he liked it.

Kissing Macy was like that, only a whole lot better.

Vaguely wondering if he should be worried about just how much better it was, he heard the back door click. Macy came out, wearing something fluttery and white, and seemed to float above the flagstone, ethereal, graceful. When she joined him on the sofa, he caught a couple of sweet fragrances. Baby lotion and...bubble gum?

She handed him a bottle of water, then sat down and uncapped hers. “Do you know how many times a three-year-old can repeat, ‘I don’t wanna go to bed’?”

“I would imagine endlessly.”

“She usually goes to bed much more easily. Tonight we let her stay up past her bedtime and loaded her up with ice cream. She was overtired and overexcited.”

“Everyone should get overexcited at least once a week.”

The words made Macy laugh, a sweet soft sound. Stephen thought she should laugh every day, not the restrained sort just now, but an all-out, bring-tears-to-her-eyes laugh. He blamed the fact that she didn’t on Mark. Dead eighteen months, and still affecting every moment of her life.

And, now, his.

“How much longer do you think it’ll take to finish up here?” he asked somewhat hesitantly. How much longer could he walk down the street and see her? How many days to feel this attraction, this sense of something? How many days to find out whether anything could come from it?

She was hesitant, as well. “I don’t know. Maybe a week. Once I’ve sorted through everything, the lawyer can take care of the pickups by the antiques dealers. I’ll put the stuff I’m keeping in storage, plus the family stuff for Clary, and then she and I will...”

Will leave. Will move on. Will start over. Without you. Stephen gave her a sidelong look. “You and Clary will...?”

She breathed deeply. “Find a place to live.”

“And you’ve definitely ruled out Copper Lake.” He tried not to sound disappointed. She’d told him from the start that she wasn’t staying here. Hell, there was no guarantee that he would stay here.

Though when he imagined his perfect life, the practice looked a lot like Dr. Yates’s, the town looked a lot like Copper Lake and the people in the background looked a lot like his friends here.

This time her breath was more a sigh. “There are bad memories.”

Setting his water on the sofa arm, he took her hand, her skin warm and dry against the cool dampness of his. “So replace them with good memories.”

“Like it’s that simple?”

He stroked his thumb over her palm. “I’ve never had any really bad memories. Yeah, it was upsetting when Mom and Dad divorced, and the first couple of moves threw things out of balance for a while. By the time Sloan and I realized we were headed for divorce, we were already out of love, so the disappointment that our marriage had failed was overshadowed by the fact that we were glad it was over. So I’m not one to give advice.”

“But you’re going to do it anyway.” Her tone was level, even mildly amused.

“As I understand it, you don’t dislike the town. You were happy here right up until the end. You had friends. You were involved in activities. Your brother visited, and you saw your parents regularly. You were pretty content with your life.” He paused for her to respond, and she nodded. “It’s not the town, Macy. It’s this house. Fair Winds. The Howard family legacy. So you move out of this house. You sell it, you tear it down and you find another one, one that’s perfect for you and Clary. You sell or donate Fair Winds.

“As for the legacy, you and Clary are the only Howards left around here. You don’t have to be concerned about it anymore. You don’t have to be a part of it. You can even get rid of the name for both of you.”

She tilted her head to one side, studying him. “You think calling ourselves Macy and Clary Ireland would make people forget that we used to be Macy and Clary Howard?”

Macy Ireland. It did have a much sweeter sound to it.

“Eventually. Sooner rather than later if you marry again, make a new family.” Macy Noble...that sounded even better. Not that he was actually thinking about marriage. He just liked to consider all the possibilities. What was the point of a serious relationship if there wasn’t at least a chance it would last? That she would stick around long enough for them to decide what was between them?

Though he was already past that point. He didn’t even know how it had happened, how someone he’d met less than a week ago had become so much a part of his life. But she had. It would be a loss if she left before giving them a chance.

“Marry again.” The words didn’t even qualify as a whisper. “I’d have to love someone, like him, trust him an awful lot to consider getting married. I don’t know if I have that kind of trust to give.”

