LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Yeah, it’s me, Mom. Logan,” he answered before she could struggle further. “Caroline’s here, too.”

      The movement was small, but Amy managed to turn her head toward her best friend’s daughter.

      “Goo…”

      “Yes, Mom, it is good.”

      He looked to Caroline then, but her stricken expression was gone, and the smile that replaced it could have made even the sickest person feel better. Rather than hang back as some of his mother’s other visitors had, Caroline rushed forward and dropped a kiss on top of that matted head of hair.

      “Oh, Mrs. Warren, I’m sorry I haven’t made it here to see you yet.” Lowering into the seat next to the bed, she reached around the bars to grasp Amy’s good hand. “Are you feeling any better tonight?”

      “Pea…”

      “Mom, I sure hope you’re saying that you’re feeling ‘peachy’ and not like ‘pea soup.’” He crossed to the opposite side of the bed and bussed his mother’s cheek before returning to take the seat next to Caroline.

      “Bo…th,” Amy said with obvious effort.

      Logan and Caroline chuckled over her comment that sounded humorous whether she intended it to or not. Caroline lifted up from the seat and leaned in to brush the hair back from Amy’s face. Logan pretended not to notice that as she did it she blinked back tears, but he swallowed the emotion thickening in his throat.

      When Caroline lowered into the chair again, she gestured with her head for him to take his mother’s hand instead. An unsettling feeling squeezed in his chest, and his eyes burned. He drew in a gulp of air and let it out slowly. Tears wouldn’t give his mother back the full use of the left side of her body or her ability to speak. He believed that prayers could, but he wished God would hurry up with His healing power.

      They sat for a few minutes longer, watching as Amy nodded off. There was something comforting about Caroline being there, someone who cared for his mother almost as much as he did. This compassionate side of Caroline was new to him, seeming to soften her hard edges, but he suspected that side had always been there, buried beneath all of her goals and lists.

      The sound of footsteps brought his attention to the door. Mrs. Scott pushed the door open, a paper cup in her hand.

      “I didn’t realize you two were in here. Dylan and Jenna are in the waiting room. They’ll want to come in when you’re finished.”

      “Oh. Okay.” He lowered his mother’s hand and stood.

      Trina stepped to the bed and lifted the pitcher off the side table, pouring ice water into the cup and replacing the lid and straw. “Did everything go okay at the shop today?”

      Next to Logan, Caroline stood up from the chair, sending him a worried glance.

      “We did fine,” he said.

      Caroline blinked but seemed to recover from her surprise. “Logan did a great job handling a difficult customer. You would have been impressed.”

      It was Logan’s turn to be surprised, but before he had the chance to look over to Caroline to see if she was serious, his mother shifted next to him.

      “Shop?”

      Amy had just awakened again, and already she was asking about her business.

      “The bakery is going to be okay, Mom. No matter what it takes, it will be there when you’re ready to come back.”

      Caroline looked his way then. Her gaze touched him in a warm, steady connection. She didn’t have to say anything aloud for him to understand what she meant. He’d made a commitment to his mother, and she’d stepped forward to help him keep it.

      As Logan sat in one of the folding chairs squeezed around Trina Scott’s small dining room table, he couldn’t help thinking that something was wrong with that picture. In fact, everything was wrong with it.

      The Saturday-night dinner should have been around his mother’s mammoth dining room table. As always. She would have insisted on doing all the cooking and would have managed to top her last amazing meal. As always. This was his mother’s domain. Her fifty-plus-hour weeks making desserts for other people’s families should have taken away the novelty of preparing food for others, but she lived for dinners like this one. That only made it more tragic that she might never be able to host another one.

      Logan pushed the thought from his mind. He should have been starving for a good meal. When was the last time he’d eaten anything that hadn’t been wrapped in cellophane? Still, he found himself pushing meat sauce and ricotta around on his plate.

      “It’s not quite the same, is it?”

      Logan looked up to find Mrs. Scott studying him from the other side of the table. She glanced at his plate of nearly untouched lasagna and then back to his face.

      “No, the food’s great. Really.” He took a big bite to reinforce his comment but had to follow it with a gulp of iced tea to choke it down.

      “You can’t kid a kidder, son.”

      “It does seem strange, I guess.”

      “Whew,” Haley called out as she reentered the room, her folded arms using her pregnant belly as a resting spot. “I thought nobody was going to say it. No offense, Mom. Your cooking is great, but having a Warren-Scott dinner anywhere but in Amy Warren’s dining room just seems wrong.”

      Murmurs of agreement came from the others crowded around the table. Logan smiled at his sister-in-law, who pressed her hand to her back while she lowered herself into a chair. The two of them hadn’t agreed on much over the years, but they were in complete agreement on this one.

      “I miss Grammy,” Lizzie said as she rounded the table and climbed up in her aunt Caroline’s lap.

      “We all do, sweetie.” Caroline wrapped her arms around the child and pressed her cheek to Lizzie’s.

      The movement of brushing her fingers along the little girl’s braids in a comforting touch appeared surprisingly natural for a woman who was probably more comfortable in a boardroom than anybody’s living room. But then Logan remembered the Scotts’ unusual family dynamic. Because Mrs. Scott wasn’t comfortable with emotional scenes, she often sent Caroline to deliver hugs as her surrogate.

      He’d heard all the stories about Caroline comforting Haley after she’d been dumped by her fiancé and wiping away Jenna’s tears after she’d messed things up with Dylan. He’d just never witnessed these things himself until the last few days, and he was having a tough time reconciling this person to the businesswoman who’d marched into the bakery and tried to take it over.

      Logan didn’t realize he’d been staring at her until she glanced over and caught him. He turned away in time to find Matthew watching him.

      “Now, Logan, I would have expected you to be the last one to show up to joint family dinners,” Matthew said. “You were amazingly talented at finding ways to avoid them.”

      Logan understood that his brother was only trying to lighten the serious mood in the room, but it didn’t make him feel any less guilty over what Matthew had said. Still, he tried his best to play along with the joke. “Could I help it if I had a date?”

      “When didn’t you have a date?” Jenna supplied.

      He didn’t mind that they all had a laugh at his expense. They needed a reason to laugh, and the reasons had been precious few the last few days. Out of his side vision, he caught sight of Caroline watching him, and he couldn’t help wondering what she saw.

      “I did a pretty good job of avoiding family dinners myself,” Dylan said. “Optometry conferences, you know.”

      “All because you didn’t want to see me.” Jenna elbowed her fiancé and then, linking her arm with his, smiled down at the diamond solitaire on her

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