“Peter,” he said, leaning back against the counter as he spoke. “You wanted to honor your husband, and Wood, and I want that, too,” he said. His gaze was direct, clear.

  And easy. Convincing her that he was speaking the complete truth.

  Where her heart should have flared, it wilted.

  No.

  The word came to her mind clearly. With no explanation.

  And no hint at its origin.

  She waited a second, searched for the reply she wanted to give, an expression of how much Greg’s choice meant to her, opened her mouth and heard “no” again. Out loud.

  She’d given him the right to choose the boy’s name, no stipulations added. He got to choose.

  Frowning, he glanced at her, toward the tea bag she was bobbing and then back at her. Her peripheral vision caught the movement. She’d yet to look at him directly.

  Not since she’d heard her deceased husband’s name come off his lips.

  “You’d planned for Peter to be the father,” Greg said. “You were having yourself inseminated with his sperm when you found out I’d already managed by some act of supreme fate to perform the job first. It’s right that Peter be remembered here. That he have a place in this family, and in your life. I feel good about the choice. My son, if that’s what we’re having, will have a namesake to look up to. And maybe even more of a reason to bond with Wood—as his brother’s namesake.”

  Elaina sipped from her tea. Burnt her lip, her tongue, and didn’t care. She sipped a second time. Put the cup down, shook her head. “No.”

  Still shaking her head, Elaina walked out of the kitchen, her tea still on the counter. She wrapped her arms around her middle, went to the living room and sat in the darkness, feeling at home there. Too at home there. Her world had been dark for so long.

  Dark felt normal.

  But the life she was building for her baby...that was going to be filled with light. She wouldn’t have it any other way...and while she’d loved Peter, memories of him were tinged with sadness and frustration. And guilt.

  “What’s going on?” Greg sat beside her. Not touching her, but...there. She moved farther away. Didn’t want to feel his heat, to be so aware of him. He belonged in the light, with the child they’d unknowingly created.

  There was no mistake about that baby’s creation. She knew that as well as she knew that life came with no guarantees, that bad things happened to good people, that there was nothing you could ever do to make sure bad didn’t happen.

  She’d made a very real choice to wake up. To give instead of take. She’d put her intentions out into the universe. And the response had been a baby with Greg instead of with Peter.

  Because with the baby, there would be light.

  “I don’t want this baby to forever wear a reminder of my tragedy.” The words came and she approved them. They were ample, without spilling any more darkness.

  In a room where she couldn’t see well enough to make out more than shadowy outlines of features.

  “Peter’s life, the things he did when he was alive, weren’t tragic.”

  “He lived life exactly as he wanted to live it.” She could say that with conviction.

  “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “It can be. When those around you are made to continuously sacrifice so that you can have things exactly as you want them.” Doom settled around her. She knew she’d made a mistake the second the words escaped. Why had they suddenly refused to be held back?

  “Are we talking about you now?” Greg sounded truly perplexed.

  “I somehow became what he’d been...” Why hadn’t she seen that? Was she talking out loud? She most certainly wasn’t having a conversation with Greg. She knew he was there. Felt his presence. Knew she had to keep herself separate and apart from it.

  “All those years, Wood sacrificed, and Peter let him. Wood was smarter than Peter even. He could have been anything he wanted to be. Before he quit school, he was already getting scholarship opportunities. For sports and for academics. He turned it all down to finish raising Peter. Who, by the way, didn’t get any major scholarships. Not because he didn’t try. He just didn’t win them. And that was fine, because he worked harder than most.

  “But when he graduated high school, rather than insisting that it was Wood’s turn, going to work before college so that Wood could have a chance to finish his own education, Peter just kept taking from his older brother. He never once encouraged Wood to do more. Never even asked what his brother might have wanted for his own life if their mother hadn’t been killed.

  “And after we married...he did the same with me. He loved me. He brought me things I wanted. Gave me a home and family. But all of those things served him, too. Which isn’t bad. It’s the way it’s supposed to be...” What was wrong with her? She didn’t usually ramble. Didn’t go on and on.

  “I loved him, but he was my past. This child is my future. I want to move on.”

  So badly she wanted to move on. Move away from... Greg could have been there. Or not. There was only silence, and she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Two people, filling each other’s needs. That’s how it’s supposed to work,” she said, but not sounding at all like the self she knew. She was acting like a ghost. Some creature that didn’t really exist, emitting words that had always been there, lingering, but not meant to be spoken.

  Or heard. Not even by her own mind’s ear.

  Peter had given her life after her parents had been killed. Without him...

  And he’d been good to her. Loved her. Brought her gifts she’d truly wanted.

  Been gentle in his dealings with her. And he’d been good to Wood, too. But in return, he’d expected both her and Wood to support him unconditionally. Peter hadn’t even considered Wood’s dreams—or her own. Peter had made Elaina feel obligated to him. Unlike the unconditional love she’d known with her parents, his had seem to come at a price. Like she was forever in his debt. And while she still cared for him, and was grateful for all he’d done for her, she didn’t owe him her future. She never had.

