LITMIR.BIZ

      3

      The downstairs carpets were far from dry. “Leave the fans on for another day or so,” Tony said distantly. Standing beside the dining room table, he rolled up a set of plans and slid it back inside its cardboard cylinder.

      A sensation of utter bereftness swept over Sharon, even though she knew it was best that he leave. The divorce was final; it was time for both of them to let go. She managed a smile and an awkward, “Okay—and thanks.”

      The expression in Tony’s eyes was at once angry and forlorn. He started to say something and then stopped himself, turning away to stare out the window at Bri and Matt, who were chasing each other up and down the stony beach. Their laughter rang through the morning sunshine, reminding Sharon that some people still felt joy.

      She looked down at the floor for a moment, swallowed hard and then asked, “Tony, are you happy?”

      The powerful shoulders tensed beneath the blue cambric of his shirt, then relaxed again. “Are you?” he countered, keeping his back to her.

      “No fair,” Sharon protested quietly. “I asked first.”

      Tony turned with a heavy sigh, the cardboard cylinder under his arm. “I used to be,” he said. “Now I’m not sure I even know what it means to be happy.”

      Sharon’s heart twisted within her; she was sorry she’d raised the question. She wanted to say something wise and good and comforting, but no words came to her.

      Tony rounded the table, caught her chin gently in his hand and asked, “What happened, Sharon? What the hell happened?”

      She bit her lip and shook her head.

      A few seconds of silent misery passed, and then Tony sighed again, gave Sharon a kiss on the forehead and walked out. Moving to the window, she blinked back tears as she watched him saying goodbye to the kids. His words echoed in her mind and in her heart. What the hell happened?

      Hugging herself, as though to hold body and soul together, Sharon sniffled and proceeded to the kitchen, where she refilled her coffee cup. She heard Tony’s car start and gripped the edge of the counter with one hand, resisting an urge to run outside, to call his name, to beg him to stay.

      She only let go of the counter when his tires bit into the gravel of the road.

      “Are you all right, Mom?” Bri’s voice made Sharon stiffen.

      She faced this child of her spirit, if not her body, with a forced smile. “I’m fine,” she lied, thinking that Bri looked more like Carmen’s photographs with every passing day. She wondered if the resemblance ever grieved Tony and wished that she had the courage to ask him.

      “You don’t look fine,” Briana argued, stepping inside the kitchen and closing the door.

      Sharon had to turn away. She pretended to be busy at the sink, dumping out the coffee she’d just poured, rinsing her cup. “What’s Matt doing?”

      “Turning over rocks and watching the sand crabs scatter,” Bri answered. “Are we going fishing?”

      The last thing Sharon wanted to do was sit at the end of the dock with her feet dangling, baiting hooks and reeling in rock cod and dogfish, when right now her inclinations ran more toward pounding her pillow and crying. Such indulgences, however, are denied to mothers on active duty. “Absolutely,” she said, lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders before turning to offer Bri a smile.

      The child looked relieved. “I’ll even bait your hooks for you,” she offered.

      Sharon laughed and hugged her. “You’re one kid in a thousand, pumpkin,” she said. “How did I get so lucky?”

      Carmen’s flawless image, smiling her beauty-queen smile, loomed in her mind, and it was as though Tony’s first wife answered, “I died, that’s how. Where would you be if it weren’t for that drunk driver?”

      Sharon shuddered, but she was determined to shake off her gray mood. In just two days she would have to give Briana and Matt back to Tony and return to her lonely apartment; she couldn’t afford to sit around feeling sorry for herself. The time allowed her was too fleeting, too precious.

      She found fishing poles and tackle in a closet, and Bri rummaged through the freezer for a package of herring, bought months before in a bait shop.

      When they joined Matt outside, and the three of them had settled themselves at the end of the dock, Bri was as good as her word. With a deftness she’d learned from Tony, she baited Sharon’s hook.

      In truth, Sharon wasn’t as squeamish about the task as Bri seemed to think, but she didn’t want to destroy the child’s pleasure in being helpful. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m sure glad I didn’t have to do that.”

      “Women,” muttered Matt, speaking from a seven-year pinnacle of life experience.

      Sharon bit back a smile. “Shall I give my standard lecture on chauvinism?” she asked.

      “No,” Matt answered succinctly. It was the mark of a modern kid, his mother guessed, knowing what a word like chauvinism meant.

      Bri looked pensive. “Great-gramma still eats in the kitchen,” she remarked. “Like a servant.”

      Sharon chose her words carefully. Tony’s grandmother had grown up in Italy and still spoke almost no English. Maybe she followed the old traditions, but the woman had raised six children to productive adulthood, among other accomplishments, and she deserved respect. “Did you know that she was only sixteen years old when she first came to America? She didn’t speak or understand English, and her marriage to your great-grandfather had been arranged for her. Personally, I consider her a very brave woman.”

      Bri bit her lower lip. “Do you think my mother was brave?”

      Questions like that, although they came up periodically, never failed to catch Sharon off guard. She drew in a deep breath and let it out again. “I never met her, sweetheart—you know that. Wouldn’t it be better to ask your dad?”

      “Do you think he loved her?”

      Sharon didn’t flinch. She concentrated on keeping her fishing pole steady. “I know he did. Very much.”

      “Carl says they only got married because my mom was pregnant with me. His mother remembers.”

      Carl was one of the cast of thousands that made up the Morelli family—specifically, a second or third cousin. And a pain in the backside.

      “He doesn’t know everything,” Sharon said, wondering why these subjects never reared their heads when Tony was around to field them. “And neither does his mother.”

      Sharon sighed. God knew, Tony was better at things like this—a born diplomat. He and Carmen would have made quite a pair. There probably would have been at least a half dozen more children added to the clan, and it seemed certain that no divorce would have goofed up the entries in

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