Lost And Found Family

You’d think by now he would have developed better tools to cope, as their once-upon-a-time counselor had advised. He’d tried. But, always, there was the memory of Owen.

He felt helpless, unable to understand that loss or how to reach Emma. He kept wanting to do something, make something good, or at least better, come from their tragedy so it wouldn’t seem so senseless. But what had he done tonight? He’d made her feel worse than she already did.

“Christian,” she said into the darkness, as if they hadn’t quarreled earlier and this was just like any other night. “Come to bed.”

He didn’t answer. How did she manage to shut out the remembered sounds of baby steps, a first complete sentence, the joyous shout of a toddler’s laughter?

His mother never hesitated to move on. She still managed her life as she always had—with crisp efficiency. She’d promptly packed away every sign of her only grandson, or for all Christian knew she’d donated everything to one of her charities. Not a picture remained on the mantel in her home in Lookout Mountain. Where the oil painting of Owen had once hung in the hall—his mother called it the gallery—there was only a glaring white rectangle. He’d grown up in that house, where only pleasant conversation was allowed, and he didn’t want that in his own marriage.

“Be right there,” he told Emma. Bob was already on the bed, lightly snoring on top of the covers. Like the sofa, their bed had once been strictly taboo. But that rule was from the days when the dog slept with Owen, the two of them tangled together in the covers.

“I’m falling asleep,” Emma murmured. “Before I do, a couple of things—first, don’t forget we have that reception tomorrow night at Coolidge Park.”

He wanted to groan. Tomorrow was shaping up to be just too much fun. And there it was, the subject he’d hoped to avoid, another slot in a schedule. Another lockstep appearance he didn’t want to make, like going in to work every morning.

“We have to go?” He didn’t wait for the answer he knew would come. “Let me guess. My mother is the chairperson. It’s not one of those monkey-suit things, is it?”

“You’ll be fine. Or wear your charcoal-gray suit instead.”

“I didn’t know I owned a charcoal-gray suit.”

“And a black one.” He knew exactly when he’d worn that one. Her voice trembled so he guessed Emma didn’t need the reminder, either. “If you keep moving, Frankie might not notice it isn’t a tuxedo.”

Like that would ever happen. His mother had eyes like an eagle. He turned to see Emma propped on an elbow in bed. In the dim light of the moon her blond hair looked darker and so did her ocean-blue eyes, almost black. She seemed like a total stranger.

Christian sent her a grim smile. “I’ll give Mom one hour. Write a check for the cause, whatever. Make conversation with all those ‘important people’ she hangs out with—even take part in another of those endless silent auctions—then we’re out of there.”

Her tone was light. “You sound like an eighth grader at a grown-up party.”

“Thanks,” Christian said drily.

He allowed himself a brief moment of pretending this was just any night, not even a year ago, their quiet time together at the end of a busy day. Maybe Emma was pretending, too.

“You’re already squirming,” she said with a little smile in her voice, “but you know we have to do this.”

“My mother...”

But that was tomorrow. He’d have time to prepare himself for the usual prying questions, the intolerable sympathy from people he barely knew. And, somehow worse, from those he did. The words never sounded genuine.

“...speaking of Frankie,” Emma murmured. “My second issue. Christian, I had a call today from your father. It’s their anniversary soon and he’d like to throw a big party. He wants me to do the planning—”

“Trust me. Mom doesn’t want a party.” Neither did he.

“Could you talk to her?”

For another few seconds he peered into the darkness, at the patch of driveway in front of the garage doors. “I can try,” he finally said when what he really wanted was for the whole world to stop.

No, he wanted time to move backward like a videotape running in reverse until the accident hadn’t happened at all. Until they were still a happy family with a grown daughter and a sweet little boy. The child Christian had yearned for yet, after his divorce, never expected to have until he met Emma.