  She’d been thinking, talking silently to herself, but heard a voice and realized she was talking out loud.

  She watched it all happening, her on the couch, Greg somewhere there, words flying everywhere... Like a horror movie, a nightmare, she could see it all and couldn’t stop it.

  There was roaring in her ears. A loud surf encasing her head in cotton. She was in a battle for herself. Breaking free from the misconceptions her mind had taken on, probably, in part, of her own accord, but from Peter’s confidence and strong personality, as well. She couldn’t hear Greg move; she couldn’t breathe.

  “I tried to encourage Wood to do more...and he was so used to Peter taking that Wood somehow took my encouragement to mean that I thought he wasn’t enough. I...it kills me to think he ever thought I thought that... That I hurt him...” Emotion welled. She wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  There was too much to let out. Too many tears to cry.

  And too much to keep boxed in any longer.

  She couldn’t grasp her own happiness. She’d lost the right when she’d hurt the two men who’d saved her from near death. Those two men who were the only living family she’d had.

  “I was responsible for the accident,” she blurted out. “It’s because of me that Peter’s dead. I took from Wood the one thing he loved more than anything else in the world. And I took away everything Peter had worked for. And no one knows.”

  The words were said.

  Her truth had been exposed.

  And she was done being a prisoner. For better or worse, her most horrible truth was free.

  * * *

  Greg just reached up and flipped the switch on the tableside lamp. The light infused the room in a soft glow that reached over to Elaina’s side of the couch, illuminating one side of her face and casting shadow on the other.

  There were tears wetting her beautiful features, but they weren’t streaming, engulfing her. They just welled slowly over her eyes, dripped down her cheeks. The expression in her eyes seemed to have no beginning and no end. A part of her that had always been there, but that he could only now see.

  Her ponytail, as neat as usual, seemed stark, unkind, as though expecting too much of someone who was weary from having to hold it all up, so perfectly, for so long.

  She didn’t react to the light. Didn’t turn to look at him. Or turn away, either.

  And he knew they weren’t done.

  He couldn’t leave her in the tragic place she was occupying. There was more. There had to be more to this story.

  Not for him. Not even for their baby.

  But for the sweet spirit that she was.

  Elaina would see that their baby was happy. She’d tend to it. Shower it with affection and discipline, too.

  She’d even do everything she could to give Greg anything that was in her power to give.

  But unless something changed about the way she dealt with her tragic past and her grief, she’d never be able to give either of them the only thing they really needed from her—her whole self. Heart and soul. All of her. Open to all of them. To whatever life had to offer any of them.

  “Tell me about the accident.”

  She’d put it out there and he’d bet his life it was the first time she’d ever even really talked about it. He had a feeling she hadn’t said a word about this before. Not to a counselor. Not to Wood. Or her friends. She’d put it out there to him. Trusted him with it for some reason. He had to help her manage this memory.

  “Peter had achieved his goals, the list of things we’d said we would accomplish before I went to medical school. I’d taken all of the mandatory courses. Had even put in the clinical hours. I wanted to be a doctor as badly as he did. But he’d felt strongly about going first, because once I started having kids, I wouldn’t be able to take on him in school, too. I would support the household first, taking care of household details, the bills, fixes, cleaning, shopping...so he could focus fully on school. And then he’d support us for the rest of his life.”

  From what she’d said earlier about Peter’s scholastic career, he translated the most recent insight into meaning that in order for Peter to successfully master med school, he’d had to be able to focus on nothing else. Having been to medical school himself, Greg could see that.

  “That day, the accident... I’d just been accepted to medical school, was so ready to begin my turn. He’d just been awarded his license, had a new practice he was starting with some others, and my time had come.”

  Relieved that she’d recognized that she had a time of her own, Greg made himself sit still, leaning back on his side of the couch as though he was in any way relaxed. He readied himself to listen to what she had to say. Listen so that he could understand her. Not so that he could change her.

  If she ever wanted to make any changes in her life, she’d have to do it herself. First, because he knew she wouldn’t let it be any other way. And second, because he knew that unless any maturation came from within, it wasn’t real. And though personal developments could last for years, it could also unravel at any moment—any particular point of stress.

  “Except that, from Peter’s perspective, my time hadn’t come yet. Or rather, it had, but what ‘my time’ was to entail had changed—to fit his needs. He told me he was giving me the world. A lovely home. A life in which I would never need to go to work and do the bidding of any boss. To stress over classes or tests or deadlines. He’d worked so hard for so many years and was ready to enjoy the fruits of his labors, not have to go to work, and help out at home, too. He told me that I didn’t need to go to school or get a degree that our family didn’t even need me to have.”

  Greg’s skin tightened as he grew hot. And then cold. Sometimes a clearer vision wasn’t pretty. Or even palatable.

