And that meant having a very hard conversation with Jack.

  She found him in the kitchen, gloomily running a toy car back and forth along the edge of the table and ignoring the stack of pancakes that had been placed in front of him. Alex swallowed hard. He was obviously still upset from what had happened yesterday, and that was going to make this more difficult.

  She sat down opposite him. “Hey, Jack,” she said. “Not very hungry this morning?”

  He shrugged and didn’t look up.

  “Jack, I need you to look at me, okay?”

  He lifted his head and met her eyes, and Alex felt as if her heart might shatter. It was hard to admit to her feelings for Elijah, knowing that she shouldn’t have let herself go there. But she couldn’t pretend not to know about her feelings for the sweet little kid sitting in front of her. He had captured her heart in a way no one had in years — since the loss of her own family.

  She needed to be strong right now. This was going to be hard. She squared her shoulders. “Jack… today’s going to be my last day here with you and your dad.”

  He blinked, clearly not processing what she was saying. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s time for me to move on,” she said. “I’ve got another job I have to go do.” She didn’t, of course, but she’d find one. She always did. Every time her bad luck caught up with her and forced her to move on from something, she inevitably found something else. It would happen again this time. It was just that, this time, she would be leaving more of herself behind than she ever had before.

  “But you belong here with us,” Jack said, sounding more confused than anything else. “I thought you were going to stay.”

  It was the worst possible moment, so of course that was the moment Elijah chose to open the door and come into the kitchen. He stood there regarding the two of them for a moment.

  “Were you listening?” Alex asked him.

  “I heard you,” he said.

  “Do you have anything to say?”

  “Sounds like you’ve made up your mind.” His voice was frosty. It made her feel sick to her stomach. The two of them had gotten so close — or so she had thought. Had none of that been real? Had he been faking it the whole time? Or maybe it had always been conditional — maybe he had only gotten close to her in hopes of persuading her to stay with Jack. Hell, maybe he had only opened up to her emotionally because he’d wanted to get her into bed.

  Even now, she couldn’t bring herself to regret that it had worked. That night had been too good. She was going to remember it forever, and even though it had ruined everything, she was still glad it had happened. She judged herself for that, of course. She should have regretted it. But she didn’t.

  She cleared her throat. “I meant, is there anything you want to say to Jack?” Surely he’d want to comfort his son right now. He would want to tell Jack not to worry, that the two of them would have each other after Alex was gone. There was no way he could pass up the moment to do that.

  “I’ll hire another nanny, Jack,” Elijah said. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll find someone who isn’t going to take off on us.”

  Jack’s lower lip quivered. “I want Alex, though,” he said. “She’s part of the family.”

  “She’s not part of the family,” Elijah said. It wasn’t cruel, the way he said it — it was as if he was imparting a fact — but Alex still felt as if she’d been slapped. He was completely right. She wasn’t a part of this family. It was why she had to leave now, before things got worse. But hearing him say it so casually, as if it didn’t matter — that was painful.

  “I put her on my family tree,” Jack said.

  Alex couldn’t let this go on. “It’s okay, Jack,” she told him. “That family tree — that’s like a photo. You know your dad’s photo album?”

  Jack nodded.

  “It’s like that,” she said. “It’s a memory you can keep. You can look at it and remember the time I spent here with you and the good times we had. We had some fun together, right?”

  “Yeah,” he whispered. She could tell he was trying not to cry.

  “Whenever you look at the tree, you can remember the time I spent as part of your family,” she said. “That was real. And you can remember the fact that I care about you, because that’s real too. That’s not going away just because I have to leave.”

  “Don’t drag this out,” Elijah said.

  Irritation sparked inside her. He wasn’t helping. But then… maybe he was right. Maybe she wasn’t making this easier for anyone either. A clean break would probably be what was best for Jack. She should go now so that he could start to heal.

  Packing had taken no time at all. Even though she was used to traveling light, it was kind of shocking to see how little she had to take away from this place with her. Nothing had ever felt so much like leaving home, and it felt as if she was forgetting something important — something irreplaceable — as she walked out to the car.

  But there was nothing left in that house that she could call her own. There was nothing that she could take with her. She put her suitcase in the trunk of her car and slammed it, fighting back tears. It wouldn’t be appropriate for her to start crying now. She had to stay strong as long as she was where Jack could see her — and besides, she didn’t want Elijah to see her break down.

  I really thought he might beg me to stay.

  She couldn’t decide if she had wanted him to do that or not. It would certainly have made it harder to leave. But maybe she wouldn’t have left if it had been like that. Maybe that would have been the sign she needed that it was all right to stick around.

  It hadn’t happened, so she would never know.

  Jack came barreling out of the house. Alex caught him as he flung his arms around her waist. “Please stay, Alex,” he said, looking up at her with wide eyes.

  Alex looked back toward the house. Elijah wasn’t coming out. It was the plea she had been imagining, but it was coming from the wrong person.

  “I have to go,” she said, stepping out of his embrace but keeping hold of his hands. “But you’ll be okay, Jack. You’ve got your dad. You two can take care of each other. And whenever you think of me — just look at those mountains over there.” She pointed off to the west.

