I sent her a soft scowl. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Gretchen scuttled into the kitchen. “Oh, I think you do. That man has been eating you alive for weeks. I don’t know how you’re walking.”
Yeah, I really didn’t know how I was walking, either.
“He does no such thing.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure he does all the things.” She waggled her brows as she filled a watering can at the sink.
“Gretchen.” It was an affectionate sigh that squeezed my chest.
God, how much I loved this woman.
She smiled. Pure Cheshire grin. “Just enjoy it, sweetheart. It seems the two of you had a little catching up to do.”
I looked out the window where the last of the day sank toward the horizon, winter holding fast to the air.
“I guess we did, didn’t we?” I admitted when I looked back at her.
Her expression softened. “It’s good you’re here, Aster.”
A war went down inside me. The part that kept worrying what I was doing was wrong. That it was selfish, staying here, dragging this family into my mess. The danger I was bringing to his door. I’d done it before, and look where that had gotten us.
Was I nothing but a fool for pressing it again? For getting us back into the very position we’d been in then?
“At what point is loving someone selfish? At what point is the cost too great?” I finally asked her.
Gretchen glanced at me in speculation. “For which of you?”
I huffed a perplexed sound, my attention focused on winding ribbon around the package I’d wrapped for Juniper, this little family that wasn’t mine yet felt like my own. My voice was a tremor when I admitted, “For Logan because I’m pretty sure I’d sacrifice anything for him.”
Gretchen hummed and went to watering the plants in the living room. Her back was to me when she spoke, “Well, from my perspective, that man is about as over-the-top as they come. Filling up the space like a blinding star every time he walks into a room.”
I felt that truth to my soul.
“Livin’ life to the extreme, but I’m pretty sure it was gonna burn out. You can’t keep shining when you only shine to cover the darkness you hold onto.”
Emotion climbed to my throat.
Thick and sticky.
She glanced at me. “I’ve cleaned house for Logan for the last five years. He was always a goof…joking, coming in and making a scene every chance he got, but there was always something beneath the surface. Couldn’t put my finger on it. Not until my Jonnie passed about a year ago.”
Grief curled through her expression, and an ache lit in my spirit. “I’m so sorry.”
“Well, I am, too, but we had quite the life together.” She went back to tending to the plants, musing as she did, “I lost him about the same time Logan was moving into this place. He told me he couldn’t handle things without me, but I knew him asking me to stay here didn’t have a thing to do with him needing the help.”
Pausing, she fiddled with a leaf before she continued to speak, “That’s a good man, you know, as wild and rough as he can be, bringing me in to live with him because he was worried about me being alone.”
She hesitated, the tease normally held in her tone waning to soft affection. “I’d been living here for about two weeks when I heard it one night. Probably should have minded my business, but you know I’m not so good at that, so I let myself into his room when I heard him whimpering in pain and he didn’t respond to my knocking.”
Soft laughter rolled from her. “The man was fool drunk, tuckered out on a bottle of whiskey, laying on his back on the floor staring up at the ceiling like it was the sky. He told me about a star he’d caught once, one that’d burned him so bad that he’d had to let it go.”
Everything squeezed, and my breath locked in my throat when she looked at me. “Every so often after that, I would hear him calling out for that star in his sleep. Aster.”
Moisture bleared my sight, joy and sorrow clutching my chest. “He haunted my dreams, too.”
She moved across the room so she could reach out and touch my cheek. “It’s only a nightmare if it ends bad. You just make sure that doesn’t happen.”