Page 19 of Chasing Dreams
Austin tasted the potato. It was delicious, as was the steak and salad. Best of all, he hadn’t had to fix it himself. She’d tried to make herself useful. She had made herself useful. Somehow he understood she wasn’t any happier with the situation than he was, but that she was just determined enough to secure his help that she’d overcome her reservations.
He admired that.
He caught himself mid-thought. No. Stop right there. Any thoughts of acceptance would only lead to trouble. He’d cut himself off from people for a reason, and he’d do well to remember that. He knew better than to let attraction scramble his thoughts.
He ate, then got up to pour them each a cup of coffee. He’d opened up to someone once. And it had been the biggest mistake of his life. He wouldn’t make it again. “The way to this man’s heart is not through his stomach.”
Her head shot up and she leveled that warm honey gaze on him. “I wasn’t trying to bribe you.”
“Good. See that you don’t.”
She picked up the broiler pan and placed it in the sink a little more noisily than necessary.
“Forget that. Come sit in here.”
Hands resting on the edge of the sink, she straightened her slender shoulders. Finally she turned and followed him into the other room, sinking onto a sofa.
Austin built a fire. The flames caught the sticks and eventually the split log. “Tell me what you did at the institute.”
He could tell she was thinking over her attitude. She had to answer him to get anywhere with her situation. “I stayed a month. I took a lot of tests.”
He sat on the hearth. “You said nothing specific brought on these dreams of yours.”
“That’s right.”
“Can you remember your first dream about your nephew?”
Pain flickered across her face as plain as the firelight. “Yes.”
“Describe it to me.”
She did, with tears in her voice and in her eyes.
“Do you remember anything about the day or two before that first dream?”
“I remember everything.”
“Tell me.”
“I went to the cemetery that morning. On the way I stopped at the store and bought pink-tipped carnations. Maggie loved carnations. I left them at her grave. And a single blue one for Jack. There’s a marker with his name. There’s nothing in the plot, though. But I didn’t want Maggie alone there without some hint of him.... Somehow it seemed...I don’t know... right. Maggie never liked being alone.”
“What else?”
“There was a couple from Michigan at the inn that weekend. It was a Monday, and after lunch, I checked them out of their room. Maya took care of the cleaning and the laundry, and I went through Maggie and Jack’s closet and drawers. Jack’s clothes and toys are still in my extra bedroom. I stored some of Maggie’s things in the garage, the things I couldn’t part with. And I took a trunk load to the Open Door Mission.”
“They had been staying with you?”
“She moved in with me after the divorce. I helped her take care of Jack.” Tears welled up then, and her chin trembled. She struggled to go on. “She made a lot of mistakes, but she was a good person. I loved her.”
Austin had seen so many suffering people, it was a wonder he could still feel anything at all. But he did. He felt plenty. Her anguish. Her grief. Her confusion. Damn her. That’s why he’d come here: to get away from feeling those things. She was exactly the person he’d avoided for the last twenty years.
To elude the dangerous wave of compassion that urged him to do something crazy like reach over and touch her and open up another whole set of complications, he turned and added another log. “Did the institute help you any?”
“They affirmed that I wasn’t as crazy as the police thought when I kept nagging them about Jack still being alive. At first I couldn’t separate the visions of Maggie and Jack in the car—under the water—”
She stopped. “Those were my fears, you see,” she went on. “Maggie had always buckled Jack into his car seat, but when the search team brought the car up, he wasn’t in it. Maggie’s seat belt hadn’t been fastened, either, leading the police to believe she’d attempted to free herself and Jack under water.” Shaine rubbed her fingertips against her breastbone over her heart as though soothing away an ache. “They said maybe she got Jack out before she ran out of oxygen and was unable to get out herself. All the morbid possibilities of what could have become of his little body went around and around in my head until I thought I’d go crazy.”
He said nothing, and kept his posture carefully guarded.