“You trust your brother. Your sister-in-law. To some extent you trust me or you wouldn’t let me near Clary.” He willed her to look at him, and she did, and he willed her to acknowledge that, yes, she did trust him. Hadn’t she turned to him for help a couple of times? Hadn’t she chosen him to accompany her to Fair Winds? Hadn’t she let him kiss her in the night by the pool?

Or had he merely been the only guy handy for all those things?

But her expression gave away nothing on her version of trust versus his.

Defeat like a cold brush over his shoulders, he said, “You’ll get married again. You’re too young, beautiful, perfectly suited to motherhood, to stay single the rest of your life. You’ll trust someone, you’ll get married and you’ll have more babies—”

“I lost my daughter after Mark died.”

Puzzled, Stephen glanced to the faintly illuminated window upstairs that showed where Clary slept. “You lost custody—”

She shook her head, her face as pale as her dress. If her hair had been blond, she could have easily passed for something from the other side, a heartbroken angel or a weary spirit. And like a runaway train that suddenly crashed to a halt, his heart stopped beating, his lungs stopped pumping air, as he realized what she was saying. “You were pregnant....”

She nodded.

“Oh, Macy.” He released her hand and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close. “God, I’m sorry. I had no idea....”

For a time she remained stiff, but then she relaxed, sinking against him, warm and delicate and trembling. He wished he’d dropped the subject before marriage had come into it, but since he hadn’t, he wished he knew what to say to ease her loss. A baby, another Clary but younger, tinier, needier... As if anything could ease that.

“I lost the baby two weeks after Mark died. My doctor thought it was because of the stress.” Her small hand reached out, curled itself into the fabric of his T-shirt. “I was pretty logical growing up. I always believed that when it was your time to die, you would die, no matter what precautions you took, no matter what heroic measures were taken to save you. When horrible things happened, I thought God had a plan. When people died too young, I believed God wanted them back in heaven.”

Glancing up, her face only a few inches from him, her eyes damp with tears, she said, “It’s damn hard to apply logic to your own baby’s death. I blamed Mark with a hatred that surprised even me. I do have friends here—not many, but good ones. That’s one reason why I stay so close to home. I don’t want to see them. They know everything, and there’s just this...pity.”

“Sympathy,” he corrected her. “There’s a big difference.” Though hadn’t Marnie said just tonight that she felt sorry for Macy? Did the difference really matter?

“Maybe.” She rested her head on his shoulder and felt so right. “You were right, though. I don’t hate Copper Lake. I hate Mark. I hate what he did. I hate how he destroyed so many lives.”

Hers, her daughter’s, her unborn child’s, his mother’s, his grandmother’s. The selfish bastard. Gently Stephen stroked her hair from her face. “Your life isn’t destroyed, Macy. Clary’s isn’t. You’ve got to deal with the memories, but she’s a happy, funny, smart, cheerful, ever-hopeful little girl who’s going to have a wonderful life. You’ll make sure of that. You need to make sure of it for yourself, too. Don’t let Mark win by running away from your family and all the people who care about you.”

She looked up again, and in the dim light he could barely make out the emotions on her face. Curiosity. Doubt. Need. “Does that include you?”

For an instant he felt like the inexperienced kid comfortable only with other nerds, who’d known he and girls weren’t a good match. He’d gained some confidence since then, but not enough to keep his voice from going all froggy on him. “Yeah, it does.”

“There’s so much you don’t know about me.”

“There’s plenty of time to learn if you don’t leave town.” Maybe even if she did.

“And what if you don’t like what you learn?”

“Let’s see...are you computer-phobic?” He waited for her to shake her head. “Are you kind to small animals and elderly people?”

“Of course.”

“Do you like chocolate?”

A nod.

“French fries or onion rings?”

“Fries.”

“Coffee?”

“Every morning.”

“Do you run for fun?”

She laughed. “Dear heavens, no.”

“Do you mind the smell of doggy breath in the morning?”

“Not as long as it’s coming from a dog.”

“Okay, that covers all the big stuff.”

She stared at him, her smile slowly fading. “You like things simple, don’t you?”

