The House On Sugar Plum Lane. Judy Duarte

again?” he asked.

      “No. I wouldn’t do that to Callie.”

      He was glad to hear that. She’d done enough to the poor kid already—moved out of the only home she’d ever known, filed for divorce from her father. A man who’d do anything to provide for his family, by the way, but she’d thrown it all in his face.

      He again glanced in the mirror, saw his daughter smiling at him, oblivious to the grown-up problems around her. “I realize you miss your mom, Amy. But to take on a search like that—”

      “I didn’t expect you to understand. You hardly even knew my mother. In fact, I think you were still calling her Mrs. Barnes when she died.”

      He wasn’t sure what she meant by that, so he spoke up in his own defense. “I used to call her Susan.”

      For some reason, he could imagine Amy rolling her eyes about now. She’d been doing that a lot in the past few months.

      Where had they gone wrong? When had they gotten off track?

      “For Pete’s sake, Brandon. You even arrived late to the funeral.”

      He’d had to work that morning, and an important call had come in. He hadn’t meant to be late. And then he’d run into traffic on Interstate 5—a fatal accident that had blocked all four lanes.

      “I can’t explain why this matters,” Amy said. “Not so you would understand. But I have to do it. I’ve got this big, huge hole in my heart now that my mom’s gone.”

      Brandon understood about holes in one’s heart, gaps in one’s life. He’d been dealing with that ever since Amy had dropped the bomb on him and moved out.

      “What about me?” he asked. “What about us?”

      “I’m sorry that our marriage wasn’t strong enough, that we don’t love each other like we once did. If it had been, if we did, we might have made it through anything.”

      She was probably right, but the trouble was, Brandon still loved Amy. And he feared he always would.

      “What’s done is done,” she said.

      Was it?

      “Besides, I’ve always been in this alone.”

      Not by his choice, he wanted to say. But he kept his mouth shut. Things had changed; Amy had changed.

      And even though he’d give anything to go back to the way things once were, she’d made it clear that she wasn’t up for the trek.

      Chapter 4

      Barbara Davila walked along the tree-shaded sidewalk to Pacifica General Hospital with slow, deliberate steps. She’d hoped that the trips to visit her son would get easier, but they hadn’t. Each day was still a struggle, and she suspected they would be until his discharge.

      For almost two weeks now, Joey had been in the cardiac unit, and each time she pushed through the revolving doors into the lobby, she was swept back to a time in her life she’d tried to forget.

      But maybe today would be different. There was talk of a heart bypass once his blood sugar level was acceptable, and she hoped that one day soon they’d announce he’d been stabilized, surgery had been scheduled, and he was finally on the road to recovery.

      She was eager to get him home, where she could oversee his care and help him get back on his feet again.

      She hadn’t told him or his wife yet, although she was sure they’d be delighted, but she’d decided it would be best if he recovered at her house in Rancho Santa Fe. It was so much more spacious and comfortable than the small condo in Fairbrook where he and his wife lived. Barbara could also afford round-the-clock help and would spare no expense at making him comfortable. She just needed to get him home.

      Who would have believed that something like this could have happened?

      At forty-eight, Joseph Davila Jr. had appeared to be the picture of health, with a ready smile, a booming laugh, and a robust complexion. He ran every day—and worked out, too—but on the inside, where no one could see, he was a mess. And to make matters worse, his pancreas had been acting up and his heart had been a ticking bomb.

      She entered the lobby, walked past the pink-frocked volunteers, made her way to the elevator, and rode it up to the third floor. While awaiting the doors to open, she wondered if she should have chosen to use the stairway for the exercise. After all, she had no idea what shape her own heart was in. But she’d worry about that later. She’d never liked hospitals and had managed to avoid them ever since her husband’s recuperation at the military hospital in Honolulu, so she was in a hurry to get in and out.

      Had it been anyone else, she’d have sent an expensive floral arrangement and come up with some plausible reason why she couldn’t stop by for a visit. But this was Joseph Jr., her only son.

      Her only child. She wouldn’t—she couldn’t—be anywhere other than here. So she pressed on and continued the forward momentum.

      Whenever she found herself stressed, she’d learned to inhale deeply and blow it out, but she couldn’t do that here. The medicinal smell was enough to send her running and gagging.

      Besides the odor, everything about the hospital—the irritating squeak of rubber-soled shoes upon the polished linoleum, the hollow clunk of a plastic lunch tray on a cart, the blips and beeps of the machines keeping people alive—seemed to send her back in time to the mid-sixties. But she’d fought the mental spiral by forcing her thoughts on the present.

      When she reached the nurses’ desk, she waited for the woman on duty to glance up. When she did, Barbara said, “Good morning, Simone. How’s Joey doing today?”

      The dark-haired Florence Nightingale managed a smile. “About the same. His minister is with him now.”

      Barbara nodded, then proceeded to her son’s private room. She’d never understood how Joey had come to be so religious, since he hadn’t been raised in the church. Her mother had carted her off to Sunday school for as long as she could remember, and she’d refused to do that to her son.

      So needless to say, Joey’s faith had surprised her.

      She could understand why it would flare up now, when his health and recovery were questionable, when he was facing his own mortality. But he’d held those same beliefs for years.

      It probably had something to do with his grandmother’s influence, which was one reason Barbara hadn’t encouraged much of a relationship between her mother and her son while he was growing up. But once Joey had gotten a driver’s license, there’d been no stopping him. He’d visited his grandma regularly, a practice that had continued even after he married.

      In fact, as her mother slipped deeper into a fog of dementia, Joey had volunteered to take her in and let her live with him and his wife, rather than place her in a home.

      Barbara had tried to talk him out of it, insisting that there were plenty of quality convalescent hospitals that were better equipped, better trained to handle Alzheimer’s patients.

      “If we put her there,” Joey had said, “you’d never visit her.”

      Barbara hadn’t argued that point. Everyone knew she hated medical facilities, even if they didn’t have any idea why. But her mother didn’t even recognize her these days anyway, so what would it hurt?

      As Barbara entered Joey’s private room, she spotted Craig Houston, the associate pastor of Joey’s church, seated in the blue vinyl chair next to the hospital bed. When the fair-haired young man in his mid-twenties looked her way, she returned his smile.

      There wasn’t even the slightest resemblance between the men, since Joey had inherited his brown hair—now silver-laced at the temples—and olive complexion from his father’s side of the family. Yet for a moment, seeing the two together, Barbara couldn’t help wondering what her son’s children might have grown up to look like had