This Time For Keeps

Lori’s eyes widened as Julia whisked into the kitchen. “You should have seen her. She pretty much let him have it.”

Meg sighed. “Julia!” Then, “What happened to ‘You have to call him’?”

Julia returned with three spoons. “Your terms,” she said. “Not his.”

It was hard to argue with that.

“And so you came over here to…?” she asked, glancing from the bag in Lori’s hands to the utensils in Julia’s.

Julia grinned. “Eat ice cream.” Tucking her arm under Meg’s, she all but dragged her to the back door.

Meg thought about protesting, telling them she was fine. Insisting that they go home. She hated that they felt the need to descend on her as if she was some fragile creature in danger of shattering.

But gratitude overrode everything else.

Over the years they’d shared a lot, from Barbie clothes to real clothes, and then real dreams. And real heartache. Julia and Lori had been there before she went off to college—and when Meg came home. They’d listened to her go on and on about the dreamy guest professor—and they’d gawked when he came after her. They knew about the night she lost her virginity. They’d helped her plan her wedding. They’d encouraged her when she and Russell had been forced to turn to medical science to conceive a child. They’d held her hand, helped with shots, held her up.

In the end, they’d been the ones to help glue all the pieces back together.

Outside, on the wide porch overlooking the yard that sloped down to the creek, she let them steer her to the top step, where they all three plopped down. Lori pulled the carton out of the bag. Julia ripped off the lid, revealing the mint chip ice cream beneath.

Lori handed over the spoons.

They all dug in.

THE PINEY WOODS GAZETTE had once been a thriving daily newspaper. Meg’s great-grandfather had prided himself on being a newsman, founding the local paper to quiet the gossip that often gripped the town. He had been a man of facts. A man of principle. Focus. He thought everyone had a right to know…everything.

It was a legacy Maxwell Landry dedicated his life to building—and passing down to his only son.

Standing outside the offices of the Gazette, Russell figured it was probably best neither man had lived to see the newspaper business slowly wither away. More and more consumers were getting their news from alternative sources, particularly online. Print was static, cumbersome. Passé. It was only a matter of time before physical newspapers became a thing of the past. He and Meg had spent countless hours working on strategies—

He frowned. No strategy in the world could stop the continuum of change. You adapted, or you became obsolete.

He and Meg had never been very good at adapting.

Neither had Ainsley. From the time she’d been just a toddler, his sister had never been able to just go with the flow. She’d seen the world through a lens all her own, and now she was gone.

It still hurt like hell.

Hating what had to be done, he pushed open the door and strode into the outer office, as he’d done hundreds of times before. And just like all those times before, the scent of vanilla and orange greeted him. His office had been down the hall to the left, across from Meg’s. Sometimes he’d worked there, but more often than not, he’d roamed the vacant space upstairs. He could think better there, without walls everywhere he turned.

Lori sat at the front desk, flanked by two ficus trees. Her role had expanded beyond being a receptionist, but with limited budgets, staffing had become an issue—and someone needed to sit out front.

Lori, with her warm smile and inherent gentleness, was the obvious choice.

She looked up from her computer screen, and again, all Russell could think was how tired she looked. Dark smudges ringed her eyes, the glare of the overhead lights making her look even more pale. She and Meg were roughly the same age, which put her at thirtyish. But she looked far older.

“Hi,” she greeted, and he couldn’t help but smile. He’d always had a soft spot for Lori.

“Hi, yourself,” he said. “You okay?”

She smiled, and the shadows seemed to recede. “Just tired,” she said, downplaying his question. “Busy day ahead. Trey has an—” She broke off, shook her head. “You’re here for Meg.”

They were simple words…true. But not true at all. “I need to get the keys—”

She picked up a small retro Magic 8 Ball from beside a picture frame on the edge of her desk. From it dangled two hot-pink keys. “Got ’em.”

Lori had the keys. Meg had given them to her. Obviously she had no intention of seeing him.

The quick burn in his gut surprised him.

“I expected her back by now,” Lori said, “but the festival meetings almost always run long.”

With two long strides he was across the cozy reception area. He reached out, almost grabbed the keys. But this was Lori, not Meg, and she’d never been anything but kind to him. Jaw tight, he forced a smile and took the keys, made the requisite small talk before returning to his rental car.

How like Meg to avoid what she didn’t want to face.

The drive across town took less than ten minutes. He pulled off the quiet crepe myrtle–lined boulevard and wound his way through a few side streets before arriving at the small frame house.

Flowers bloomed. Everywhere he looked, a rainbow of colors screamed back at him. Pink and white from the azaleas, red from geraniums, yellow from daisies and daffodils. Even the trees rained colors, a veritable parade of dogwood and redbuds, all shimmering in the late-morning sun like something straight out of a picture book.

Once he would have grabbed his camera and gone down on his knee, searching for the perfect blend of light and shadow and color. That’s what Ainsley had always loved, the contrasts in life. The unexpected.

The house had been drab when she’d first showed it to him, gray in the dead of winter. He’d thought she was making a mistake, but she’d seen the promise, and she’d insisted.

Now she was gone, but the color remained.

Russell pushed the car door open and stepped into the seductive warmth of Texas in April. He was a man who thrived on the periphery, the complete opposite of his baby sister. No matter how much he did not want to go inside, he owed her. This, and a whole lot more.

Striding up the walk, he made his way between the armies of petunias lining the walkway, up the two steps to the screened porch, and yanked open the outer door.

Meg rose from the porch swing, the baby on her hip. “Hey,” was all she said.

He stopped, stared at her standing there in a fall of sunlight, her jeans faded, her scoop-neck olive shirt wrinkled. Her hair was soft, loose.

“Meggie.” Goddamn his voice for breaking.

She shifted little Charlotte on her hip. “Lori called, told me I’d just missed you.”

His hand tightened around the key.

“My meeting ran over,” she said as Charlotte fisted her hand in Meg’s hair and yanked. “I must have been crazy signing up to chair. You wouldn’t believe how many last-minute details there are.”

The edges of the key dug into his palm. “You always were one for staying busy.”

Her smile was lopsided, and with it about a thousand years fell away. “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.”

The tension spun out between them, the stillness and the silence pushing in like invisible walls. Once he’d known this woman as well as he’d known himself, her body—her heart. Or at least, he’d thought he had. She’d been his wife and his friend, his coworker and confidante, his lover. They’d bought a falling-down house and turned it into a home. They’d shared meals and dreams, their bodies…