‘I don’t imagine Edie did.’
‘No, I don’t imagine she did either. When I was a teenager, it was considered good form to collect up a few sticks and build a new fire when you left. Then, when you came back, someone else’s fire would be there and you just lit it.’
‘Ah. So there’s no need to search around for something to burn while your girlfriend’s sitting on a rock and shivering.’ Kate grinned at him.
‘That might be a consideration.’ He stretched, holding his hands out to the warmth of the blaze. ‘So. You’re going to say yes, are you?’
He was teasing her, that was obvious. And if Kate denied it then it would only appear that she was protesting too much.
‘I might. As Fred says, a doctor’s a very good catch.’
Ethan chuckled. ‘Long hours? Evenings on your own?’
‘Never out of a job. Good pay scales.’ Kate grinned up at him. ‘I think Fred had an eye on the practical.’
‘Having the time to be with someone is practical.’
There was a sudden catch in his voice. Ethan leaned forward, poking the fire with a stick so that it burned brightly, suddenly lost in his own thoughts, which seemed to be dancing among the flames.
‘You seem very sure of that.’
He turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘I am. I was working pretty hard when Jenna died. We’d just bought the house and she’d given up work when Sam was born. I wasn’t around very much.’
Kate could see why that would matter to him, but it was something that a lot of people did. Buying houses, having kids. It all cost money. She wondered whether that was really the right thing to say to Ethan, and decided that this was one of those situations where there was no right thing to say. You just had to do your best.
‘You were providing for your family.’
‘Yeah, that’s how we both looked at it. Jenna had been under the weather for a few days with a urinary infection. I’d given her a prescription for some antibiotics, and she said she was feeling better, so I went to work. I worked late that evening, and spent the night at the hospital. I called her and she said that she was okay.’
I’m okay. The very thing that she had said to Ethan. No wonder he’d refused to take her word for it, and had kept nagging away at her until she was honest with him. Kate swallowed hard. ‘But she wasn’t.’
‘No. The infection spread to her kidney and she was sick...couldn’t keep the antibiotics down. Then it got into her bloodstream and she developed sepsis. I got the call the following afternoon. My mother had gone over there to help her out with Sam and had called an ambulance.’
‘But it was too late.’ Kate knew that sepsis could kill quickly. The body’s reaction to infection, it caused the vital organs to shut down, and once that happened it was difficult to reverse.
‘Yes. She died two days later.’
‘I’m so sorry, Ethan.’
He shook his head, staring into the fire. ‘I’ve learned to live with it. But you see, a doctor who isn’t around when his family needs him isn’t as good a catch as Fred thinks.’
He blamed himself. ‘But you can’t think...’
‘I don’t think, I know. I wasn’t there.’
‘But...’ This was crazy. No one could be there for someone all the time. And if Ethan was responsible, then so was his wife. Kate pressed her lips together. Maybe she shouldn’t say that.
‘But what?’
‘I just think you can’t be there for someone twenty-four hours a day. I tried to lock myself away from harm once, and it didn’t work.’
‘That’s what you think—that it’s like trying to lock them away from harm?’
Maybe she’d said too much. But Kate believed it, and she couldn’t take it back now. ‘Yes, it is.’
‘Yeah, it’s what I think too.’ There was a note of resignation in his voice.
‘But you don’t feel it?’