LITMIR.BIZ

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She hadn’t really realized anything was missing until she’d come home after her father’s heart attack.

      Then, forced to take a break, to slow down and look around during those long days in his hospital room, she had seen cracks in her well-developed life begin to appear. A chasm of emptiness opened up before her.

      She was back with her father—in subdued silence. And longing for something more. That was why she’d been so glad to find Jon.

      He was as addicted to work as she was. For his entire adult life he had been filling the empty spaces in his life with patients and professional demands on his time. Now he was thirty-five. It was time to marry, to have a family.

      “One child,” he said. “I have time for one child.”

      “Two,” Ally had responded instantly. “I want at least two.” There was no way she was going to subject a child of hers to the same loneliness she’d experienced.

      Jon had looked doubtful and skeptical and as if he thought she was being irrational and irresponsible.

      “Two,” Ally had repeated. “Or three,” she’d added in a moment of recklessness.

      “No more than two,” Jon had stated firmly. “We don’t want chaos.”

      But a part of Ally did.

      And tonight on the deck of PJ’s parents’ house, she was reminded of it.

      The whole day, from the moment she’d got out of the car to be swept into the embrace of his parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and assorted relations, she had felt a sense of déjà vu that was odd because she knew she’d never experienced anything like it before.

      It wasn’t until after dinner, when she’d sat on a bench on the deck listening to Martha and Tallie compare toddler notes while in the kitchen the aunts discussed recipes, and in the dining room PJ’s father, Mr. Cristopolous and several friends compared golf swings and on the lawn little boys toddled about and bigger boys tossed footballs, and on the sand where PJ’s brother Lukas was deep in conversation with Connie Cristopolous and PJ and Elias were starting up a bonfire in the rock fire pit that Ally recognized what she was seeing—the families she’d read about in her books.

      They were real—at least this one was. And for the moment—for this one single weekend—they were hers.

      She smiled. Not just on her face, but all the way down to the depths of her soul.

      “Come on, then, Ally.” Martha broke into her realization. “I’ll show you guys the mural I’m doing in Ma’s sewing room.”

      And happily, willingly, Ally went with Martha and Tallie. She ran her hand along the oak banister as they climbed the stairs, certain that the wood beneath her fingers had been worn smooth by PJ and his brothers sliding down it. She paused to look at the family photos that lined the upstairs hall. They stretched back for generations, right to a couple of fiercely scowling men with bushy moustaches who looked as if they’d just got off the boat.

      “My great-grandfather Nikos and his brother, right after they emigrated,” Martha said when she noticed the direction of Ally’s glance. “I want to do a mural of the whole family—” she waved her hand to encompass the myriad photos on both the walls “—sometime. Show all the generations. I did something like it out in Butte as a local history project. You would have loved this photo of a traditional Chinese bride one of the students brought in.”

      Martha rattled on happily about that, while Ally and Tallie admired the ongoing mural in Helena’s sewing room. Martha had done small vignettes of children—the Antonides children. Here was Alex throwing a ball, Eddie taking his first steps, the twins smearing birthday cake all over their faces. And their parents, too, when they were children. All of Helena’s and Aeolus’s children were there.

      “Is that PJ?” Ally asked, arrested by a small painting on the wall by the bay window of a young boy on a surfboard.

      Martha laughed. “Who else?”

      Who else, indeed? Ally moved closer, drawn to the picture of PJ as a boy, recognizing the triumphant grin and, in his expression, the sheer joy of being alive.

      “Of all of us kids,” Martha said, “he was the one who loved it here the most. The one who loved the ocean the most. We always thought he was insane, going all the way to Hawaii when he had one out the back door. But—” she smiled at Ally “—I guess he wasn’t so crazy after all. Look who he brought home.”

      And there was such warmth and such approval in her voice that Ally felt about two inches high.

      She couldn’t respond to it, could only smile and feel betraying tears prick.

      “Hey,” PJ’s voice came from the doorway. “I wondered where you’d got to.”

      “Brought her up to show her family history,” Martha said. “You haven’t seen this, either.” She waved a hand around the room.

      PJ ambled in and startled Ally by snagging her hand and drawing her along with him while he moved from vignette to vignette. She tried to look at them, too, but mostly she was aware of his hand wrapping hers.

      She should tug it away. It was sending the wrong message, and not just to the onlookers, but to Ally herself. It promised a relationship, a future. A married life of love.

      Experimentally she tried pulling her hand out of his. He hung on tighter. “They’re terrific,” he told Martha, nodding at her paintings. “Ma loves ‘em. Says she’s going to make you fill the whole room.”

      “Yes, well, Theo and I are doing our part. Tallie and Elias are doing theirs. Up to you now,” she added giving him a significant look.

      Ally tensed at her obvious inference, but PJ’s grip on her hand didn’t change. “All in good time,” he said easily. Then, as if he took it all in stride, as doubtless he did, he said to all of them, “Fire’s going. Sun’s set. Come on out.”

      The scene around the firepit was even more reminiscent of all the stories she used to read. Most of the family gathered around it, sitting on blankets, laughing and talking as the evening lengthened and the sky grew deep and dark.

      The breeze off the ocean turned the air cool, and Ally would have gone for her sweater, but before she could, PJ slipped his sweatshirt jacket over her shoulders.

      “Come here,” he said, and drew her down onto the blanket, shifting around so that she sat in the vee of his legs and he tugged her back against his chest, looping his arms around her.

      It felt far too intimate for Ally’s peace of mind. But at the same time, perversely, it felt like exactly where she wanted to be.

      “Warmer?” His lips were next to her ear, his breath lifting tendrils of her hair.

      She shivered again at the feel of it and, misunderstanding the cause, he wrapped his arms more tightly around her. “I can go get you a warmer jacket.”’

      It would have got her out of his arms. Saying “Yes, please” would have been the sane thing to do, but Ally didn’t do it.

      She couldn’t bring herself to destroy the evening. It was her dream come to life. The warmth and joy of the camaraderie, the laughter and easy music that began as Lukas picked up a guitar and began to play, and two of PJ’s aunts began to sing, enchanted her. And the hard strength of PJ’s arms around her simply enhanced the experience.

      “I’m fine,” she said.

      It was true. It was wonderful.

      It lasted the rest of the night.

      It was late when the party began to break up. Tallie and Elias had put the twins down to sleep. Martha had gone inside to rock Eddie. Yiayia had gone up to bed an hour earlier, but not before she’d stopped on her way in to smile down at Ally, snug in the embrace of PJ’s arms.

      “Ne,” she said approvingly. And her fingers had brushed over

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