“Life is simple. You find a job you like and a person you love, you do good when you can, you work hard and play hard, you take care of those you bring into the world and you always remember to be kind to others.” He bent close to her. “No matter what Mark taught you, it doesn’t have to be any harder than that. Trust me.”

And then he kissed her, wondering if his trust me had sounded normal enough or if she’d heard the faint plea underlying it.

* * *

When Macy awakened Sunday morning, before she even opened her eyes, a familiar feeling settled in her chest, right above her cleavage. It was insubstantial, fluttering, the way she imagined a butterfly’s delicate wings might beat.

It was nothing, but it made her lungs constrict, and perspiration popped out across her forehead. Eyes still closed, she groped across the bed until she found Clary and scooted close to her daughter, nuzzling her soft brown hair, letting the scents of baby shampoo and bubble gum bath gel filter through the buzzing in her brain.

She was not having a panic attack. She was taking her medication regularly, and she’d been staying physically active, not just since she got here but since before her release from the hospital. Exercise was a great help in keeping the flutters and trembles and buzzes at bay. One day soon, her doctor said, she could probably come off the medication completely.

But not today.

A small hand touched her face, then fingers pried her eye open. “I know you’re awake, Mama. I see your eyes movin’ in there.”

Macy opened both eyes to find her baby grinning at her, wide-awake and as cheery this morning as she’d been cranky the night before. “Good morning.”

“Mornin.’ What’re we gonna do today? I wanna see Scooter.”

“I think we can arrange that.”

“I don’t wanna do any more packing. It’s bor-ing.”

“Well, maybe AnAnne can do something else with you while Uncle Brent and I pack.”

Then came a hint of last night’s crankiness. “I don’t wanna do it with AnAnne. I wanna do it with you.”

Macy’s heart tugged as she squeezed Clary closer. Her child had spent so much of her time in someone else’s care, and she’d been far too young to understand why. Her visits to the hospital, first with Brent and their parents, later with Anne, too, had been infrequent. The place had scared her, and she’d always cried when she had to leave without Macy.

“All right, sweetie. We’ll find something fun to do.” Brent and Anne, bless their hearts, wouldn’t mind working while she took Clary to the park or out for a treat.

Or maybe walked down to Stephen’s house for playtime with Scooter.

When this was all taken care of and she and Clary had settled—well, wherever—she was sending her brother and sister-in-law on the best honeymoon ever as thanks.

The sweat had gone away and the fluttering stopped, though the knot in her gut was slower to unwind. Not a panic attack. Not even a precursor to one, even if it was identical to all the other precursors she’d ever suffered.

Throwing back the covers, she gathered clothing for both of them and headed for the bathroom. “Come on, sweetie, up, up. Time’s a-wasting.”

Clary giggled as she rolled across the mattress, then slid to her feet. “That’s what Grandpa always says.”

“Well, Grandpa’s always right.” He was a role model for his children and grandchild.

Mark’s grandfather had been a role model, too, damn him.

They brushed their teeth and dressed, Macy in denim shorts and a purple tank top, Clary in a watermelon-print sundress with green-and-red polka-dotted flip-flops. With a white sunhat, she looked adorable. She skipped downstairs ahead of Macy and turned toward the kitchen.

The aromas of coffee and bacon drifted down the hall. Brent and Anne were early risers and, always thoughtful, Anne had fixed breakfast for them. They sat at the kitchen table, interrupting their talk to greet Clary.

“Guess what?” Clary helped herself to a piece of bacon from Anne’s plate. “Me and Mama are gonna do something special this morning. Aren’t we, Mama?”

Nothing like easing into a subject. Macy poured herself a cup of coffee before facing them. “If it’s okay with you guys. She’s bored with packing.”

“So are you, I bet,” Brent said.

Macy responded with the raise of her brows.

“Go ahead,” Anne added. “We’ll work in the library. All the books are going to the local library, right?” She made a shooing gesture. “Go on, take your coffee and get out of this house.”

