No, he didn’t want Amy with them on the camping trip. But if she was at home, with no reason to get out of bed, he’d never enjoy himself.
“All packed?” he asked cheerfully. Amy gave him a pleading look, but he ignored it. “Dad should be here soon to take you to the airport.” His father said that Stephen would cave if Amy shed even one tear at the airport, so someone other than his son had to drive her there.
“Yes,” she mumbled in such a sad voice that Stephen almost gave in to her. But he squared his shoulders, picked up her suitcase, and left the room. Amy scuffled along behind him.
Amy said nothing on the way to the airport with her father-in-law. She knew from long experience that she wouldn’t get anywhere with Lewis Hanford. When she was four, he’d watched her and Stephen playing in the sandpile and he’d said to her, “You’re as bossy as they come, aren’t you?” Amy’d had no answer for that so she’d just blinked up at him. He was a tall man, with broad shoulders and a hard, flat stomach. She didn’t know it then but he’d played semipro football until an injured knee had sent him home. He wasn’t the easiest man to live with, nor were his three eldest sons who were just like him.
Amy looked up at the man, utterly unafraid of his size or his gruff manner. “Stephen and I are going to get married.”
Lewis looked at his youngest son, the incredibly beautiful, blond Stephen who had a temperament just like his mother’s. He was always in a good mood, always happy, very easy to get along with. “I think you two will do very well together,” Lewis said, then went into the house. Neither he nor Amy spoke of the matter again. To them, it had been settled that day.
Now, in the car, she confronted him. “I’ll never forgive you for making Stephen send me away,” she said under her breath.
“Add it to the list you already have against me.”
“That list fills up a roll of paper that is now too heavy for me to lift.”
She knew how to get to him and he smiled. “You’ll be fine,” he said gently. For all of their arguments over the years, he loved her as the daughter he’d never had. His three eldest sons had all married and divorced and their lives were now full of exes and steps. But Amy was a person who made up her mind and never swayed from her decisions. And she was still unafraid of him.
“Oh, so you’ve met these women who have to go to a therapist for whatever horrible things have happened in their lives.”
“Like losing a baby?” he asked softly.
Amy turned to look out the side window. “I didn’t go to
anyone for that.”
“But you should have.”
She looked back at him. “Like you should have when Marta died?”
“Yeah, I should have,” he said loudly. “I should have gone to talk to someone instead of drinking myself into a stupor every night for a year and trying to run my truck into a tree.”
“All right,” she said in a tone meant to calm him down. “I was willing to go talk to someone—” His look made her backtrack. “Okay, so maybe I wasn’t willing to talk about what was a very private matter to me, but going to spend time in a house with strangers…I don’t see how that will do me any good.”
“‘Spend time,’” he said. “You make it sound like you’re off to prison. What do they sell up in Maine?”
“Sell? I don’t know. Lobsters. Blueberries.”
“You better bring back some food. Stevie and the boys will be full of the junk they’re taking on the camping trip and they’ll need something good.”
“If you’re trying to make me angry, you’re succeeding.”
“Good. I like you angry better than weepy.” He stopped in front of the departure area of the local airport.
“I still don’t see how my Stephen could be related to you.”
She waited for him to reply but he just sat there. Obviously, he wasn’t going to help her with her suitcase. Again she thought how Lewis and his three eldest sons were Neanderthals. Stephen opened doors for women, carried anything that weighed more than their handbags, and sang in the church choir. Lewis and the “boys” smashed beer cans on their foreheads.
She got out, opened the back, and hauled her heavy bag out. Before she closed the door she said, “Ever think that maybe Marta came to her senses and Stephen isn’t yours?”
When Lewis looked at her with fury on his face, Amy gave him a sweet smile and slammed the door shut. He took off so fast she had to grab her hand back.
She went into the airport to start the long security check.
Two
When Amy at last landed at the Bangor airport, a driver was waiting for her, holding a sign with her last name on it. “That’s me,” she said, smiling.