Second Time's the Charm

“You get the reading done?” he asked Mark as they took their seats in the back row.

“Yeah, you?”

“Not quite, but close.” He’d spent a while in Abraham’s room, watching the boy sleep. Thinking about how close he’d come to having permanent hearing loss.

Back in his room, he’d had a hard time focusing, thinking of the procedure that afternoon. Needing it to go as well as the doctor predicted.

Needing to see Lillie, too. He hadn’t heard a word from her since Thursday. And, other than when he was focused on Abe, he could think of little else.

She’d been through so much. And deserved none of it. He needed to make things better for her somehow.

Lillie cared about them. She was just scared. It was that fear, in fact, that told him how much she cared. She was running away.

And somehow he had to catch her. Which was why he hadn’t agreed to not seeing her anymore. He’d just let her go for the moment.

Until he could figure out how to help her.

And then he’d woken up the next morning to the realization that his son was going deaf.

“I heard that that last break-in, the one where the guy broke the glass,” Mark was saying as they waited for their professor to appear, “was one street over from you. No one was home, but he found a safe in the bedroom and took some cash. A lot of it. The sheriff called Addy sometime after midnight. Apparently they have a couple of suspects but couldn’t get hold of anyone from the county attorney’s office and wanted her opinion on something.”

Oh, God.

“Did Addy hear from the bar yet?”

Mark’s fiancée, licensed to practice law in Colorado, had recently taken the Arizona bar exam to enable her to transfer her practice to Shelter Valley.

“On Friday,” Mark said. “She’s been official for two days and is already on call.”

Mark sounded like he was complaining, but the grin on his face told the truth.

“So they know who’s been doing the break-ins?” Jon made himself ask the question. An informed man was an armed man.

Shrugging, Mark shook his head. “She couldn’t tell me any more than that,” he said, and then nodded toward the front of the room where their chemistry professor had taken the podium—right on time.

* * *

LILLIE KEPT BUSY all morning on Monday. Too busy to dwell on that afternoon’s procedure.

On Sunday, after having breakfast with Papa and Gayle, she’d driven to the cemetery. Visited with her son and confirmed for herself that, without a doubt, she couldn’t risk opening herself up to the possibility of loving—and losing—another child. She was strong but not that strong.

Losing her parents had been hard. Kirk’s infidelity had been hard. Losing Braydon had almost killed her.

As she ate her lunch in her office, she dialed her ex-husband.

“Lil?” He picked up on the first ring.

“I’ve been thinking,” she started, and paused. Did she really want to do this? Was it necessary?

“I’ve been hoping you’d call, Lil,” Kirk said. “I promised I’d only call you once a week, but I’d hoped you’d call before then. Something’s happening here. Thursday...it was so great being with you—”

“Have you been drinking?” she interrupted. She didn’t need to hear any more.

“Only a mimosa with a client over breakfast this morning,” Kirk said. “To celebrate the closing of a deal.”

It might only have been one. Kirk’s newfound humility could be causing him to ramble. Either way, it didn’t matter to her.

“I’m calling to tell you that I think it’s best that you not call me anymore,” she said. Ending things cleanly might seem cruel in the moment, but in the long run it was best for both of them. “If ever I was going to feel something for you, it would have been Thursday,” she told him.