Colby sat beside her husband, in the wake of his suffering, and cried.
She cried for all the years Joe would miss. She cried for the Morgans’ unending pain. She cried for Alec’s tortured history with his brother. And she cried for the empathy she could not feel for her husband.
For the last bit of love that seemed to have died right along with Joe.
Chapter One
Present Day
People liked to tease Colby that, if she were ever late, they’d assume she was either dead or arrested. She’d prided herself on her punctuality. Today, however, a quick glance at the car’s clock warned that she’d be late for her appointment.
It couldn’t be helped.
Her grip tightened on the steering wheel as she stopped at the entrance to the Queen of Heaven Cemetery. Its gates always triggered the same flashback—Mark taking flight off their ninth-floor balcony several weeks after Joe’s funeral. Like a cascade of dominoes, next came the sour stomach, the pasty mouth, the sweaty palms. Breathe.
Mark’s refusal to properly treat his bipolar disorder had doomed their marriage, but Colby had never wanted that ending for him or herself.
The echo of survivor’s guilt—as unshakable as her shadow—often steered her into the graveyard. Today, the second anniversary of Joe’s death intensified the summons. Inevitably, a mental fog descended, clouding her thoughts about the two important men in her life who now lay buried beneath earth and memories and broken dreams.
Although her last three visits to these graves hadn’t ended with mascara-streaked cheeks, the jury was still out on today. Having only recently weaned herself off the medication that had been prescribed to manage her PTSD, this visit would be a test. She’d been feeling stronger, banking on new memories and dreams to mend her broken pieces.
Colby parked along the narrow road that separated two larger plots of land. To her right lay Mark. To her left, one hundred yards across the road, was Joe’s headstone. A bouquet of fresh hydrangeas lay at its base. No surprise, considering the anniversary. Thankfully, she hadn’t run into his family. But for her whirlwind courtship and impulsive elopement with Mark, the Morgans wouldn’t be visiting Joe’s grave—a fact no one could forget.
Cold fingers of dread crept up her neck when she thought of meeting with Alec later this morning. Their former friendship had been another casualty of these tragedies.
Joe had been her childhood playmate, Alec her protector. Opposing images of Alec cycled through her mind like a flip book: him patiently tutoring her in French (which she’d only taken because, when she’d heard him speak it, it had sounded more romantic than Spanish), then politely brushing her off at the grocery store a few months after the funerals. Knowing her face would always be a painful reminder of Joe’s death, she’d given Alec the space he’d demanded without words.
He must be desperate to be willing to work with her now.
She shut off the engine but remained inside the car with the window cracked open. Leafy branches swayed in the breeze, sounding like the ghostly whispers Mark had often spoken of during manic phases. In those moments, he’d declared himself a prophet, which had frightened her, although no more than many other things he’d done or said during their marriage.
If she hadn’t become benumbed to his brain’s pattern of recovery from mania, she might’ve noticed that his depression following Joe’s death had been more acute. Might’ve realized that taking a little time off from work to comfort him wouldn’t be enough. Might not have missed the fact that he’d been lying about taking his meds and seeing his doctor.
But Mark had been a pretty good liar, and maybe she’d been too caught up in her own disillusionment and grief about Joe to notice. She’d been running on autopilot just to get through those days, reluctant to do or say anything to make the situation at home even worse. It wasn’t until Mark had mumbled incoherent apologies and hurtled toward the balcony that she’d awakened from that haze.
By then it had been too late.
Mark had jumped to his death, much like Joe had in the fatal dare.
She closed her eyes now to block the image of Mark’s broken body on the sidewalk below. Defiantly, the gruesome vision of bone, blood, and gray matter surfaced. She forced her eyelids open, fixing her gaze on the rustling leaves as if they could erase the memory engraved on her brain. The tightness in her chest eased slightly, although her eyes still stung.
Two deep breaths later, she offered up a prayer. If she had one fervent wish since her husband’s death, it was that he finally found the peace that had eluded him in life. Assuming things went according to plan, she might also know peace soon.
She twisted the platinum wedding band she still wore out of respect—and guilt—while staring blankly at the light rain now dotting the windshield. Like tears, she thought. She started the car and let the automatic wipers clear them away before heading out of the cemetery, toward her new venture, A CertainTea.
Toward the future.
Even the rain couldn’t mar the sight of the newly renovated restaurant. The elegant, one-story glass-and-stone structure sat at the end of a private driveway, amid a wooded, two-acre parcel bordered on one side by Lake Sandy. A lush, manicured lawn sloped toward the hexagonal cedar gazebo at the water’s edge, where visitors could enjoy a panorama of the four-hundred-acre lake and its shoreline, which was dotted by private homes, docks, and boats.
Colby could hardly wait to be surrounded by families celebrating engagements, birthdays, and anniversaries here. Celebrating life!
Convinced that hosting other people’s happiest moments in this peaceful setting would draw her from her perpetual state of limbo, she’d persuaded her father to invest some of Cabot Tea Company’s funds in this endeavor. Of course, that purse had strings. Technically, CTC owned A CertainTea. She’d manage it, but she’d report to her brother, Hunter.
She accepted that condition because CTC had assumed all the risk. It wasn’t like her former legal career had prepared her to be a restaurateur. But if she could run multimillion-dollar real estate and banking deals, she could manage this place.
“I was about to call a bail bondsman,” Hunter teased, standing in the open doorway. Her brother’s wire-rimmed glasses framed his owlish eyes, which constantly assessed his surroundings. His wife, Sara, had helped him acquire the bit of polish he’d never cared about: taming his thick brown locks into a neatly cropped style, and dressing him in well-made clothes. “I can’t stay long. Meeting with Dad and Jenna.”