“Thanks, guys.” Macy hugged each of them, then went to the island. She slung her purse strap over her shoulder, then hesitated. Her keys were supposed to be right there next to her bag. Maybe she’d left them inside...but why would she have put them inside after letting them into the house last night after dinner? “Have you guys seen my keys?”

Brent cut into the over-easy egg on his plate. “You had them in your hand when we came in the door.”

She glanced at Anne, who shook her head. “I was helping Clary carry the ice cream. I didn’t pay attention. Maybe you put them in the freezer?”

Macy checked. No keys. She rummaged through the papers on the island. Nothing. Brent and Anne left the table to help her look, and even Clary helped, though the first time she looked in a box and saw books, she lost interest.

“Here they are,” Anne called from down the hall.

Macy followed her voice into the living room, where her sister-in-law dangled the keys from her finger. “Where were they?”

Anne looked at Brent, then shrugged. “On the fireplace mantel.”

Under their wedding portrait. Macy chilled. Not once in the six years she’d lived there had she ever left her keys on the mantel. And not once last night after dinner had she set foot in the living room. She knew it.

“Th-thanks.” She took the keys from Anne, avoided making eye contact with either her or Brent and called for Clary. “Let’s go, pretty baby.”

“Have fun,” Brent said with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

As she buckled Clary into her car seat, she considered how the keys had wound up on the mantel. 1) Brent had put them there. 2) Anne had. 3) Stephen had. 4) A ghost had. Or 5) she’d had another episode and done it herself. The only thing she could say beyond a doubt was that Clary hadn’t done it because she couldn’t reach the mantel, and there wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the room the girl could have moved by herself.

But why would Brent or Anne or Stephen move her keys? The idea was ludicrous. When had any of them had the chance? Brent and Anne had come in from dinner and gone straight to the guesthouse. When Stephen arrived, he’d been in the kitchen with Macy before they’d gone to the guesthouse. When he left, she’d walked him to the door, where he’d given her a couple of toe-curling good-night kisses. He’d never had the chance to go into the living...

Except the twenty minutes or so he was alone on the patio while she bathed Clary and put her to bed.

She shifted the van into Reverse and automatically checked the back-up camera but didn’t move her foot from the brake. What reason could Stephen possibly have for moving her keys? And why last night, when he was the only one whose time in the house was unaccounted for? If he’d wanted to play mind games with her, he’d had plenty of other opportunities.

But if it hadn’t been him, that left her. Why would she misplace her own keys? Because this whole trip to Copper Lake had her a little unhinged. Because she’d imagined an intruder in the guesthouse and misplaced the Fair Winds contract and the cologne bottle. Because she had a history of mental illness related to Mark and his passing. Because she was one of those people all her friends and acquaintances said things like Poor thing and Bless her heart about.

Because that fluttering and sweating and shaking this morning had been the precursor of a panic attack, even if she was taking her medicine and staying active.

Because she was losing control again.

Blowing out a heavy breath, she checked the camera once more, then backed out of the driveway. Even driving slowly, it took only a minute or two to reach Stephen’s house, where she parked on the side of the road next to the gate.

“Is this were Dr. Stephen lives?”

She checked her smile in the rearview—steady enough for a little girl—then faced her. “Yep.”

Clary unbuckled her harness in the time it took Macy to unhook her seatbelt and open the door. Clary scrambled over the console and the driver’s seat, then jumped to the ground, raising little puffs of dust in the soft dirt. They’d reached Stephen’s door and Clary had banged on the wooden frame of the screen before Macy had time to second-guess coming here. He might be writing. Sunday could be his day to sleep in until noon, or he could be getting ready for church or have plans with someone else.

A welcoming bark sounded inside, then the door opened. It was a toss-up whose greeting was more excited—Clary’s or Scooter’s. Though Stephen’s was much quieter, just a smile that sent warmth all the way to her toes, it persuaded Macy of two things. She wasn’t interrupting his morning, and he hadn’t played some weird mind game with her keys last night. Granted, Mark had fooled her, but she’d learned to be cautious as a result. If Stephen knew about her inpatient care, if he’d moved the keys to screw with her, she was ten times the fool Mark had made her. Something deep inside, something primal and instinctive, said she wasn’t that big a fool. She could trust this man.

