Or maybe he didn’t want to go to the beach with anyone but his wife.
He spent the entire day in front of the television with his son, instead. They alternated between football and Disney movies and ate peanut butter sandwiches.
* * *
“THANK YOU SO much for my party.” Maddie’s thick-tongued words tripped out of her mouth with excitement a full four hours after her surprise as she stood, arms filled with presents, at the gated entrance to the pool area. Maddie and her sister-in-law, Lynn, were two of the last to leave, having insisted on helping clean up.
“You’re very welcome,” Jenna told the woman. “I’m just glad I’ve had a chance to get to know you and share in your most special time,” she said.
“Well my most special time is in bed with Darin,” the woman said, her expression completely serious. “We get to sleep with each other every night and I still can’t believe it sometimes,” she added.
Lynn smiled a knowing smile, and Jenna wished she’d gotten to know the nurse better in her time at the Stand.
“Well, I’m glad you liked the party,” Jenna said.
“I did.” Maddie juggled her presents and nodded her head. “I was sooo surprised, wasn’t I, Lynn?”
“Yes, you were.” The affection in Lynn’s voice warmed Jenna at a time when she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel warm again.
“And Darin will be sooo surprised, too, won’t he?”
“Yep.”
“But you didn’t tell everyone that the party should have been for you, too.”
Jenna looked to Lynn, not sure how to respond. Didn’t Maddie understand that this had been a baby shower?
“No, I didn’t because we wanted you to have your own party,” Lynn said. “You and your baby deserve a party all your own.”
“Oh, so then next Saturday we can have another party for you and your baby all alone?”
The consternation on Lynn’s face surprised Jenna almost as much as Maddie’s comment.
“You’re pregnant?” she asked.
Lynn glanced down and when she raised her head, her face was red. “Well, yes, but Grant and I weren’t going to tell anyone yet. Not until I’m a little further along. We didn’t know that Maddie knew.”
“Darin told me,” Maddie said, grinning from ear to ear. “He heard Grant whoop and holler in your bedroom and went to see why but you were talking in a funny voice and so Darin thought you might be naked and so he just listened and then he told me what he heard.”
Jenna knew that Lynn and her husband lived together with his brother and Maddie—and Lynn’s three-year-old daughter from her first marriage—in the big bungalow at the back of the property.
She’d wondered at the time how Lynn did it. Taking on a handicapped couple expecting a child.
But as she listened to Maddie, as she saw the warmth in Lynn’s gaze, as she stood there with the two of them she was more envious than she could ever remember being.
This was family.
And a family of her own was all she’d ever wanted.
It was something she was never going to have if she didn’t convince Steve Smith that he had to let her go.
* * *
CHANTEL COOKED BREAKFAST Sunday morning. Max awoke to the smell of bacon, climbed out of bed alone, feeli
ng more like himself than he had since Meri left.
Meri was gone because she’d chosen to leave. And as her husband who’d promised to love and cherish, to honor and protect, he was going to see that Steve Smith was no longer a threat to her. And then he’d take his son and get on with his life.