LITMIR.BIZ

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write those out. We should probably call the hotel to confirm our reservations—”

      “Lee,” Tucker cut in quietly. “Is this really why you wanted to get away and talk? To go through our to-do list for the millionth time? We can talk about this stuff anywhere.”

      She got that frightened, doubtful look on her face. “But we weren’t talking just now, were we? We weren’t saying anything. I was...filling the silence.”

      “There’s allowed to be silence, isn’t there?”

      “Not when—” She stopped and took a breath, lifted her strong chin. She had the strongest face of the three Cherry girls, determined and full of courage. Tucker was so grateful that the burning oil hadn’t splashed more than an inch above her jawline to change those contoured planes. She began again. “Not when all I can think about when we’re silent is that I can almost feel you wanting to call this off.”

      “Call it off,” he echoed blankly, as if he didn’t know.

      “Yes. Cancel. End it. Tell me it’s been a mistake. I keep waiting for you to say it, and you don’t.”

      “Because I didn’t want to hurt—” Wrong, wrong, wrong.

      Her eyes narrowed and she went white. “That’s why? That’s why? I thought you might not be sure about what you were feeling. Wedding jitters. I’m having them, too, and the other stuff, the sense that we’re not connecting, and I haven’t known if it was temporary— But now you’re saying— You’re telling me you knew this wasn’t right, knew it for sure, but you were just going to go ahead with it anyhow?”

      “Not for sure. I was— I kept—” But he couldn’t say it. He didn’t really know, himself, what he’d been going to do. He didn’t feel as if he understood anything right now. He kept thinking about his dad, and his own determination never to do anything even remotely similar to what he had done. You had to consider your family’s happiness, not just your own. You couldn’t let your emotions blow you every which way like leaves in the wind.

      She said it for him. “You were going to marry me, because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Do you have any idea how insulting that is?”

      It went downhill from there.

      And then, eventually, after quite a long time, with a lot of silence, some tears, some words, it came partway back up. “It’s a relief,” Lee said quietly. “I’m relieved.”

      But when they got back to the house she didn’t even wait for him to kill the engine before she jumped out of the car, gabbled something he couldn’t catch and disappeared inside. By the time he reached the porch, he could hear through the open front door her feet clattering up the stairs toward the privacy of her room.

      He didn’t go inside.

      He couldn’t. Not yet.

      He needed some space. They’d decided not to say anything to anyone else until tomorrow. “Daisy only arrived six hours ago,” Lee had said. “I don’t want to hit everyone with this news until she’s settled in a little.”

      “It’s not about Daisy, is it?” he’d answered, and the words had felt like a lie in his mouth.

      Was it about Daisy?

      Hell, he definitely wasn’t going inside right now, because Daisy would probably be there.

      He sat on the porch steps instead, hunching over to rest his elbows on his spread knees and brooding in the dark. A slew of different emotions roiled inside him, as choppy and confusing as the waves on the lake when the weather was changing.

      This whole thing felt like a change in the weather, a change in the season. That unsettling feeling at the end of summer when the leaves rattled down from the trees in a sudden wind, and the temperature dropped forty degrees in an hour, only to come back up into the seventies again the next day.

      He didn’t run his life on these kinds of emotions. He didn’t blow hot and cold. There’d been no place for that kind of thing after the lymphoma had finally claimed his dad eight years ago, when Tucker was just sixteen. No place, and even less motivation.

      He’d had to grow up fast, with no time to waste. He’d had to put his family first. He’d needed two part-time jobs to help his mom with money. He’d been the one to sit up with her late at night while they talked about how to keep Mattie in school and whether Carla was old enough for a serious boyfriend. He knew the value of caution, and of thinking things through. He knew the honor in it, even more.

      “It’s meaningless, isn’t it?” he asked the universe, on a mutter. This sense of changed destiny, of an unlooked-for miracle, it was just nonsense.

      What am I asking for? A damn sign, or something?

      He heard footsteps behind him.

      It was her, Daisy, and his crazy heart told him that this was the sign he’d been asking for.

      He turned around too eagerly, already half on his feet on the lowest porch step.

      And of course it wasn’t her.

      It wasn’t even Lee. It was Mary Jane.

      “Oh.” The energy slumped out of him. The slump was so obvious that Mary Jane couldn’t miss it.

      “Everything okay?” she asked with a lightness he didn’t buy for a moment. She knew something was wrong. Maybe she’d seen Lee disappear upstairs and close the door of her room. There was no light coming from Lee’s window, he saw. She was in there in the dark. Daisy’s room was next to hers, and from there the light shone brightly, spilling down onto the porch roof.

      “Everything’s fine,” he growled, almost too low for Mary Jane to hear. She said nothing, and he let her silence prod him into saying more, still on a reluctant mutter. “Lee and I have been talking. We’ve worked it out. It’s okay.”

      “Good.” It was firm, almost aggressive. She hesitated for a moment, as if she might have said something more, then turned to head back inside. She’d been waiting all evening for Alex to call, and Tucker guessed that he still hadn’t. He would be full of apologies when he finally did, and would probably bring her flowers the next time he saw her, but Tucker still wasn’t impressed by his ex-future-sister-in-law’s boyfriend.

      “Mary Jane, is that you down there?” Daisy’s voice came from her window.

      She lifted the sliding screen and stuck her head out, her hair haloed by the lamp on the desk nearby. Tucker took the last step down off the porch, looked up at her and felt like Romeo to her Juliet.

      But soft! What light through yonder window breaks, if you can believe that nonsense!

      “Oh, Tucker, sorry,” she sang out breezily. “I thought it was Mary Jane.”

      It was. Dragging his gaze from the upper window, he found that Mary Jane had heard her sister’s voice and had stopped on the porch. She was looking at him as if she’d read the whole Romeo-and-Juliet thing in his body language, clearer than Shakespeare’s words.

      “She’s here,” he told Daisy, his voice catching roughly in his throat.

      “Or if you don’t mind, Tucker, I left my hairbrush in her car. Could you grab it for me and toss it up? Is it locked, Mary Jane?” she called a little louder.

      Mary Jane cleared her throat, and called back, “No, it’s open. I can get it for you.”

      “But I bet Tucker can throw better than you.”

      “I could bring it up to you, Daisy,” Mary Jane said tetchily, starting across the porch and down the steps. “Nobody has to throw it!”

      “I got it,” Tucker said quickly. The car was parked only yards away. He found the hairbrush on the front dash and held it up for Daisy to see. “You really want me to...?”

      “Sure, why not.” She reached out for it. He threw it neatly, and she

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