Which meant there’d been an intruder—not likely with the alarm always armed—or a ghost or she couldn’t trust herself.

“What brings you two pretty girls to our place this morning?” Stephen asked.

“We wanna do something fun,” Clary replied.

He unlatched the screen door and held it open for them to enter. Scooter hesitated a moment as if he couldn’t quite resist the lure of freedom, but in the end the lure of playing with Clary won out. “I can think of a lot of fun things to do,” Stephen murmured as Macy followed her daughter inside. “We’d have to ditch the little one for some of them.”

This time the intensity on his face ignited the heat. She resisted the urge to fan herself because common sense told her the temperature rise was all internal. With the windows open and the ceiling fan whirring, the small living room was perfectly comfortable.

“No ditching,” she said just as quietly. “My baby said, ‘But I wanna do something fun with yooouu, Mama.’ I was thinking we’d start with breakfast.”

“Hmm. I have protein bars and coffee. I’m not sure I want to see Little Bit on caffeine.”

“It’s not a pretty sight. I thought maybe the four of us could go to Ellie’s, then do...something.”

His laughter was genuine. “Have you forgotten what constitutes fun, Macy?”

“Back in Charleston, we’d go to the beach or to the Battery downtown or visit one of the historic sites.”

“Here we go to the lake or the parks or to the square downtown or visit one of the historic sites. We have an active historical society, the botanical society’s gardens are in full bloom and we even have a couple of museums. Oh, wait, I bet you worked on all of those, didn’t you?”

Because he was standing so close and it had been her standard response to Brent’s teasing, and because he was right, she smacked him on the shoulder. “We could just take Scooter and leave you here, you know.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t have near as much fun.” He grinned and turned toward the bedroom off the living room. “Just let me change.”

“Into what? Another white T-shirt?”

His only response was a childish tongue stuck out.

He was back in a couple of minutes in a clean white T-shirt and denim shorts that still bore the creases from being folded.

Clary chatted all the way to the restaurant and was thrilled to help hold Scooter’s leash on the walk from the car. They were seated at a wrought-iron table and chairs, patterns mismatched, in the shade of a crape myrtle. It would be a beautiful setting when the tree was in bloom, though the dropped blossoms would make regular cleanup a necessity.

It was Ellie Maricci herself who took their order, greeting Stephen affectionately, making a big deal over Clary and Scooter and hugging Macy. “I’m glad to see you back here. It’s been way too long.”

A strange sensation swept through Macy, both pleasant and alien. She’d gotten dozens of hugs at Mark’s funeral, but since then, physical contact was pretty much limited to her immediate family—and, now, Stephen. Like Anamaria’s embrace at the park her first day back, Ellie’s hug felt nice and genuine.

“Are you here to stay?”

Aware of Stephen’s gaze on her, Macy shrugged. “I don’t really... There’s so much to do before I think about...”

At least it wasn’t a flat, certain refusal. Stephen would probably find optimism in that.

“I can imagine. But it would be a shame to deprive the young boys of Copper Lake the pleasure of knowing Clary. She’s going to be a heartbreaker someday.” Ellie grinned and winked at Clary, who did her best to wink back, then switched from friend to server mode. “What can I get you folks today?”

* * *

Copper Lake on a pretty spring Sunday was at its best. With little to no touch-up, it could more than do justice to the cover of a glossy tourist brochure. Flowers were blooming, the square was neatly manicured, the war memorials gleamed and the river lazily flowed. Cars filled church parking lots, and delicious aromas drifted on the air as restaurants geared up for the after-church crowds. It was welcoming. Peaceful.

It was home, Stephen realized. Because of his mom’s regular moves, he’d never developed a connection to the places they lived. What was the point when he knew they would be moving on before long? But this town... It had been luck that brought him here, and now he wanted to stay. He belonged.

If only Macy felt the same.

They’d done nothing special—a leisurely breakfast, play on the toys at the riverfront park, a walk around downtown showing Clary her hometown. They didn’t call it that to her, of course. She regarded this visit as a vacation, a trip to a strange place to do boring stuff before returning to the only home she remembered.

