Twins Included

“Thank you. I think!” Although her cheeks had flushed two shades deeper than Sunset Blush, her eyes were cool.

“So,” he said, “what have you been doing?”

“Just looking around.” She smoothed a tidying hand down her hair; unnecessarily, since—to him at least—it looked perfect. “Getting the feel of things again.”

“I used to do the same, whenever I came home from UBC in the summer holidays—I always had to wander around, looking, touching—though it didn’t take long, our house being so small!” He saw her pink-glossed lips tighten and realized it had been a mistake to talk about summer vacation from UBC. Quickly he moved on. “Fancy some lemonade?”

She hesitated for a moment, and then with a shrug in her voice, said, “Sure.”

In the kitchen, he took two cans of lemonade from the fridge, poured hers into a glass and handed it to her.

He leaned against the counter, taking a draught from his can, while she perched on the edge of the table.

“Where did you get to this morning?” he asked.

“I went to church.”

“Didn’t see you there.”

“I was late, took a seat at the back. I’d run out of gas, couldn’t get the car started. I had to walk.”

“And after?”

“I didn’t hang around. I’m not quite ready to talk to people yet.” She looked down at her glass, ran a slender fingertip over the rim. Her oval nails were painted the exact same shade of Sunset Blush as her lips. “Although I did have a word with an old friend on my way home. Molly White. Martin now. She said you were going to her place for lunch.”

“She mentioned that you’d met up.” He looked again at her hair, which was full of bits of sunshine from the rays streaming in through the window. It used to be a short curly mop; now it was parted in the center and fell to her breasts, straight as rain. He preferred it like this. Except that it made him ache to run his hands through it, to feel the silky strands slide through his fingers—

“Molly told me she’d lost her husband. How long ago was that?”

“Three years ago. He was a cop. Shot in the line of duty—got in the way of a bullet when he was trying to stop a robbery at the Esso station on Wayberry Road. He and Molly…” Matt shook his head. “They were so right for each other. She took it hard. As did the kids, of course. Stuart and Iain adored their dad. And Dave thought the world of them, too. His family was his life.”

“Does Molly have a job?”

“No. She trained as a nurse, though, in Vancouver. Worked there full-time till the kids came along, then part-time after that. She’d been planning to start full-time again, once both boys were in school…but before she could, Dave was killed. She was shattered, went totally to pieces. She hasn’t worked at all since then. I often think it would be the best thing for her, to go back, but…” He shrugged.

He didn’t tell Liz that he wished Molly would go back to work. It wasn’t that he minded “being there” for her, he didn’t. What concerned him was that instead of becoming less dependent on him as time went by, she was becoming more and more clingy, more and more needy. He’d expected that by now she’d be making moves to reclaim her independence. She hadn’t. But he’d promised Dave to look after her for as long as she needed him. And so he would.

“Liz,” he said, “I want to talk about you. Why did you come back here? Did things go…wrong…in New York?”

“Wrong? What do you mean?”

“You know…problems at work, or with…a man…?”

“That’s my business, Matt. I’d prefer if you didn’t try to pry into my affairs—”

“It’s just that you’re looking a bit…run-down.”

“I was in a stressful job,” she said. “I worked for the CEO of a major stockbroking firm. Busy, busy, busy, with long hours, constant deadlines. It took a lot out of me, I was getting burned out…but now that I’m home, I’ll be fine. And since you’re into making personal remarks,” she added, raking a pointed glance over his face, “it looks as if you finally met your match!”

She was referring, of course, to his broken nose; his scarred lip; his bashed-in cheekbone.

“Yeah.” He managed to keep his tone nonchalant, but his hand clenched around the can and he heard a faint creak as the tin gave way under the pressure. “I guess I did.”