“The mayor’s son?” Ellie asked, surprised.

“She didn’t give him her number, and she doesn’t respond,” Taylor said.

“I did this morning,” I said. Taylor looked devastated. “I told him if he didn’t stop, I was going to file a complaint with the police department.”

“And he’s still trying to contact you?” Ellie asked.

“Yes,” I said, annoyed.

“You did?” Taylor asked. “You told him that?”

I turned to him. “I told you. I want nothing to do with him.”

Taylor managed a small half smile. He didn’t lose his temper. He didn’t punch at the air or scream or slam doors. Maybe it was because he was emotionally exhausted, but I’d asked him to do better, and he had. “I wish I could do better by you. That’s what you deserve.”

The shocked expressions across the table prompted me to reach for his hand. His vulnerability at that moment was so incredibly moving.

He looked down at my hand on his and blinked, seeming surprised.

“Will you sit on the porch with me?” I asked.

He stared at me for a moment like I’d spoken in a foreign language, and then he nodded, finally processing my request. “Yeah. I mean yes. Of course.”

Taylor’s chair grated against the floor when he pushed it back to stand. I kept his hand in mine while we walked to the front door. He didn’t try to pull away, but he was on autopilot, letting me lead him outside. We sat down on the top step and listened to the birds whistling, the wind pushing through the leaves on the trees, and watched the cars drive by. It was a beautiful, sunny summer day. It should have been pouring rain from gray skies, but instead, the storm was inside. Taylor’s cheeks were wet from silent tears, and I felt myself growing desperate.

“I know this is probably the worst time for this, but I have to. I’m going to say something that I wanted to say the other night, so I don’t want you to think there is any other reason for this than me telling you of a decision I’ve already made,” I said.

“Falyn.” He waited several seconds before speaking again. I was afraid he would tell me to shut up because he didn’t want to hear anything from me. That anything I had to say would be of little importance to him that day, and I couldn’t be mad because he would be right. “If you tell me you want a divorce right now, I’m warning you … I might just walk into the street and lay there.”

I couldn’t help but smile, but it faded. “I don’t want a divorce.”

His eyes met mine, and he really saw me for the first time in hours. “You don’t?”

I shook my head. “I love you. And you’re right. We should work on this together, not apart. It’s not doing anyone any favors, particularly the kids, and …”

“I think I’m hearing you say that when we get home, we’re not separated anymore.” He waited, cautiously optimistic.

“I’m saying we’re not separated anymore.”

“Anymore? You mean now?”

“Yes.”

“As in right now?” he asked, still unsure.

“If that’s okay with you. I don’t mean to assume.”

He closed his eyes and rested his head in his hands, leaning forward almost onto his toes.

“Be careful,” I said, holding him back by the arm.

He puffed out a cry, and then he pulled me into his arms. Soon, he began to sob, and I held him. The muscles in my back began to burn, but I didn’t dare move. If he needed me, I would sit in that position for the rest of the day, holding him.

His shoulders stopped shaking, and he took in two deep breaths, pulling back and wiping his eyes. I’d never seen him in so much pain. Not even the night I left. “I do love you,” he said with a faltering breath. “And I’m going to be better. I can’t lose you, too. It’ll break me, Falyn … I might already be broken.”

I leaned over to kiss his cheek and then the corner of his mouth. He stiffened, unsure what to do, worried to do the wrong thing. I pressed my lips against his, once and then again. The third time I parted my lips, he kissed me back, holding each side of my face. We hadn’t touched in months, and once we started, we couldn’t stop. We were crying and kissing, hugging and making promises, and it felt right.

Taylor held his forehead to mine, breathing hard, relieved but once again cautious. “Is this for now? Is it going to be different when we get back to Colorado and go home to the same problems?”

“We’ll be working on the same problems, but it will be different.”

He nodded, a tear dripping from the tip of his nose. “It will. I promise.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

ELLIE

I SWIPED LEFT ON MY EREADER DISPLAY, turning the page, and then adjusting my body when Tyler stirred. He’d been asleep on my right thigh for two hours, and Gavin on my left for three. I wasn’t sure why I moved. Trying to adjust after one of my boys did to make them more comfortable usually just made them uncomfortable, and they would shift again. For whatever reason, I thought I’d know what would make them more comfortable than they did, and I was almost always wrong. It was in part a control issue and maternal instinct. I needed to feel I was helping to make them comfortable, when in reality if I’d just sat still, they could have done it themselves.

I skimmed down the page, absorbing ideas about coping with death, helping others to cope with death, and the comfort in the belief held by a Ph.D. that our energies move on to the next life. I wasn’t sure if that made me a transcendental new age fruit loop, but it made me feel better, and as far as I was concerned, that was my purpose—to exist and heal wounds in the healthiest way I could.

I’d been grappling with finding peace in Thomas’s death, in the lies, and in the danger we’d been put in. I tried not to think about Gavin’s picture being one in the more than a dozen photographs scattered on the passenger seat of the vehicle carrying three mafia hitmen, or that his picture had likely been spattered and stained by their blood. The same dark red in color as Gavin’s, and not long ago surging through veins of a man who was once a boy; whose only difference from me was a series of bad choices, spurned by childhood experiences marred by his parents’ bad choices: a cycle that was never broken.

My heart ached for the men who would have murdered my child without a second thought, and that was unnerving as well. I’d given up anger, and with that release, I found myself without the tool I needed to hate. I could hate them, but it was difficult when I’d spent so many years viewing adults as children and studying the origin of their actions. I’d never considered that in my discipline to view the world in a new way, I would struggle with having expected emotions that would have come so easily to me a decade earlier.

Still, those men I couldn’t hate weren’t imaginary. They’d come to Eakins with guns and a very real threat to our family. It was easy to blame Thomas and Travis for bringing them there, but that would require placing the blame on someone else’s choice. Thomas and Travis might have made their own choices based on the Carlisis, but they were on the right side of this. Their only other choice was to allow the Carlisis to avenge Benny’s death. I was a person who detested violence, but sitting in a room with my sleeping husband and son, I realized there truly was a time for everything.