LITMIR.BIZ

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around him, oozing nauseating amounts of sympathy and pity. He rubbed a palm across the stubble on his face, and drawled in a voice meant to annoy, “I can’t wait to hear.”

      “Because if you don’t, I am going to tell Lilah and John about your love affair with the bottle as well as the very un-called-for kiss and grope last night.”

      Sam glared at her menacingly. He didn’t want to think about the way he’d tried to scare her off, his reaction to her soft body and softer lips—the fact he’d gotten turned on for the first time since Ellie’s death.

      “And you know what they’ll do if that happens, don’t you?” Kate continued, oblivious to his pain. “They’ll cancel their trip to South America, and lose this chance to do medical missionary work.”

      Sam knew how long his uncle John and aunt Lilah had been looking forward to that. This had been several years in the planning and was the culmination of a lifelong dream. He couldn’t do that to them. They deserved better.

      “Not to mention,” Kate continued, “their month-long second honeymoon trip to New England in October to see the fall colors. It would be a lousy thing to do, depriving them of those two trips. And even in as bad a shape as you evidently are, you wouldn’t want to do that. Now would you?”

      Sam didn’t need Kate reminding him how much John and Lilah had done for him and his family. For the past ten years or so, they had filled the void left by the deaths of first his and then Ellie’s parents. They had been “parents” to him and “grandparents” to his boys.

      “I’m not asking my aunt and uncle to cancel anything,” Sam snapped.

      “You and I both know John and Lilah won’t leave town unless they are sure you and the boys are going to be taken care of in their absence. And right now, for that, I’m your only option.”

      Unfortunately, that was true, Sam thought. His cousins were all busy with their own lives, careers, families. As for housekeepers, they’d already run through quite a few. Finding another one was not going to be easy, given the bad rep in the state his boys had conjured up for the family. None of that, however, meant Sam wanted Kate’s help. He glared at her, resenting the position she’d put him in. “I know you mean well, Kate. But you living here will never work.”

      “We’ll never know until we try,” she said practically, at that moment looking every inch the determined grief counselor she was. “So what’s it going to be, Sam?” Her fingertips curled impatiently around the edge of his desk. “Are you going to give me a chance to help you and your kids before this turns into the kind of crisis you can’t come back from, or do I call John and Lilah now and tell them you are in worse shape than even they realize?”

      SAM DIDN’T ANSWER THAT. He didn’t have to. No one, not even the busybody Kate Marten, needed to tell Sam how important it was to shield his family from the way he’d given in to the pain and frustration and bottomed out the night before. Bad enough that Kate had been there to witness his behavior firsthand. Fortunately, he thought wearily, his kids hadn’t been around to see it. And by the time they got back from John and Lilah’s, there would be no evidence that anything had happened any differently than any other night.

      He met Kate’s stare head-on, his anger under tight control. “I’m going to take a shower.” He gave her a hard look, making it clear he expected her to be gone when he returned. Then he dragged himself out of his chair, up the stairs, and into the privacy of the master bedroom suite he’d shared with Ellie on trips back to Laramie. Sam’s throat ached as he glanced at the huge four-poster where he and Ellie’d made love many times and he still slept. I love you, Sam, Ellie had whispered every night before they went to sleep as she cuddled close. I love you so much. He would murmur the words back without really thinking about what they meant, what she meant to him. Scowling, Sam shook his head. He’d had so much, for so long, and he’d taken it all for granted.

      In the hierarchy of things to be done, Ellie rarely if ever took the time to see to her own needs. She was always busy seeing to everyone else’s. Had he just paid attention to those first signs, her sluggishness and unexplained weight loss. If he’d just insisted she go in for a physical, instead of letting her put it off… Instead, he had believed her when she said it was probably nothing. And by the time they discovered the tumor on her ovary, the cancer had spread. He’d known it was bad, but he still hadn’t believed she was going to die. Nor, when it came down to it, had she. After all, she was so young…just thirty-two when her illness was discovered. She had her whole life ahead of her, a husband to love and sons to raise. She’d been as certain as he that she would beat the disease. Realizing now how foolish and naive they had been, Sam shook his head and stripped down to his shorts. Leaving his clothes on the floor where they lay, he headed into the bathroom to shave. A glance in the mirror did nothing to lift his spirits. He looked even worse than Kate had indicated or he’d expected. His face was haggard beneath the stubble of his beard, his eyes puffy and red, the corners of his mouth drawn in an expression that revealed just how miserable he felt inside. There were harsh lines on his face; a grim look in his eyes. He hadn’t slept more than three or four hours a night in months and the strain showed in his gaunt, tired appearance. Kate Marten was right about one thing, Sam thought as his lips twisted in bitter gallows humor. He was a hell of a role model for his sons.

      The regret inside him mounting, for all the times and ways he had failed his family, Sam picked up the can of shaving cream. Scowling, he spread the foam over his face and began to shave. He needed to start eating right and to get a decent amount of rest every night. But even as he thought it he knew: even if he hadn’t been drinking last night, he probably wouldn’t have slept. The insomnia was just one more thing he didn’t know how to deal with. It had started during the first days of Ellie’s illness, when their days and nights were filled with worry. This couldn’t be happening to them…her tumor wasn’t really malignant…her cancer hadn’t really metastasized. And even if it had, nothing was going to happen to her. Not with all the specialists he had flown in, the strings he and his uncle John McCabe—one of the most respected and well-connected family doctors in Texas—had pulled to get her the very best of care possible, the most up-to-date, comprehensive treatment.

      After all, their lives had been charmed up to that point. Sam had professional success beyond his wildest dreams, he and Ellie had a lively, loving family that was the envy of all their friends. They had money and clout. And Sam hadn’t been afraid to use it to help his wife. But none of it had done any good in the end. Through endless rounds of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, Ellie’s cancer had continued to grow and spread. She’d gotten weaker and thinner by the day. And all Sam could do was be strong for her and the boys. Behave as if everything was going to be fine, even when he and Ellie had been told by the doctors that she had very little time left. He’d wanted to level with the kids immediately. Prepare them for what was to come. Ellie had resisted—vigorously. “I don’t want them grieving while I’m still here,” she’d told him emotionally. “I want our last days together to be full of love and laughter and joy. Not weighed down with unbearable sadness.”

      So Sam had prayed hard for a miracle and pretended she would survive, even when he knew her lungs ached with every breath and her pain required larger and larger doses of pain-killers to keep it manageable. When the boys had entered her sickroom she had smiled and been the mom they needed and depended on. Only with Sam, in the last few days of her life, had she let down her guard and told him the truth, that the suffering she felt was getting to be too much. She felt so unbearably weary. Weak. Sick. It was time to move on, Ellie had whispered tearfully as he’d held her in his arms, crying, too. She was beginning to want to move on. And quickly after that, she did. Slipping away from them peacefully in her sleep. Leaving him to face their boys’ wrath—at having been misled about the terminal nature of her illness—alone.

      It wasn’t easy seeing the disillusionment and disappointment every time he looked into his sons’ eyes, Sam thought as a single tear slid down his cheek. Harder yet realizing just how much of their family’s happiness had centered around Ellie. His family and friends kept telling him the numbness, the disorientation, the relentless anger over Ellie’s fate would go away with time. But it hadn’t,

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