Brambleberry House. RaeAnne Thayne

sorry.”

      He shook his head. “Don’t, Sage. It’s okay. I’d better get the last load of boxes.”

      He turned and headed down the stairs, leaving behind only the echo of his workboots hitting the wooden steps. Julia turned her confused gaze to Anna and Sage and found them both watching after Will with identical expressions of sadness in their eyes.

      “I missed something, obviously,” she said softly.

      Sage gave Anna a helpless look and the other woman shrugged.

      “She’ll find out sooner or later,” Anna said. “She might as well hear it from us.”

      “You’re right,” Sage said. “It just still hurts so much to talk about the whole thing.”

      “You don’t have to tell me anything,” Julia said quickly. “I’m sorry if I’ve wandered into things that are none of my business.”

      Sage glanced down the stairs as if checking to see if Will was returning. When she was certain he was still outside, she turned back, her voice pitched low. “Will had a daughter. She would have been a couple years younger than your twins. Cara. That’s who I was talking about. Abigail adored her. We all did. She was the cutest little thing you’ve ever seen, just full of energy, with big blue eyes, brown curls and dimples. She was full of sugar, our Cara.”

      Had a daughter. Not has. An ache blossomed in her chest and she knew she didn’t want to hear any more.

      But she had learned many lessons over the last few years—one of the earliest was that information was empowering, even if the gaining of it was a process often drenched in pain.

      “What happened?” she forced herself to ask.

      Sage shook her head, her face inexpressibly sad. Anna squeezed her arm and picked up the rest of the story.

      “Cara was killed along with Will’s wife, Robin, two years ago.” Though Anna spoke in her usual no-nonsense tone, Julia could hear the pain threading through her words.

      “They were crossing the street downtown in the middle of the afternoon when they were hit by a drunk tourist in a motorhome,” she went on. “Robin died instantly but Cara hung on for two weeks. We all thought—hoped—she was going to pull through but she caught an infection in the hospital in Portland and her little body was too weak and battered to fight it.”

      She wanted to cry, just sit right there in the middle of the floor and weep for him. More than that, she wanted to race down the stairs and hug her own precious darlings to her.

      “Oh, poor Will. He must have been shattered.”

      “We all were,” Sage said. “It was like a light went out of all of us. Will used to be so lighthearted. Like a big tease of an older brother. It’s been more than two years since Robin and Cara died and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him genuinely smile at something since then.”

      The ache inside her stretched and tugged and her eyes burned with tears for the teenage boy with the mischievous eyes.

      Sage touched her arm. “I’m so glad you’re here now.”

      “Me? Why?”

      “Well, you’ve lost someone, too. You understand, in a way the rest of us can’t. I’m sure it would help Will to talk to someone who’s experienced some of those same emotions.”

      Julia barely contained her wince, feeling like the world’s biggest fraud.

      “Grief is such a solitary, individual thing,” she said after an awkward moment. “No one walks the same journey.”

      Sage smiled and pressed a cheek to Julia’s. “I know. But I’m still glad you’re here, and I’m sure Will is, too.”

      Julia was saved from having to come up with an answer to that when she again heard his footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, he came in, muscles bulging beneath the cotton of his shirt as he carried in a trio of boxes.

      He had erased any trace of emotion from his features, any sign at all that he contained any emotions at all. Finding out about his wife and daughter explained so much about him. The hardness, the cynicism. The pain in his eyes when he looked at Maddie.

      She had a wild urge to take the boxes from him, slip her arms around his waist and hold him until everything was all right again.

      “This is the last of it. Where do these go?”

      Her words tangled in her throat and she had to clear her throat before she could speak. “The top one belongs in my bedroom. The others are Simon’s.”

      With an abrupt nod, he headed first to her room and then to the one down the hall where Simon slept.

      He returned to the living room just as the doorbell downstairs rang through the house.

      “Hey, Mom!” Simon yelled up the stairs an instant later. “The pizza guy’s here!”

      Conan started barking in accompaniment and Julia rolled her eyes at the sudden cacophony of sound. “Are you sure about this? The house was so quiet before we showed up. If you want that quiet again, you’d better speak now while I’ve still got the U-Haul.”

      Sage shook her head with a laugh. “No way. I’m not lugging those books back down the stairs. You’re stuck here for a while.”

      Right now, she couldn’t think of anywhere she would rather be. Julia flashed a quick smile to the other two women and Will, grabbed her purse, and headed down the stairs to pay for the pizza.

      Simon stood at the door holding on to Conan’s collar as the dog wriggled with excitement, his tail wagging a mile a minute.

      Her son giggled. “I think he really likes pizza, Mom.”

      “I guess. Maybe you had better take him into Anna’s apartment so he doesn’t attack the pizza driver.”

      With effort, he wrangled the dog through the door and closed the door behind him. Finally, Julia opened the door and found a skinny young man with his cap on backward and his arms full of pizza boxes.

      She quickly paid him for the pizza—adding in a hefty tip. She closed the door behind him and backed into the entry, her arms full, and nearly collided with a solid male.

      Strong arms came around her to keep her upright.

      “Oh,” she exclaimed to Will. “I didn’t hear you come down the stairs.”

      “You were talking to the driver,” he answered. He quickly released her—much to her regret. She knew she shouldn’t have enjoyed that brief moment of contact, but it had been so very long...

      She couldn’t help noticing the boy she had known now had hard strength in his very grown-up muscles.

      “I thought you said the trailer was empty,” she said with some confusion as he headed for the door.

      “It is. You’re done here so I’m heading home.”

      “You can’t leave!” she exclaimed.

      He raised an eyebrow. “I can’t?”

      She held out the boxes in her arms. “You’ve got to stay for pizza. I ordered way too much for three women and two children.”

      “Don’t forget Conan,” he pointed out. “He’s crazy about pizza, even though all that cheese is lousy for him.”

      “Knowing my kids, I’m sure he’ll be able to sneak far more than is good for him.”

      The scent of him reached her, spicy and male and far more enticing than any pizza smells. “I still have too much. Please stay.”

      He gazed at the door with a look almost of desperation in his eyes. But when he turned back, she thought he might be weakening.

      “Please, Will,” she pressed.

      He