Lovely Wild. Megan Hart

financially disruptive situation of having been placed on probation at reduced salary by his practice. Worse was the very real possibility that not only could he lose his license, but Annette’s husband, Gerry, had been making noise about malpractice.

      Even if eventually it all worked out and he didn’t lose his job, money was going to be tight for a while, no question. They’d have to cut back. Way back. The kids wouldn’t be happy, especially Kendra, but they’d just have to understand that this summer there couldn’t be a pool membership or that expensive sleepaway camp. No horseback riding lessons. They could cancel their cable TV if they had to, he thought. Cut back on dinners out. It could work. It would have to work.

      In the dark, Ryan swallowed against a surge of sourness. For a moment he thought about shaking Mari awake to see if she’d bring him an antacid, but he stopped himself with the barest brush of his fingers along her shoulder. She would get up, if he asked her to, but it wasn’t going to make him feel better.

      Maybe he could get a teaching position. Maybe he could go back to school for a new career, something like software engineering or website design. Maybe he could run away to Europe and become a heroin addict.

      Maybe he could finally write that book he’d been thinking of writing for years.

      The idea wiggled, a worm on a hook, in his brain. He had his dad’s notes. All the files, the hours of film and video. Just because the old man had never taken advantage of the gold mine didn’t mean Ryan couldn’t. Or shouldn’t. In fact, wouldn’t it be something his dad would want Ryan to do? And who better to put it all together, to make something out of his dad’s life’s work, than Ryan? After all, the only man who knew Mari’s story better than his father was, of course, Ryan himself.

      Eased a little, he sat back in the dark, scarcely realizing he’d sat up in the first place. Yeah. The book. Even if all the rest of this turned out okay, if he got reinstated, kept his license, dodged the malpractice suit...even if all of that worked itself out, now still might be the time to write the book. What had his father always said about a door closing while a window opened?

      Beside him, Mari stirred and murmured in her sleep. Ryan was used to her sleep talking, usually half-formed sentences and mumbled phrases that made little sense. Sometimes, more rarely, she moved her hands in those fluttering motions that he knew were language but which he’d never been able to interpret. Remnants of her childhood slipping out in unconsciousness. If he woke her too roughly, she’d come awake instantly. No rubbing of eyes, no yawns. Instant clarity. She’d probably be halfway across the room, too, hands up to protect herself but eyes wide. And silent, even those silly, muttered phrases gone. She wouldn’t remember what she’d been dreaming. She never did. Well, she said she never did, and Ryan had no reason to believe she’d lie. Nor did he have any real interest in prodding those memories. He wasn’t a Freudian psychiatrist; dreams were of little use to him.

      He listened now, though, trying to make out what she was saying. Her low chuckle quirked his own smile. Mari had an infectious laugh as easy and free as the rest of her impulses. He loved that about her. Envied it, too.

      His smile slipped away. What would she do when she found out everything, the whole truth? She hadn’t questioned him when he’d said he was being threatened with a malpractice suit. That had happened before, more than once. It was part of being a doctor. Probation meant he’d still go to the office every day, so he’d downplayed that part of it. She wouldn’t notice anything different about his schedule. But the rest of it, the part about Annette, what would she do about that? She wouldn’t leave him. How could she? He was all she’d ever known. The second most important man in her life, and once his dad had died, the most and only. She wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t.

      Could she? Oh. God. Could she really?

      His hands fisted in the covers, a blanket and quilt for him because even with the summer-weight flannel pajama bottoms and T-shirt, he was still too cold to sleep without blankets.

      All he’d told her was that there was some trouble with a patient at work, and she hadn’t pressed him for answers. She never did. That was something else he loved about her.

      If Ryan said the sky was green, Mari could be counted on to give it a curious glance and a shrug, a smile. To go along with it. Not that she couldn’t be stubborn, because she could hold tighter to an idea or a desire than anyone he’d ever known. When Mari wanted something, she sewed herself up tight inside it, so whatever it was she’d set her sights on became a part of her. Inextricable. It was just that she so rarely wanted something hard enough to hold on to it that way.

      So, she wouldn’t press him for answers about what had happened. What was still happening. He could give her any number of explanations, and she’d accept them the way she’d always done because he’d never given her reason to doubt him. She trusted him.

      Sometimes, Mari’s trust in him was a weight Ryan wasn’t sure he could carry. Sure, he’d always liked it that way, pitying his buddies whose wives controlled the bank accounts, their sex lives, hell, what their husbands wore. What cars they drove. But that trust was a huge responsibility, too.

      Lying in the dark beside her and hearing the soft whistle of her breath, that low chuckle that told him she was dreaming again, inside that place he could never go, Ryan wanted to wake his wife and tell her everything. Confess. Spill it out, no matter what might happen. He wanted to turn to her, take her in his arms, kiss her until her eyes opened and she focused on him.

      But then somehow the alarm was going off. He’d slept without knowing it. Daylight filtered through the windows, brighter than he expected, and in the sunshine the truth suddenly didn’t seem as appealing as it had in the dark.

       THREE

      THE BOY IN front of her looks very seriously at the glass measuring bowl, ducking so he can see directly into it. From this angle, his face is distorted through the glass. All big eyes and twisted mouth. He’s concentrating fiercely, pouring exactly the right amount of oil.

      “Is this enough, Mama?”

      Mari eyes the red line on the glass bowl. Shimmering golden oil inside it. And her boy, looking up at her now as though the answer to this question is very, very important. She supposes to him, it is.

      “Looks good to me, honey.”

      “Now the eggs?”

      “Now the eggs.”

      Ethan carefully takes one egg. Then another. He cracks the eggs into the small glass cup the way Mari taught him and checks each yolk carefully before dumping it into the oil. As far as she knows, her son has never cracked open an egg and found a half-formed fetus inside, but Mari has. The eggs she ate in childhood weren’t like the kind you get in stores, all of them candled to make sure they’re okay before they’re shipped off to market. Chickens penned with roosters often had eggs with babies waiting inside. Mari always cracks them first into a separate container.

      “Three eggs. A third of a cup of oil.” Ethan reads this from the cookbook, one finger pressed to the stained pages. A massive volume, over five hundred pages, it’s the only cookbook Mari’s ever owned. It had been a gift from her adopted father, who’d considered cuisine as much a part of her curriculum as reading or writing. An important life skill, he’d said, to be able to make more than boxed macaroni and cheese. Being able to cook a decent meal was part of being an adult. “Quarter cup of water. We forgot the water.”

      “Go ahead and add it.” Mari doesn’t hand it to him, knowing he wants to do it himself.

      Ethan adds the water. “It says we should mix it.”

      “Yep. Put it in the bowl and turn it on. Low,” Mari emphasizes, because Ethan’s been known to flip the speed to high and spatter the kitchen with batter.

      He giggles. Her heart swells with love for her boy who reminds her so much of herself. Yet who all too soon will become entirely more foreign to her than that mixer.

      Already