  “The mountains?” Jack squinted at them.

  “That’s where I’ll be.” She’d decided to drive in that direction almost on a whim, and the beauty of the mountains appealed to her greatly. She was sure she would be able to find something to do with herself there — bartending, waitressing, something. She’d land on her feet, just as she did every time. In a few months, everything that had happened in Hope’s Creek would be a distant memory.

  Jack looked off at the mountains. “That’s a long way away.”

  “It’s not so far away,” she said. “After all, you can see it from here. You’ll be able to see the place where I’m living, even if you can’t see me. That’s something, right?”

  “I guess,” Jack said. “Are you going to look back and think about me?”

  “Every day,” she said quietly, wondering whether it was a mistake to tell him that. “I’ll never forget you, Jack, and I’ll never forget your dad, either. I’ve had such a good time here with you both, and I’m sorry I have to go now. I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you too,” Jack mumbled.

  “Go back inside,” she told him. “Your dad will be lonely.”

  For a moment, she thought he might not do it — but he backed away slowly, then turned and ran back to the house.

  Alex took a long, deep breath in, and then let it go. That was it, she knew — she would never see either one of them again. It was a battle to force herself to get into her car, and she refused to look back as she drove down the path and turned onto the main road that would lead her away from Hope’s Creek.

  She had put so much faith in this. Without even meaning to, she had let herself believe that she might find something permanent here.

  But Alex Hart’s only lifelong companion was, and always would be, her bad luck. Nothing else could last.

  CHAPTER 20

  ELIJAH

  “Are you looking for someone to live in?” asked Caitlin, the new nanny candidate.

  “No,” Elijah said. It was a surprise even to him. He hadn’t thought the matter through very much. But he couldn’t picture welcoming someone new into his home right now, giving the room that had belonged to Alex to a newcomer. He wished it was easier, but having somebody else in that space would only serve as a reminder of who was no longer there. He didn’t think he could handle that. “You live in Hope’s Creek, right?”

  “I’m new there, yes,” Caitlin said. “Just moved into town two weeks ago.”

  “And you plan on staying?” He wouldn’t put his son through the loss of a second nanny so soon after what had happened with Alex.

  “I love Hope’s Creek,” Caitlin enthused. “I’m definitely here for the long haul.”

  “Well, that’s great,” Elijah said. “I have your résumé and your contact information, so I’ll be getting back to you soon.”

  “Do I get to meet your son?” Caitlin asked.

  “I won’t be introducing him to anyone until I’m close to making a hire.” Part of the problem, he thought, had been the way Jack had so quickly become attached to Alex. He wouldn’t run the risk of something like that happening to them again. “If I decide to move your application forward, I’ll ask you to come back for a playdate with Jack to make sure the two of you get along well, and if that goes all right, we’ll finalize things.”

  “In that case, I look forward to hearing from you.” Caitlin rose to her feet and extended a hand to Elijah.

  He shook it. “Thanks for coming by,” he said. “It was nice to meet with you.”

  When she was gone, he poured himself a glass of scotch and sat drinking it and pondering. He knew he wanted another nanny. Having Alex here had made such a difference for Jack, and Elijah wasn’t willing to let that go just because she’d decided to leave them.

  But it was hard to imagine anybody filling her shoes. Caitlin’s resume was good — it was better than Alex’s had been, actually, because she did have experience in childcare. She seemed competent, and she had answered all of Elijah’s questions satisfactorily. And yet, he found that he didn’t want to hire her. And there was only one plausible reason for that.

  She just wasn’t Alex. She would never be Alex. And it was impossible to imagine anybody else taking Alex’s place in their lives. Caitlin would care for Jack, but would Jack fall in love with her the way he had with Alex? Almost certainly not. And that was a good thing, probably — Jack had been too codependent with Alex — but it was hard to see it that way.

  He sighed, downed his drink, got up, and went out to the kitchen. Jack was sitting at the table with his crayons spread out in front of him, coloring something in a sketchbook that Elijah hadn’t been aware he owned. He looked up at his father briefly, then returned his attention to the page in front of him.

  “What are you drawing?” Elijah asked.

  “A picture.”

  Jack’s communication with Elijah had been short and direct lately, bordering on rudeness, and Elijah had restrained himself from calling it out or telling his son to mind his manners. It surprised him that Jack seemed to have connected Alex’s departure with Elijah’s own actions, but kids could be pretty astute about things that were going on around them, and it was clear that Jack did blame his father, at least in part, for what had happened.

  Elijah tried to remember what Alex had told him. What Jack really needed was Elijah’s presence in his life. If Elijah could really focus and be there for his son, things would get better. After all, it had worked before. Jack’s behavior had been helped by Elijah taking a more active role in his life.

  So he sat down at the table. “Can I draw with you?” he asked.

  “Whatever,” Jack said.

  Elijah let that roll off his back. “Can you tear me out a piece of paper?”

  “No. I need all of this paper.”

  “Okay,” Elijah said, keeping his voice cheerful. “No problem. I’ll get some of my own.”

