She rubbed her eyes and looked away from him, sniffling quietly. “I believed you for twenty years, Blake. It’s not so easy anymore.”

“I never thought it would be.”

“Yes, you did.”

He smiled ruefully. “You’re right. I thought you’d hear my apology and launch yourself into my arms and we’d ride off into the sunset together.” He sighed. “So, where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know.”

It was an opening, something at least. “You have to give me—give us another chance. When you asked for one, I agreed, and I thought about where we’d gone wrong and here I am. You owe me the same consideration, Annie. You owe it to our family.”

“Oh, good. A lecture on family values from you.” She pulled a compact from her purse and flipped the mirror open. “Perfect. I look like the Pillsbury Dough Girl.”

“You look beautiful.”

She looked up at him sharply. “But my hair will grow out.”

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

She clicked the compact shut. “No, you shouldn’t have.”

Her gaze was uncomfortably direct, and he was reminded that in some ways, after almost twenty years of marriage, he didn’t know the woman sitting across from him at all. “On June fourteenth, I’ll meet you at the house. We can discuss . . . this . . . then.” She got to her feet, and he saw that she was a little unsteady. She was obviously holding herself together with incredible effort.

He took hope from that. “I won’t give up, Annie. I’ll do whatever it takes to get you back.”

She sighed. “Winning was always very important to you, Blake.” On that final, cutting remark, she turned and walked out of the diner.

Chapter 22

Nick waited for Annie to return. For the first hour, he told himself he was being an idiot. He knew she couldn’t possibly meet with her husband and be back here in less than two hours.

But then two hours had stretched into three, and then four, and then five.

Forcing a smile, he’d made a big production out of dinner, for Izzy’s sake. He’d stumbled through one of Annie’s recipes: chicken breasts breaded with cornflakes and potato chips. He’d forgotten to start the rice in time, and so he served the oven-fried chicken with sliced bananas and chunks of cheese. He’d tried his best to keep a conversation going, but he and Izzy were both keenly aware of the empty chair at the table.

Everything had gone well enough until Izzy had looked at him, her upper lip mustachioed with a thin band of milk. “Daddy, she’s comin’ back, isn’t she, Daddy?”

Nick’s fork had hit the edge of his plate with a ping. He hadn’t known how in the hell to answer, and so he’d fallen back on standard parenting. Avoidance. “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he’d said, looking quickly away.

By the time they’d done the dishes and he’d given Izzy her bath and put her to bed, he was as jittery as a bird. He couldn’t even concentrate enough to read her a bedtime story. Instead, he’d kissed her forehead and run from the room.

Blake had been exactly what Nick had expected—and precisely what he’d feared. When he’d seen the handsome, confident, obviously successful man in his expensive black suit, Nick had felt as if he were nothing. He saw his own flaws in sharp relief: the cheap, small-town jeans that needed hemming, the T-shirt that had once been blue but after countless washings had been rendered a dull and lifeless gray, the ripped belt loop he’d never bothered to sew. And he didn’t even want to think about his looks—the deeply etched lines around his eyes that were Kathy’s legacy, and the unnatural color of his hair.

Blake was everything that Nick could never be.

He wished he could push his worry aside, think about something else—anything else. But the more he tried to clear his thoughts, the more she was there, inside him. Annie held his heart and soul in the palm of her hand, and she didn’t even know it.

He’d never felt as much a part of a family as he did now.

With another man’s wife.

Annie saw him standing out at the lake. She got out of her Mustang and eased the door shut quietly, walking slowly across the grass.

Wordlessly, she came up beside him. She waited for him to touch her, move close enough that she could feel the comforting heat of his presence, but he didn’t. Instead, he stood stiffly in place. “How did it go?”

There was no point in lying to him. “He made a terrible mistake and he loves me.”

“He did make a terrible mistake.”

There was a crack in his voice, and in it, she heard his pain.

“What are you going to do?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know. I spent two and a half months trying to fall out of love with him, and now when I’ve almost succeeded, he wants to take it all back. I can’t adapt this quickly.”

He fell silent, and she realized what she’d said. Almost succeeded. Almost fallen out of love with her husband. She wanted to place a Band-Aid on the wound of her words, but almost was the sad truth of her feelings for Blake. Anything else would be a lie.

On the shore, the water lapped quietly against the gravel. Breezes whispered through the leaves of a huge old maple tree.

The thought of leaving here terrified her. She thought of her big, empty house in California, and all the time she’d have alone. “What if—”

He turned to her. “What if what?”

She took a deep breath. “What if I . . . came back here? After . . . everything is settled? I’ve been thinking more and more about a bookstore. You were right, that house on Main Street would be perfect. And God knows, this town needs one . . .”

