Brambleberry House: His Second-Chance Family

Hadn’t she suffered enough from emotionally unavailable men?

“Look what I found, Mom!” Maddie uncurled her fingers to reveal a small gnarled object. “What is it?”

As she studied the object, Julia held her daughter’s hand, trying not to notice how thin her fingers seemed. It appeared to be an agate but was an odd color, greenish gray with red streaks in it.

“We forgot to bring our rocky coast field book, didn’t we? We’ll have to look it up when we get back to the house.”

“Do you know, Mr. Garrett?” Maddie presented the object for Will’s inspection.

“I’m afraid I’m not much of a naturalist,” he said, rather curtly. “Sage is your expert in that department. She can tell you in a second.”

“Oh. Okay.” Maddie’s shoulders slumped, more from fatigue than disappointment, Julia thought, but Will didn’t pick up on it. Guilt flickered in his expression.

“I can look at it,” he said after a moment. “Let’s see.”

Will reached for her hand and he examined the contents carefully. “Wow. This is quite a find. It’s a bloodstone agate.”

“I want to see,” Simon said.

“It’s pretty rare,” Will said. He talked to them about some of the other treasures they could find beachcombing on the coast until they reached his house.

“I guess this is your stop,” Julia said as they stood at the steps of his deck.

He glanced up the steps, as if eager to escape, then looked back at them. “I’ll walk you the rest of the way to Brambleberry House. It’s nearly dark. I wouldn’t want you walking on your own.”

It was only three houses, she almost said, but he looked so determined to stick it out that she couldn’t bring herself to argue.

“Thank you,” she said, then gave Maddie a careful look. Her daughter hadn’t said much for some time, since finding the bloodstone.

“Is it piggyback time?” Julia asked quietly.

Maddie shrugged, her features dispirited. “I guess so. I really wanted to make it the whole way on my own this time.”

“You made it farther this time than last time. And farther still than the time before. Come on, pumpkin. Your chariot awaits.” Julia crouched down and her daughter climbed aboard.

“I can carry her,” Will said, though he looked as if he would rather stick a nail gun to his hand and pull the switch.

“I’ve got her,” she answered, aching for him all over again. “But you can make sure Simon and Conan stay away from the surf.”

They crossed the last hundred yards to Brambleberry House in silence. When they reached the back gate, Will held it open for them and they walked inside where the smells of Abigail’s lush late-summer flowers surrounded them in warm welcome.

She eased Maddie off her back. “You two take Conan inside to get a drink from Anna while I talk to Mr. Garrett, okay?”

“Okay,” Simon said, and headed up the steps. Maddie followed more slowly but a moment later Julia and Will were alone with only the sound of the wind sighing in the tops of the pine trees.

“What’s wrong with Maddie?”

His quiet voice cut through the peace of the night and she instinctively bristled, wanting to protest that nothing was wrong with her child. Absolutely nothing. Maddie was perfect in every way.

The words tangled in her throat. “She’s recovering from a bone marrow transplant,” she answered in a low voice to match his. It wasn’t any grand secret and he certainly deserved to know, though she didn’t want to go through more explanations.

“It’s been four months but she hasn’t quite regained her strength. She’s been a fighter through everything life has thrown at her the last two and a half years, though—two rounds of chemo and a round of radiation—so I know it’s only a matter of time before she’ll be back to her old self.”

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_7b5943b8-6b41-5176-8fbd-8b74839e9dc3)

HE HEARD HER words as if she whispered them on the wind from a long distance away.

Bone marrow transplant. Chemotherapy. Radiation.

Cancer.

He had suspected Maddie was ill, but cancer. Damn it. The thought of that sweet-faced little girl enduring that kind of nightmare plowed into him like a semitruck and completely knocked him off his pins.

“I’m sorry, Julia.”

The words seemed horrifyingly inadequate but he didn’t have the first idea what else to say in this kind of situation. Besides, hadn’t he learned after the dark abyss of the last two years that sometimes the simplest of sentiments meant the most?

The sun had finally slipped beyond the horizon and in the dusky twilight, she looked young and lovely and as fragile as her daughter.

“It’s been a long, tough journey,” she answered. “But I have great hope that we’re finally starting to climb through to the other side.”

He envied her that hope, he realized. That’s what had been missing in his world for two years—for too long there had seemed no escape to the unrelenting pain. He missed Robin, he missed Cara, he missed the man he used to be.

But this wasn’t about him, he reminded himself. One other lesson he had learned since the accident that stole his family was that very few people made it through life unscathed, without suffering or pain, and Julia had obviously seen more than her share.

“A year and a half, you said. So you must have had to cope with losing your husband in the midst of dealing with Maddie’s cancer?”

In the twilight, he saw her mouth open then close, as if she wanted to say something but changed her mind.

“Yes,” she finally answered, though he had a feeling that wasn’t what she intended to tell him. “I guess you can see why I felt like we needed a fresh start.”

“She’s okay now, you said?”

“She’s been in remission for a year. The bone marrow transplant was more a precaution because the second round of chemo destroyed her immune system. We were blessed that Simon could be the donor. But as you can imagine, we’re all pretty sick of hospitals and doctors by now.”

He released a breath, his mind tangled in the vicious thorns of remembering those last terrible two weeks when Cara had clung to life, when he had cried and prayed and begged for another chance for his broken and battered little girl.

For nothing.

His prayers hadn’t done a damn bit of good.

“It’s kind of surreal, isn’t it?” Julia said after a moment. “Who would have thought all those summers ago when we were young that one day we’d be standing here in Abigail’s garden together talking about my daughter’s cancer treatment?”

He had a sudden, savage need to pummel something—to yank the autumn roses up by the roots, to shatter the porch swing into a million pieces, to hack the limbs off Abigail’s dogwood bushes.

“Life is the cruelest bitch around,” he said, and the bitter words seemed to scrape his throat bloody and raw. “Makes you wonder what the hell the point is.”

She lifted shocked eyes to his. “Oh, Will. I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and before he realized her intentions, she reached out and touched his arm in sympathy.