“Not really,” Eric admitted before he slid a book back into the bookcase and turned toward them. “I knew who he was, though. I worked for Morelli Landscaping when I was a kid. I wasn’t assigned to this house—Kevin Little used to do the landscaping and upkeep here—but one spring, Kevin’s crew was short one guy, and I filled in. During my breaks, I used to read. That’s how Kevin found me one day, under a tree with my nose in a book. Kevin wasn’t used to me. He didn’t know that I worked like a madman but grabbed a book on my break. He thought I was slacking off and started to lay into me. Next thing I know, I hear someone calling out to Kevin from the front porch. It was your dad. He must have heard us in the yard. He asked to speak to Kevin. I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation from where I was sitting.”
“Dad told your boss to lay off you, didn’t he?” Marc said.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“It’s what Dad would have done in that situation,” Colleen said quietly, sharing a meaningful glance with her eldest brother. “He didn’t have much when he was growing up. He believed in the power of hard work and education. He would have been the first to defend a kid reading on his break.”
In the distance, they heard Riley start to wail. “All that sugar from dessert has her battery overcharged. I better go assist the troops,” Marc said with a smile. He squeezed Colleen’s shoulder as he left, confirmation that he’d been as affected by Eric’s memory of Derry as she had been.
“Do you want to sit down?” Colleen asked, waving at the sofa. The sound of the French door shutting quietly behind Marc had highlighted the fact that she was alone with Eric.
“He and my mom were alike in that way,” Eric said.
“Excuse me?”
“Your dad and my mom,” he said. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he stared at the bookcases. “Education. Hard work. My mom drilled that into me practically from the day I was born.”
Colleen swallowed with effort. It seemed like such a charged topic. “Natalie has told me a lot about your mom. She sounds like she was an amazing woman,” she said.
“She was.”
The silence and Colleen’s discomfort mingled…swelled.
“What’s wrong?’ Eric asked quietly.
She shook her head and laughed. “It’s an old feeling, but it still haunts me at times.”
“What’s that?””
“The urge to apologize for my father’s actions,” she murmured after a pause, studying Eric’s hand where it rested on his thigh. “And the subsequent rush of anger…wanting to defend him…wishing like crazy I could…feeling helpless because I know I can’t.”
He reached out, pulled her toward his body in a comforting gesture. Colleen recalled her earlier conversation with her mother. She glanced into Eric’s face. It was shadowed and sober-looking in the dim room.
He rubbed her shoulders with his fingers. It soothed her, his touch…reassured her. “I know that. If I didn’t always know it as well as I do right now, I’m sorry.”
“It was such a hard thing, the crash…for everyone. Everything was so raw. Emotions just get splattered everywhere in the aftermath, I guess.”
“I was so busy tallying up the things your father had stolen from me, I never really paused to think about who he really was, let alone what my life would have been like if the crash hadn’t happened.” He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe I wouldn’t have had the drive it took to go to college and medical school if there weren’t so many barriers just taunting me to leap over them.”
Colleen smiled. “And maybe I wouldn’t have gotten married in such a rush and started a family so quickly, desperate to create my own little secure world.”
He held her stare. “Is that what you think happened?”
She sighed. “Maybe. If that was part of my motivation for an early marriage, I don’t regret it. I had a lot of good years with Darin. I have Brendan and Jenny, and who could regret that?”
He nodded in agreement. He shifted his hand, massaging her tense shoulder and neck muscles. She let her head drop onto his chest and inhaled the clean scent of his laundered shirt and the subtle spice of his cologne. Her eyelids grew heavy. It felt so good.
“When you say you miss Darin…”
“Yes?” she asked when he paused, her eyelids still closed. When he didn’t immediately respond, she opened her eyes and lifted her head from his chest.
“Forgive me for being curious,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
“I was just wondering to what degree Darin is still with us, when I’m alone with you.”
The way he’d posed the question had caught her off guard.