The Family Man

“My mom used to sew,” Hannah said, wiping her nose. “She made us dresses once.”

Tess remembered. Her mother had sewn matching blue dresses with pink ribbons that the twins had worn on the first day of school in the third grade. That was when it was really cool to be Hannah’s twin. Now Tess wouldn’t wear the same color shirt Hannah was wearing, much less the same dress.

Thea’s smile faded and her voice got real soft. “I bet your mom did a lot of special things with you.”

Suddenly, Tess could barely fill her lungs with air. Her face started to feel numb and tingly. “Why are you being nice to us?”

Thea started to say something, but Tess drew in a shaky breath and cut her off. “You don’t have to be nice to us anymore. Ask Uncle Logan. We’re not nice.” That’s why no one wanted them.

“Hmm. Your aunt Glen thinks you’re nice.” Thea didn’t correct her or try to be too cheerful the way the teachers did at school when Tess talked back at them. She just looked…serious.

It would have been better if Thea had given her a fake smile or argued with her. Hannah was sniffing, crouched on the floor at her feet. Tess struggled not to cry.

“Tess, I’ve taken care of you for two months and I’ve never seen you do anything mean. I don’t think you realize what a special girl you are, how special you both are. You worked together to save Whizzer, didn’t you?”

When the door closed behind Thea and Whizzer, Tess wiped her nose, listening to Hannah cry. She couldn’t make herself reach down and touch her sister for fear she’d start crying herself and never stop. She ached with loneliness.

Why did Mom have to die?

THEA SAT on the front-porch step watching Whizzer make a frenzied circuit around the sun-dappled yard, but she was seeing something else. Her mind replayed memories of her own past—lying on her bed in a dark room and wondering how she’d make it through the next day without her mother. What would she have done if her father hadn’t wanted to take care of her? At ten, she’d been running the household, striving for perfection in the hopes that her father wouldn’t find fault with and abandon her, too. At ten, Tess and Hannah had gone in the opposite direction, withdrawing into shells so tight they might never open.

“Whizzer must be marking his territory against the raccoons,” Logan commented as he lowered himself onto the step next to her.

Lost in thought, Thea hadn’t heard Logan come outside. She hugged her knees tight as she attempted to push the painful childhood memories to the far corners of her mind, along with the strange flutter she got in her stomach from looking at Logan. Being attracted to him was almost more disconcerting than her memories. He’d already made it very clear he didn’t want her around.

“Should I be afraid of letting Whizzer out at night? He won’t get eaten or anything?” She’d only had the dog for a few days, but he now had a permanent place in her heart.

“Might.” He shrugged. “Cats need to be kept in at night, too. Not because of the raccoons, but because of coyotes and wolves.”

“Wolves.” Thea shivered.

“We’re out in the middle of the woods. This is their turf, not ours.” Anyone else would have smiled when they reminded Thea that she was in the midst of a forest. Not Logan. With the sun on the other side of the house, his face was cast in late-afternoon shadows.

She should have been put off by the closed, withdrawn expression he wore to cloak his grief. Instead, Thea’s heart went out to him once more. His distant demeanor was very hard on his nieces. It wouldn’t help them deal with the death of the most important person in their lives, or the apparent abandonment of their father. Thea had gone through counseling to deal with her own sense of loss and knew that Logan needed to talk about what had happened in order to move on. And if he didn’t move forward in the grieving process, he couldn’t help the girls.

In his isolated mountain home, Logan was clearly not working through his grief, hiding in the silence and darkness he so obviously craved. For some reason, Thea couldn’t shake the thought that Logan needed people to heal. The three of them—Logan, Tess and Hannah—stood a chance if he’d just open up.

“It seems a little lonely up here. No sirens. No music from your neighbor’s apartment. No garbage trucks lumbering by,” Thea said to fill the silence.

He looked at her shoes, before admitting, “Some call it peaceful.”

If it was peace he wanted, he wasn’t getting it from Thea. For two months, the twins had put up with her questions and stories. Maybe her efforts to draw them out weren’t successful, but Thea wasn’t going to stop trying.

“I once met a woman who couldn’t stand silence. She carried a Walkman everywhere she went, with just one earphone plugged in.” There. That ought to get a reaction out of him. Thea couldn’t resist staring at Logan.

Logan looked shell-shocked, and then he deadpanned, “What did she listen to? Religion? Talk radio?”

“Rap music.” Thea allowed herself a small smile at the memory of her grandmother. “She was a black belt and said it kept her on her toes.”

He rolled his eyes. “So, you’re saying silence is overrated?”

“For some people.”

“You, for instance. You’re never silent or still. Why is that?”

This was definitely going in a direction she wanted to avoid. She was who she was, and she didn’t want to explain herself to him. By rights, he shouldn’t want to pursue the subject, either. His house was silent as a tomb. “Were you close to Deb?”

Logan chewed on his cheek, making her wonder if he was going to answer. “Yeah,” he finally admitted.

“Was losing Deb…was it sudden?” The twins rarely spoke of her.

“We knew.” Two words spoken incredibly slowly, an indicator of his tremendous grief.

As he stood, Thea watched Logan erect barriers around himself as clearly as if they’d been made of brick. He was shutting her out.

“And Wes? Were he and Deb—”

“They were separated. He was never here. He never called.” Logan’s words were more guarded than usual. “When he showed up in November and wanted to take the girls, I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t seem to stop him.”

Frowning, Thea rubbed her hands over her eyes. How horrible that must have been for Tess and Hannah, being passed along and cared for by two men who didn’t express their emotions easily. Thea’s father, a police detective, had been much the same.

“Are you staying or not?” There was no invitation in his tone.

“The girls warned me I wouldn’t like it here,” Thea hedged, filled with second thoughts. She didn’t really want to tiptoe through this family’s grief if it meant dredging up all of her own baggage. And yet, how could she not?

“Why did they warn you?” Logan hung his head and answered his own question. “Never mind. It was Tess, wasn’t it?”

Thea rushed to explain. “Tess was more curious as to why I’d want to stay than telling me I couldn’t.”

“I don’t know why you’d want to stay, either. I don’t know what I was thinking even offering to let you stay a few days. I would have run in the opposite direction if I were in your shoes.”

“Then why did you ask me?”

HE HESITATED. Why indeed?

Logan’s muscles bunched. Any more pressure and he just knew he’d crack. Deb. The twins. His leg. His entire body vibrated with the need for a release. Thea placed a hand on his arm. Her fingers were cool against his skin. Despite himself, the tension in Logan’s muscles eased.

“Do you want to tell me more about Deb?”

Looking into Thea’s solemn gaze, Logan wanted desperately to say no. Anything he said was just going to make him look weak. He had his rules, which was how he kept it all together.

Don’t talk about Deb. Don’t think about Deb.

With effort, he made his head move in something that might have resembled a stiff shake.

“I know it sounds like a cliché, but sometimes it helps to talk about it. Especially to a stranger.”

Logan’s lungs wouldn’t fill with air. Sister Mary Sunshine was here to fix him?