He went very still. “What are you saying?”

“After the divorce . . . and after Natalie leaves for college, I’ll be down in Southern California all by myself—”

“Don’t do that to me, Annie. Don’t throw me hope like it was a bone to bury in my backyard. I can’t spend the rest of my life waiting for you, watching the driveway, thinking today, maybe today. It’d break what’s left of my heart. Don’t make me any promises if you can’t keep them. It’s . . . easier for me that way.”

The wind seemed to leak out of her lungs. She sagged. He was right; she knew he was right. Her future was a mystery, impenetrable and uncertain. She had no idea what would happen when she returned home. She wasn’t even sure what she wanted to happen. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She wanted to tack on some kind of excuse, to remind him that she’d known Blake forever, that Natalie was her daughter, that she had always been a married woman, but none of the words mattered.

He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, swaying slightly, gazing down at her as if he had already lost her.

The next morning, Annie was so depressed she didn’t even go to Nick’s. Instead, she lay in bed and alternately cried and stared.

Her mind was too full; it was making her crazy, all the things she had to think about. Her husband—the man she’d loved since she was nineteen years old—wanted another chance to make their marriage work. He was sorry. He’d made a mistake.

Hadn’t she begged him to give their marriage a chance just a few months ago?

Beside her bed, the phone rang. She leaned over and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Annie Colwater? This is Madge at Dr. Burton’s office. I’m calling to remind you of your ten-thirty appointment this morning.”

She’d forgotten all about it. “Oh, I don’t know—”

“Doc Burton told me not to take no for an answer.”

Annie sighed. Last week she’d thought she’d beaten the depression, but now she was there again, slogging through the bleak confusion, unable to break through to the surface. Maybe it would be good to talk to the doctor. If nothing else, it gave her somewhere to go and something to do. She would probably feel better just getting out of bed. “Thanks, Madge,” she said softly. “I’ll be there.”

With a tired sigh, she rolled out of bed and headed for the shower. By ten-fifteen, she was dressed in a pair of jeans and a worn sweatshirt. Without bothering to comb her hair—what was the point?—she grabbed her handbag and car keys and left her room.

Hank was on the porch, sitting in his rocker, reading a book. At her hurried exit, he looked up. “You’re running late this morning.”

“I have a doctor’s appointment.”

His smile faded. “Are you okay?”

“Other than the fact that I’m depressed and retaining more water than a Sea World seal tank, I’m fine. Doc Burton made the appointment when I saw him. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t still feeling blue before I . . . went home.”

Blue. Such a nothing little word for the emptiness seeping through her bloodstream.

Forcing a smile, she leaned down and kissed his forehead. “ ’Bye, Dad.”

“ ’Bye.”

She hurried down the steps and jumped into her Mustang.

Downtown, she parked in the shade of an elm tree and left her car without bothering to lock the door. She hurried up the concrete steps and into the brick building she’d visited so often in her youth.

Madge grinned up at her. “Hello, sweetie. The doctor’s waiting for you. Go on back to exam room two.”

Annie nodded and headed down the white-walled hallway. She found a door with a huge black 2 stenciled on it, and she went inside. Taking a seat on the paper-covered table, she flipped through the current issue of Fishing News.

About five minutes later, Dr. Burton knocked on the door and pushed it open. “Hi, Annie. Are you still feeling blue?”

How in the hell could she answer that? One minute she was pink, and the next—especially since Blake’s call—the blue was so bad it was a dark, violent purple. She tossed the magazine onto the vacant chair. “Sometimes,” she answered.

“Marge tells me you tried to make an appointment while I was gone. What was that about?”

“A bout with the flu. I won, but . . . in the last day or two, the nausea has come back a bit.”

“I told you that this was a time to take extra good care of yourself. When the depression bites, your system has a hard time with bugs. How about if we draw a little blood and see what’s what. Then, if everything’s okay, we can talk about how you really feel.”

Three hours later, Annie stood in front of her father’s house. Shivering, she moved forward. Her legs didn’t seem to work; it felt as if she were walking through a dense gray fog that resisted her movements.

Slowly, she climbed the steps and went inside.

Hank was sitting by the fireplace, doing a crossword puzzle. At her entrance, he looked up. “I didn’t expect you until—”

She burst into tears. He was beside her in an instant. He scooped her into his big arms and held her, stroking her hair. Holding her close, he guided her onto the sofa, sitting beside her. Behind her, the door slammed shut, closing out the world.

“What is it, Annie?”

She sniffed hard and wiped her runny nose on her sleeve. She turned to him, but the words wouldn’t come.