How would she feel when Macy took her away from that home? She was three. She would miss her grandparents and Brent and Anne, but she would adapt. He was proof that the ability to adapt was a good thing.

As they approached the square, Clary pointed to River’s Edge across the street. “Is that a church?”

“No, sweetie. It used to be a house. Now people have parties there.”

“It’s a big house,” she said dubiously.

“Yes, it is,” Macy agreed. She didn’t mention that Clary owned such a house herself. It would be one more of those things she didn’t understand.

Clary turned her head and sniffed the air, like a hound on a hunt. “I smell cookies.”

Stephen sniffed, too. “I smell fresh-ground Topeca.”

“Can we have a cookie, Mama? And some whatever he said?”

Macy gave them both reproving looks, then faced A Cuppa Joe, and her own nose delicately twitched. “Coffee.” Though she’d had a cup with her when they picked up him and Scooter, plus another cup with breakfast, she practically sighed the word. “Okay,” she said sternly. “One cup, one cookie. And something besides coffee for you, Clary.”

They turned the corner, where a couple of tables and chairs flanked the coffee-shop door. Stephen looped Scooter’s leash over an iron hook set into the wall, then held the door for his girls.

His girls. He liked the sound of that.

There was never anything simple about a coffee run in Copper Lake. Both Joe Saldana and his wife, Liz, were working, and their dogs were patients of Stephen’s. They knew Macy, too, and talked warmly with her while Clary narrowed her choice of treat from the entire refrigerated case to a row of brightly decorated cookies. With Liz’s help, she settled on a sugar cookie as big as her head decorated like a watermelon. As Stephen picked up the tray, Joe tossed on a couple of dog biscuits for Scooter.

“You gotta love a place that takes care of their four-footed customers,” Stephen said as he maneuvered the tray onto one of the outdoor tables.

“You gotta love a place whose coffee smells this good.” Macy cupped both hands to the ceramic mug—A Cuppa Joe was big into recycling, reducing and reusing—but all she’d done so far was sniff the steam rising. Could he put a similar supremely content look on her face, given the chance?

He’d like to think so, but Joe’s coffee was hard to compete with.

“Did you sleep well last night?” he asked after dragging a chair to the two-person table for Clary. The kid didn’t bother sitting in it but crouched next to it, feeding Scooter his cookies one half at a time—and slipping a few bites of her own in, too, if the green frosting on Scooter’s beard was anything to judge by.

He looked back at Macy in time to see her shoulders stiffen slightly. If he hadn’t spent much of the past six days with her, he might have missed it entirely. But her hands didn’t tremble as she took a sip of Topeca’s Manzano blend, then set the mug on the table, and her face didn’t show any emotion beyond pure appreciation for a cup of El Salvador’s best coffee.

“I did. It was nice having Clary to cuddle with.” She gazed across the street as a couple of teenage boys jogged through to River Road, then met his eyes again. “But when I got up this morning, I couldn’t find my keys. I leave them on the kitchen island. I always have. But we finally found them on the mantel underneath the wedding portrait.”

He faked an accusing look. “Were you planning to scratch out your faces with the keys? ’Cause I’ve got to tell you, car keys weren’t made for destroying canvas and oil. Now that your brother’s here, we’ll get a ladder and have that bonfire you were talking about.”

Her smile was unsteady. “I don’t remember putting them there.”

He wasn’t sure why that was so important to her, but he shrugged. “You forgot. You were preoccupied. It happens all the time. My mom once found hers in the medicine cabinet, and Dr. Yates left his once in a cat’s crate. The cat and his owner were halfway to California by the time she found them.”

“I’m not normally forgetful.”

He curled his fingers around hers. “But this isn’t a normal time for you, is it?”

“No,” she agreed with another weak smile.

Stephen couldn’t help but wonder why the incident troubled her more than he understood. But if there was a subtle way to ask, he couldn’t think of it, so he just went with straightforward. “Tell me why it bothers you so much.”