  He went over to the kitchen island drawers. They didn’t have a junk drawer — Elijah’s family had had a drawer like that growing up, but Elijah didn’t make it a practice to keep things he didn’t need. Now he wished he had. A junk drawer would have had a pad of paper in it. Eventually, he found a paper bag neatly tucked into the side of the recycle bin. He pulled it out and came back over to the table. Sitting down across from Jack, he picked up a crayon and began to sketch a pattern on the bag.

  Jack said nothing.

  “So I’ve been thinking,” Elijah said to him. “What if we don’t get a new nanny after all? I know we talked about hiring someone to replace Alex, but I’m not sure that’s something we’re going to have to do. We’ve gotten by with just the two of us for a pretty long time now, right? Maybe we can do that again.”

  “You’re too busy,” Jack said. “You need to hire a nanny because you have to work all the time.”

  “Not all the time,” Elijah said. “It hasn’t been like that so much anymore, has it, Jack? You and I have gotten closer. We’ve spent more time together. We can keep doing that, can’t we? We don’t need outside help.”

  Jack shrugged. “Do whatever you want,” he said. “I don’t need a nanny.”

  “Do you want one?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Okay,” Elijah said. “If that’s how you feel about it, I think we won’t hire someone. I think it’s best for the two of us to focus on our family right now. For us to spend more time together.”

  “Okay, Dad,” Jack said wearily, as if this was something he had heard a hundred times before.

  “Jack, if you want me to hire someone, you need to tell me,” Elijah said. “Just be honest with me. We can tell each other the truth, can’t we? I know you’ve been unhappy lately. I want you to tell me why.”

  Jack sighed and put his crayon down. “You made Alex go away,” he said.

  “I didn’t make her go, Jack.”

  “Well, you didn’t make her stay.”

  “Jack, I can’t make Alex do anything. She’s a grown-up. You know that.”

  “You didn’t even ask her to stay,” Jack said. “Did you even want her to?”

  “I liked Alex,” Elijah said. “I liked her a lot. She and I were friends. But she was ready to go, and I needed to respect that. We both need to respect that she wants something different for her life now, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean her time here wasn’t important, and it doesn’t mean she cares for us any less. You know that, don’t you?”

  “If she really cared, she would have stayed,” Jack insisted.

  “That’s not true,” Elijah said. “Alex needed to move on. She had other things she wanted to do.”

  “Like how sometimes you don’t have time for me because you want to work?” Jack asked. “Are you going to move on one day too?”

  “You know I won’t. You and I are a team, Jack. Together forever.”

  “But I thought Alex was a part of our team too,” Jack said. “I wanted her to be.”

  Elijah sighed. This conversation was difficult and painful because the truth was that he felt the same way his son did. He had also wanted Alex to become a part of their team. Even now, seeing her name on the family tree that still stood in his son’s bedroom made his heart beat a little faster. Alex had told Jack that she wanted to leave that tree as a permanent reminder of her time with the family, and it was certainly that.

  “Sometimes important people come into our lives and then they have to go,” he told Jack. “It’s hard, but it’s part of life. And that’s okay.”

  “Like Mom,” Jack said.

  “Not like Mom. Mom didn’t want to leave. She would never have wanted to leave.”

  “But Alex didn’t want to either,” Jack protested.

  “She did, Jack. That’s the reason she went. She wanted to go.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jack said. “She was happy here. She liked me. She liked us, Dad. She told me she liked you.”

  “She did?” Elijah very much did not want to pry too hard into that conversation. Hearing about how Alex had liked him after all would only make him feel worse about everything that had happened. But was it true? Was it possible that she had cared as much about him as he had about her?

  If she had, why would she have left? He wouldn’t have sent her away. The thought would never have crossed his mind. How could she have left if she had anything like the feelings he had?

  “She said she really loved it here,” Jack said. “That’s what she told me. That she hadn’t felt like any place was her home in a long time, but she did feel at home with us. And if she felt like that, why would she leave?”

  “I guess we can’t know, Jack. We can never know what other people are thinking.”

  Jack got up from the table. “I don’t feel like coloring anymore,” he said quietly. “You can keep using the crayons if you want.”

  “Jack, are you angry at me?”

  Jack shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t care if you get another nanny or don’t. But I guess you should, because you’re going to have to stop spending time with me and start working a lot again.”

  “That’s not true,” Elijah protested. “That’s not something that has to change, Jack. Things between us will stay the same even now that Alex is gone.”

  “No, they won’t,” Jack said. “Everything always changes. Nobody ever stays. And you won’t either.”

  Elijah closed his eyes. He did have to work today, at least a little bit. There was no getting out of it. And Jack would feel his absence more than he had while Alex was here. Right now, he would have given anything to have her back.

  But Jack was right. Alex had left them, and not because she’d been unhappy here. The problem had been that she had felt unwelcome. When she had tried to make her opinions known, Elijah had told her off. She must have felt as if she couldn’t come to him and talk about what she thought or felt. She must have felt as if she couldn’t do her best to give Jack the things he needed. Of course she wouldn’t want to stay under those conditions.