Part 8 (2/2)

Facing him over fifteen years of...no, not silence-they'd stayed stiltedly, steadily polite-but stormy quiet.

Boone braced himself. What if the quiet was better? Sometimes it was. Grief had become more bearable when he'd stopped feeling like screaming. Work had even become easier when he'd learned to draw with less volume in the music filling his studio.

Crockett sighed, sounding uncannily like Aunt Gert when she was about to cut loose on one or more of them. ”You're completely nuts.”

Oh, for G.o.d's sake. ”That's beside the point.”

”No, usually it's beside the point. Right now, it is the point.” Crockett seemed to be trying to gather his thoughts. ”I was in love with Maggie from the moment I met her,” he admitted. ”Something you can identify with. But that didn't mean she was in love with me. Not for one minute. Even before you and she met, that s.h.i.+p had already sailed and I was getting over it. Besides,” he added wryly, ”I already had a pretty good idea that my particular s.h.i.+p was taking me in another direction altogether. You don't enter the priesthood because of a broken heart, Boone. At least, you shouldn't. Maggie probably had a little more to do with it for me than she should have, but that's not your fault or hers-it's mine.”

”But she would still-”

”No, she wouldn't. She had an aneurysm. You didn't give her that. No one even knew she had it. Had I been with her, I wouldn't have known.”

Boone hadn't cried over Maggie in a long time. He'd cursed and shouted out his anger and mourned in long and mostly silent pain, but he thought he'd come a long way. He spent time with her family without falling apart. He enjoyed seeing pictures of her in Aunt Gert's photo alb.u.ms. He was able to talk about her without losing his voice to grief. He'd found pleasure with other women and was pretty sure he was finding something more than just pleasure with Lucy. But he'd always felt guilty. Still felt guilty.

Tears pushed at the backs of his eyes and he lifted his hand to his face, trying to keep them back with his fingers. He hadn't been raised with the old archetype that said men didn't cry, but he'd never gotten comfortable with the fact that sometimes they did.

”How could I not have known?” he asked, although he understood that even Crockett's G.o.d-endowed wisdom probably didn't have an answer for him. ”How could we have been together d.a.m.n near every minute for ten years without me knowing she had a time bomb inside her?”

”You weren't given that power,” Crockett said. ”I don't know why. I don't even begin to know why. G.o.d wanted Maggie in a different place, and I don't know the why on that, either. But there's one thing I do know.”

”What's that?” The tears were there, moving past his fingers and down his cheeks. He turned his face away.

”I see lots of people, even elderly people, who never, ever have what you and Maggie had. Who have never loved anyone the way you did her and who've never been loved the way she did you. For ten years, you both started and ended every day fully aware you were somebody's heart and soul. That was an unparalleled gift, Boone. It ended too soon-I know that, and I can't tell you the reason for it, but that doesn't take away from what it was.”

Boone nodded. He knew that too, but knowing it didn't make the ending any more bearable.

”And I know something else.”

Crockett wasn't going to go on unless he turned to face him. Boone finally did, after wiping his face with his palms. ”What?”

”That it's time.”

Boone didn't have to ask, ”Time for what?” It was time to let Maggie rest, to accept memories as just what they were: memories. He thought he'd done that in Rising Sun with Lucy, but it had only been one of the intricate steps in the grieving process. He still wasn't sure he was ready for that dance to be over. ”I don't know if I can do it,” he said aloud.

”I don't know either,” Crockett admitted, ”but I know you should.”

”It wasn't just Maggie I lost,” Boone said. ”I lost my best friend too.”

Crockett met his gaze again before stepping into the bathroom between their rooms and coming out with a tissue and handing it to him. ”I've been here the whole time,” he said, unsmiling, ”and the truth is so have you. We don't talk a lot, but I never doubted that if I needed a friend, I always had one.”

Boone realized he'd always known that, too, though it wasn't the same as it had been when they were young. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be. ”I kept thinking you were the one who was angry and blaming you for it,” he said. ”Maybe it was me.”