Her gaze drifted away—not an obvious shift, as if she didn’t want him to see her eyes, just sort of moving off toward the square, but he would bet his first-ever book tour, if it ever materialized, hiding was exactly the reason.

“You’ll think I’m crazy. The hell of it is, I might be.”

His natural snort faded away. She wasn’t laughing, wasn’t teasing. The smile was just barely there, wobbling, and even with her head turned away, he could see the heat in her cheeks and the glistening in her eyes. He tightened his grip on her hand, not too tight, just letting her know he was there. No matter what.

A long time passed before she looked at him again. “You had a front-row seat for the intruder-in-the-guesthouse show. The night we went to Fair Winds, when I got home, I couldn’t find the contract I’d left in the living room. It finally turned up in Mark’s office. A day or two later, I threw a bottle of his cologne into the trash, and it reappeared in his closet, where he’d always kept it. Then my keys...”

So that was all it was. Worry over incidents that probably wouldn’t mean anything if they’d happened anywhere else. But to happen in the house she’d shared with her suicidal husband, while trying to deal with closing that part of her life and opening a new one...

“A couple of incidents don’t make you unbalanced, Macy. Stress manifests itself in strange ways. You probably just forgot because you need to forget. That’s part of what this trip is about for you.” He snorted self-deprecatingly. “I’m not a people doctor, but I’m happy to diagnose and give advice.”

“I’d be happy to accept your diagnosis and advice, except...” She glanced at Clary leaning against the wall, Scooter’s head in her lap, and the tears glistened again. “This is a really bad time to have this conversation.”

“Want to drop her off at home?” Because he really didn’t want to put it off. These kinds of confidences didn’t come easy, and he didn’t want to give her a chance to reassess and decide she didn’t trust him enough to share. He wanted her trust. He needed it.

His mother hadn’t raised him and Marnie in church, but he believed in God, miracles, divine intervention. At that moment it came in the form of Anamaria Calloway and her two children, waving from across the street. “Hey Doc! Hey Doc!” Will called while his younger sister vacillated. “Scooter! Doc!”

Despite the seriousness of the conversation a few seconds ago, Stephen couldn’t have stopped the smile crossing his face if he wanted to. Will and Gloriana, and their mother and father, were among his favorite people in town, and their yellow Labs, Lucky and Ducky, yes, named by the kids, were two of the biggest characters in his practice.

“Will thinks my name is Hey Doc,” he said quietly to Macy as the Calloways started across the street, “and Gloriana couldn’t care less what it is as long as Scooter’s around.” His smile broadened as they stepped onto the curb, released their mother’s hands and rushed over for a hug. “Hey, guys, how are you?”

Gloriana returned his hug, then immediately turned to Scooter and Clary. “I know you. You’re her little girl.” She pointed at Macy.

“Who are you?” Clary asked.

“I’m her little girl.” Now her finger turned to Anamaria.

Fidgeting in front of Stephen, Will claimed his attention. “Hey Doc, guess what? Mama let us skip the boring part of church. She made Daddy stay, though. Said he needed it more.”

From what Stephen had heard about Robbie Calloway’s life pre-Anamaria, that was probably true.

“We’re not being total heathens,” Anamaria said. “We’re having Robbie’s birthday dinner this afternoon, so we’re down here to pick up the cake from Ellie’s. Just the very immediate family, and I think it’s going to be twenty-some people.”

“Sounds like fun. Tell Robbie happy birthday.”

“I will.” Anamaria rested her hand on Macy’s shoulder, studying her intently. People said the woman was a psychic, and Stephen figured it wasn’t his place to say yes or no. There were more mysteries in the world, blah blah. After a moment, she bent to hug Macy. “We have a few minutes before the cake’s ready. Can we borrow Clary and Scooter for a little play in the square?”

Psychic, intuitive or just an insightful woman—Stephen didn’t care. At that moment he adored her.

Macy hesitated until the kids, including her own, started clamoring. Finally she nodded. He thought her reluctance might have as much to do with the conversation that awaited them as it did with letting Clary go off.