  “He wanted to start a family.”

  Greg almost stopped her. Could see at least somewhat the explosion that was to come. He didn’t know about the actual crash that took Peter Alexander’s life, but he knew all he wanted to know.

  And still sat quietly. Because he wasn’t listening for himself.

  And more than what he wanted, what he needed—the desire to be a real friend to Elaina—was holding him silent.

  “He wanted to be young enough, after the kids left for college, for us to learn to sail and spend a year on a yacht, to travel all over the world, maybe do some volunteer work in countries where medical attention isn’t as readily available as it is in the United States...”

  The more she talked, the more his heart sank. If Peter had been evil, perhaps Elaina would have better hope of ever getting herself to the other side of guilt. But Peter Alexander had apparently had some great qualities. Enough so that they masked his innate narcissism. Not that he was in any position to diagnose a dead man. Nor would he ever do so out loud. But the picture was so clear to him that it wouldn’t disappear, either. Peter had consistently neglected Elaina’s needs in favor of his own. Instinctively, Greg knew that he’d never make the same mistakes. Elaina and their child would be his world.

  “He wanted me to put off my own medical school until after we’d had the kids. And I suddenly knew that when that time came, he’d have me put it off again, then, too. Putting if off while he was in school was a given—we needed money coming in. But when he passed the boards and used kids as a means to stall me, I knew he didn’t see me as a doctor at all. He never had.”

  Greg had reached the same conclusion. Didn’t make a sound.

  “In the car that day, I told him that I was going to medical school. He’d brought the subject up first. But I was glad he was driving when I had to tell him, so that he couldn’t go off on me as badly. That way, he wouldn’t be able to give me his full attention. But he did. He raised his voice to me in a way I’d never heard. Told me that medical school just was not an option. That he was not going to support me through it because our family didn’t need it.”

  Oh, God.

  “I screamed back at him.” Tears still fell slowly. Intermittently. He wanted to wipe them away, to kiss them, to hold her until she exorcised every negative emotion and she could start over.

  But he knew better. Life didn’t work that way.

  Talking about a traumatic event was good. Probably even miraculous, given what had happened to Elaina. But even that wouldn’t be a miracle cure.

  “I’d never screamed like that at anyone before,” she said, her voice soft, her tone questioning. As though, even then, she couldn’t believe how she’d sounded to herself in the car that day.

  “I told him that I wanted a divorce...”

  Her tears came swiftly then. Accompanied by broken sobs. “In a spur-of-the-moment conversation, I was willing to throw away the only family I had for what I wanted...”

  Yep. He’d known it wasn’t going to be good. Or miraculous.

  And he knew she had to finish explaining why she was so afraid of being selfish, of taking care of her own needs. Which was the only reason he wasn’t hauling her up into his arms and showing her that she wasn’t alone right then. Promising her that she’d never be alone again.

  It wasn’t a promise she’d be able to believe.

  “And that’s why he was staring at me in complete disbelief, in utter shock, when another car, driving in the wrong lane, suddenly veered toward us. I screamed again, trying to alert him and get him to look at the road, but it apparently only sounded like more of the same to him. He glanced up. He saw the car. The look on his face... He turned the wheel sharply, putting his side of the car more completely in front of the other car. And protecting me... I’ll never forget that look on his face. He knew he was likely going to die.

  “And I think, in that split second, he chose to die, because my remark about divorce had done him in...”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No, I don’t. And there’s no way I ever will, for sure. But I knew Peter...”

  “And loved him for all you were worth for many years.” And ever since her husband’s death there’d apparently never been any voice but her own condemning one, talking to her about what really happened that day.

  Maybe she hadn’t allowed there to be one. She was alive and Peter was not. Her last words to him hadn’t been what she’d ever choose them to be.

  But his death didn’t wipe away the damage some of his actions had done. It didn’t wipe away his own culpability in the fight they’d had that day. Greg wasn’t into damning a dead man—a man with what sounded like some great qualities. But he’d be tempted to deck the guy one if he showed up alive in that moment.

  And something occurred to him. “Maybe Peter made the choice he did, sparing you, because in those last seconds, he’d wanted to give his life for yours. He knew you had more to do, because he knew he’d robbed you of any chance to live your dreams, too, being married to him.”

  She sniffled. Wiped her nose with a tissue she’d pulled out of the end table drawer beside her.

  “Maybe you honor that choice by doing what you’ve been saying you’re ready to do—living fully again. Otherwise, what was his sacrifice for?”

  “Maybe.”

  He heard the word. And heard the lack of conviction in her tone, too.

  Elaina had been living too long in her silent pool of guilt to suddenly swim to shore and climb out. He fully understood that. The demons there with her were set on robbing her of a future life.

  He could only hope that her talking to him was one step forward, like she was calling out from within the pool. Letting someone know she was there.

  So she had a light toward which to swim.

  He hoped against hope that he and the baby would be that light.

  Chapter Eighteen