”Maybe. And maybe-” Crockett hesitated, ”-maybe the only way I could do the priesthood thing was by giving up who I'd been, including being your best friend. Being whatever I was to Kelly. I think I was wrong.”

Boone drew in a wavering breath. ”Wanna kiss and make up?”

Crockett grinned. ”I think I'll pa.s.s.”

They'd known each other their whole lives, but they'd never, ever hugged. Not that they minded men hugging, but they'd always been more the shake hands and say rude things and slap shoulders type.

Boone didn't know who stepped first, but for a moment, they were the hugging type, holding hard and close. ”Be careful going back,” he said gruffly.

”Will do. You and Lucy-take care of each other.”

”Okay.”

Back in his room, Boone sat on the bed and held the picture of Maggie for a long, aching time. ”If I let you go,” he said aloud, ”it doesn't mean forgetting, does it?”

There was no thunder or lightning, no epiphanic understanding that life would go on from this day forward unfettered by memories or grief. It would have been nice if he could have heard Maggie's voice urging him to freedom. ”Oh, for heaven's sake, Boone,” he wanted to hear, ”what's taken you so long?”

But when he kissed his fingertips and pressed them to the gla.s.s in the picture frame, as he'd done every night for three years, he understood that he wouldn't do it anymore. ”Love you,” he whispered.

Before he slept, just for a moment, he smelled lilacs and spring.

And he felt hope.

Chapter Nine.

Kelly Brennan was pale and listless. Her makeup was as perfect as ever, but it was more like a mask than an enhancement. Lucy felt sorry for her in spite of herself. She poured a cup of orange spice tea and set it in front of Kelly at the kitchen's island. ”Would you like some breakfast?” she asked brightly. ”I was going to make oatmeal.”

The lawyer's glance was baleful. ”I'd rather eat glue. I came over to talk to my brother and my aunt, and I'd like some privacy while I do that.”

”Fine.” Lucy went into the laundry room, closing the door with a snap that very nearly qualified as a slam-Lucy the Pleaser never slammed doors. She emptied the was.h.i.+ng machine and carried the basket outside. Every bed in the house was changed on Monday morning. Gert was a modern thinker most of the time, but her evolution had stopped with certain housekeeping habits-even when Monday was a holiday. One of Lucy's favorite jobs was hanging the crisp white bedding outside. It was a dose of sanity on even the worst of days.

When the two sets of sheets from that load were flapping on the line, she went to the garden behind the garage, getting a hoe out of the shed. Jack did a good job keeping the weeds at bay, but there were always a few to take one's frustrations out on. She'd chopped up earth around the tomato plants and onions, pulled a handful of radishes, and was hoeing the beans when she heard a drawling voice behind her. ”You were wearing those shorts when I met you. I liked them that day too.”

She had to stop herself from saying something rude. It wasn't Boone's fault his sister was a pain in the backside. ”Thank you,” she said primly, not turning around.

”I'm going to drive out to the cemetery. You want to go? It's a pretty morning.”

She'd had to call and order flowers for her parents' graves in Virginia after the fire fiasco on Sat.u.r.day and she felt a sharp twinge of regret that she wouldn't be able to visit.

”Dad and I went every year. He made me,” she murmured. She straightened and faced Boone, leaning on the hoe. ”He'd sit on a bench and talk to Mom and I'd run around looking at all the names on the markers. There was an Isobel Dolan who was buried three rows away, and I used to put flowers on her grave. I just knew she was a long-lost grandmother.” She smiled sheepishly and handed him the hoe to put away. ”My grandparents are all buried in Ireland and I never knew any of them, but that didn't stop me from daydreaming.” She nodded. ”I'd like to go.”

The Jeep was full of flowers. Some were silk arrangements, some real, their aroma sweet in the warm air. ”You just want me along to help distribute all this,” she accused, climbing into the pa.s.senger seat and accepting a bouquet of yellow roses from him.

Boone started the Jeep. ”You got that right. Aunt Gert and Kelly will go to the cemetery today-it's one way we're all very traditional, I guess-but I always get to be the flower boy.”

”These are gorgeous,” she said, sniffing the flowers in her lap.

”They were her favorite.”

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