At last he crossed the room to slip between the sheets. Bob was twitching in her sleep and one rear leg jabbed him in his side, but Emma had said no more and neither would he. Instead, he lay there thinking about tomorrow’s fund-raiser at Coolidge Park. The certain run-in with his mother about the anniversary party. The shattered moments of his and Emma’s lives.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_c42b52db-81fa-5011-af8e-f0cb65a13936)

“I THOUGHT YOU’D be here sooner.”

Emma had just stepped into Coolidge Park’s Walker Pavilion when Frankie—wearing an ivory gown and pearls—spotted her. On a drift of Chanel perfume, she gave Emma an air kiss on each cheek. “I wondered if you’d decided not to come.”

Ah, but your wish is my command.

Emma was wearing a sparkly, floor-length bronze dress for tonight’s fund-raiser. She’d even had her hair done today, sandwiching the appointment between a trip to Signal Mountain to begin redoing Mrs. Belkin’s closet, another tense phone call with her landlord and a quick dash home to shower then change.

“Business,” she told Frankie. “Sorry.”

Instantly Emma wished she’d said something else. Work was never a valid excuse for Frankie, whose daily life centered on her charitable activities.

Despite Emma’s insistence that she and Christian come tonight, the event set her teeth on edge. This part of the city’s North Shore was now the place to see and be seen. That wasn’t a factor for Emma, who had few social pretensions. But she’d spent many afternoons here at the nearby carousel with Owen and didn’t need the reminder of happier times.

“Is Christian here yet?” she asked.

Frankie tilted her head toward a group of men, including her husband, in the far corner of the crowded pavilion. Emma easily picked out Christian. He stood taller than the rest, his dark hair, gray suit and white shirt like the beacon of a familiar lighthouse in some stormy harbor. He and Lanier were talking, but Christian looked tense. Emma recognized his I’m-with-my-father-and-I’m-not-myself-at-the-moment laugh.

Frankie sensed trouble. “You didn’t drive in together? I assumed you were in the ladies’ room to freshen up.”

Emma bit back a sigh. “Christian was tied up at the office all day. We missed each other at home. I had no choice but to drive my own car—being already late,” she couldn’t help adding. “He looks trapped. Excuse me.” With Frankie’s gaze following her, she crossed the room on high-heeled sandals.

“Hey, good-looking,” she said, reaching Christian’s side, then flushed. The teasing words had come without thinking, as they might have less than a year ago. After their quarrel last night they sounded false.

Yet his eyes warmed for a second. He turned to his father and the other men in the group, his tone a shade too hearty. “Am I a lucky man, or what?”

Southern gentlemen to the core, they all politely agreed. She gave her father-in-law a quick kiss on the cheek, then slid her hand into Christian’s. “We need to circulate.”

“Emma,” Lanier called her back. “We’ll talk about the party.”

“Whenever you like,” she said.

She and Christian continued across the room, greeting people here and there until an older woman swooped down on them in a flash of blue organza. Emma couldn’t remember her name, but she was one of Frankie’s charity friends.

She hugged Christian, then cast a glance at Emma’s dress. “Lovely, my dear,” she said. “And how brave of you to come.” She patted Emma’s bare shoulder. “In your place I wouldn’t be able to leave the house.”

Christian squeezed Emma’s hand. “We’re doing fine,” he said, then kept walking until another woman stopped them.

“Emma. Frankie said you’d be here but I wasn’t sure...”

“We wouldn’t miss it,” she murmured, her throat closing on the words.

Grateful for his solid presence, Emma gripped Christian’s hand as he led her away. She spied Grace and Rafael Ramirez standing by the bar. Grace had married the barn’s trainer this past summer, much to Christian’s dismay. He still thought Grace, at twenty, was too young, and she’d quit college, rather than choose a major and then finish her degree, to become Rafe’s wife.

Emma waved at them but they seemed to be in a deep discussion and didn’t respond. She glanced away—and there was Max Barrett. Her pulse skipped a beat. Later she’d have to apologize to him about the carousel horse. I don’t know what else to do except to start charging that poor pony rent.