Linking hands, the kids headed off with Anamaria, Scooter trotting alongside with his leash in both girls’ hands. Stephen watched until they were in the square proper then turned his gaze to Macy. “You can see her and make sure she’s safe, and she can’t overhear a thing. You believe in fate?”

“I guess I do.” She shifted in the chair then folded her hands together. It took her a long time to start, but he didn’t push. Skittish creatures tended to push back or flee entirely.

“I told you last night that I—I lost the baby I was carrying when Mark died.”

He didn’t need to be particularly insightful to know she’d said those words to very few people. They were still difficult for her. They still tore at the raw place in her heart.

“I also, in a sense, lost Clary. I was hugely depressed. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, not even to feed or dress my daughter. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel. I didn’t care if I lived or died. The only times I wasn’t depressed, I was in a constant panic, almost manic in my behavior. I would get up at two in the morning and scrub the bricks in the fireplace because if I didn’t keep busy, I felt like I would explode out of my skin.” She gazed at her hands as if searching for telltale signs of that frantic scrubbing, grimaced, then went on.

“I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t stop imagining horrible things happening to Clary, to my family. I tried to anticipate every disaster, every tiny little mistake. I couldn’t bear to let her out of my sight. Then the anxiety would fade—though it never went away—and the depression would come back. I wouldn’t bathe, wouldn’t eat. It was too much effort to even open my eyes most of the time, but even then, there was a little voice in my head, warning me of all the ways I could lose Clary. I didn’t have the ability to act on it, but it wouldn’t leave me alone.” Her voice trembled, her breath catching. Across the street, Clary called to her, and she looked up, smiling tightly, waving to her daughter.

“Finally, in a rare lucid moment, I asked my parents to hospitalize me, so they did. They committed me to a psychiatric hospital in Columbia.”

Stephen wanted to look away, to close his eyes, to take some time to process her bleak words, but he kept his gaze on hers. The shadows in her eyes were haunted, sad enough to make him need to gather her into his arms and never let go. He settled for tightening his fingers around hers.

“You’d been through a lot, Macy. Your husband’s suicide, losing your baby, Miss Willa’s death, all in a month. It’s no wonder your brain shut down for a while. You needed time to deal with it.”

“I wanted so badly to just go back a few months, a year. To wake up and find myself back in Copper Lake, still happily married to the man I knew in college, because he was definitely not that man at the end. But instead the doctors forced me to move forward—and Clary. She was a powerful incentive. I got out of bed for her. I took medications for her. I sat through hundreds of hours of therapy for her. I knew by then that she might not need me, but I damn well needed her.”

He wanted to argue the statement that Clary didn’t need her. She was her mother; she adored her; of course Clary needed her. But the girl had been barely one and a half when her father died, when Macy was hospitalized. She would have adapted to being raised by her grandparents, or to being Brent and Anne’s daughter.

Watching Macy stare into her coffee cup, he tried the whole scenario on in his mind. Macy, suffering such cripplingly severe depression and anxiety. On the one hand, it wasn’t such a surprise. Millions of people relied on antidepressants to get through the day. He could rattle off a dozen names of family or people he worked with in a dozen seconds.

On the other hand, the profound depression and anxiety she described... He looked at her and couldn’t quite imagine it. She struck him as gentle, yes. A little insecure. Maybe even a bit fragile. But he also thought she seemed strong, capable, on an even keel most of the time. Wasn’t that the best any of them could claim? That they were okay most of the time?

He glanced up as a couple of his clients, dressed for church in summer-weight suits, said hello, then went inside the coffee shop, and he wondered if they, like Will Calloway, had skipped out on the boring part of the sermon. When the door swung shut behind them, he said, “I’m really sorry for everything that happened, Macy. The words don’t do justice to the way I feel. I am overwhelmed and so very sorry you had to go through this, and I think the way you’ve come out of it is amazing. But just for the record, you’re not losing it again. You’re not crazy. Being back in that house, doing what you’re doing, is enough to give the most analytical person in the world the creeps.”

Her fingers squeezed his just slightly, and her wan smile reappeared for a moment. “Thank you for the vote of confidence, Stephen, but you’ve haven’t heard the rest of the story.”