Page 59 of Just a Heartbeat Away

“Maybe she’d become available if she knew you had feelings. I can’t imagine this other fellow can compare.”

Seb coughed. Hard. “That sounded suspiciously like a compliment.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Sebastian. I give you plenty of compliments.”

“Name one other.”

She glared at him, then went back to arranging the slices of bread in the bowl. “I’ve stopped folding your laundry, haven’t I? I don’t call the school to check in on Matty anymore. I don’t insist on picking him up from school or buying his clothes. What would you call all of that?”

“Oh.” Seb furrowed his brow. It simply hadn’t occurred to him. “You’ve been handing back the reins to me because you...trust me.”

“Obviously I do. You’re a good father. Don’t make me hit you over the head with it.”

He blinked at her. “But you’ve never liked me.” Maybe it was a stupid thing to say, but it was a piece of evidence he’d clung to for years. It had allowed Muriel’s disappointment in him to keep from sinking in too deeply. All the cutting comments and sideways glances, all the insinuations that he was incompetent, he’d been able to ignore to a certain extent, because she’d never liked him. There wasn’t even the chance of being good enough. It was just a personality thing.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” She filled a tureen with ice water to set on the table for dinner. He knew she’d fill a small pitcher next, with milk for Matty. And last would be the little carafe of red wine that she’d put out but frown when anyone partook. “I like you just fine. Now.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at her candor. “But before...” he prompted.

She just pursed her lips.

“Oh, come on, Muriel. We’re this far in. Might as well go the whole way.”

“Fine. Yes, before, I didn’t like you. You got my daughter pregnant after a few months of knowing her, and you were an absent father.”

She let that little gem sit between them, blooming noxiously like a plume of bloodred ink in the ocean.

“But I would have to be intentionally blind to ignore all the ways you’ve grown. Pushed yourself. And at great emotional cost. I used to think you were a lazy man. And maybe you were. But you’re not anymore.” She sniffed, patted her perfect hair, and finally, finally made eye contact with him. “I don’t hold grudges. It’s immature. And you’ve proven yourself just fine.”

Matty banged through the back door, smashing through the moment and demanding Seb’s full attention while he laid out the three different types of autumn leaves he’d found in the backyard with Grandpa Sullivan. And then dinner was on the table and then it was bedtime for Matty, almost immediately followed by bedtime for the Sullivans.

Just a few short hours after that mega-bomb conversation with his mother-in-law, Seb sat alone in his workshop, all the lights clicked on. He leaned back on two legs of his folding chair and clicked open his phone, going immediately to his texts. There were two new messages from the women he’d had to cancel on last week. He’d made the dates impulsively. They were both his age. Now they both wanted to reschedule. He clicked his phone closed and tossed it onto one of his workbenches.

He didn’t need to text right now. Texting was another man’s game. Strangely, it was with Muriel’s words in his mind that Sebastian rose, selecting one raw slab of wood from his shelves and then another and another. He was going to do what he did best.

He worked until midnight. With no drawings, no plans, he let the wood surprise him. Just the way he liked it.

SEBSPOTTEDVIAfrom afar a few times that week. But he didn’t like what he saw. She looked slow and sad, and she was constantly alone. Usually he’d spot her with Sadie or Shelly or Grace, sometimes Cat. They’d be sitting next to one another in the teacher’s lounge or laughing over the Xerox machine. But she was chronically alone now. And the one time he went to her office, she’d been on the phone, offered him no more than a polite wave. He’d been certain her eyes were red like she’d been crying.

Something was up. He resolved on Saturday morning that, if she wasn’t at softball that afternoon, he would call Serafine to check and see if everything was all right. Ever since he and Serafine had figured things out via text, that they weren’t a love match, he’d become much less stressed at the idea of hanging out with her. In fact, he’d been toying with the idea of inviting her over again, sometime when Tyler was supposed to come over as well. He liked the idea of seeing his friend as off-kilter and schoolboyish as he’d been a few weeks ago. It made Seb feel a little less like a twerp for nursing this crush on Via.See? Grown men can act like fools over pretty women; it happens every day.

Seb, Matty and Crabby, the whole motley crew, pulled into the parking lot next to the softball fields. Two seconds later, the Sullivans pulled their Benz smoothly into the spot next to Seb’s truck. He tried hard not to sigh. They’d wanted to come to his softball game, of all things.

Seb was fairly sure that they decided to come onlyafterMatty had spilled the beans that no one specifically watched over him while Seb was playing. But it wasn’t like he was running wild! Seb could see him the whole time. Still, no matter what the reasoning was, Sebastian found himself both looking forward to and dreading the thought of seeing Via for the first time in a week and a half under the watchful eye of his mother-in-law.

He’d had exactly zero more heart-to-hearts with Muriel, if you could even call it that. But still, he was very well aware of just how sharp her vision was.

“Remember what we talked about, Matty?” Seb asked his son as he hauled him out of the booster seat in the back of his truck. Crabby hopped down with leonine grace. The effect was immediately squashed by the tongue lolling out one side of his mouth.

“Right. Don’t give Grandma and Grandpa a heart attack while they’re playing with me outside, and don’t make it seem like you let me run wild like a lost boy,” he recited, almost verbatim.

“Right. And there’s a stop at Ample Hills ice cream in it for you if you can manage to pull the whole thing off, capisce?”

“Capisce.” Matty nodded extremely solemnly. He took his artisanal ice cream very seriously.

“Well. This is quaint,” Muriel said, her utilitarian pumps clicking on the parking lot pavement.

“What’s the difference between a softball field and a baseball field?” Art asked, pushing his thick lenses farther up his nose and buttoning the middle button on his tweed blazer.

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