A traveling medical tech, he made rounds in Sunset Bay often, and he had begun to use her family’s property regularly.
He didn’t know her. Everyone in town knew her and, more importantly, knew Thomas.
There had been no one to confide in.
And that was how it had started. Because Michael had asked why she was sad, and he had been the only person to notice that she was. That no matter how wide she was smiling it didn’t reach her eyes.
But he had seen it. He knew.
No, she didn’t feel guilty.
And if he knew... Oh, if Thomas knew, he wouldn’t be able to ignore it. Not like when she had quietly told him she was lonely.
Not when she had asked him if he still thought she was beautiful and he’d said yes without even looking at her, asking why she had doubted it.
Not like when she’d said she missed him, and he looked at her like she was insane, because they lived together, and half the time they even worked together at the church, so how could she miss him?
On the nightstand, she saw her phone light up.
Michael stirred in the bed, his eyes opening, but he didn’t make a sound.
She didn’t answer the phone because she couldn’t bear to speak to anyone. But it was late, and if she was starting to get calls...
She touched his shoulder. “I have to go.”
He stirred, and he took her in his arms, pulling her against the length of his body, kissing her. She melted. She hadn’t been touched like this in so long.
His hands skimmed over her curves. Reverently. Lustfully.
Had she ever been touched like this? Had Thomas ever looked at her with this kind of intensity?
“Do you really have to?”
“Yes,” she said. “I... My...”
“Yeah.” His lips lifted into a smile. “I get it.”
She rolled away from him reluctantly and got out of bed, dressing slowly.
She put her phone in her purse. Her wedding ring was still in there. She wasn’t going to put it on while she was still with Michael.
“Regrets?” he asked.
“None.”
And that would have stayed true if Michael hadn’t followed her.
But he did.
Right out of the bedroom. Right when her eyes connected with her husband’s.
Thomas was standing at the bottom of the stairs, his expression tense, his left hand resting on the banister.
His gold wedding ring shining bright. His eyes met hers, grave but with no trace of anger at all.
“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you...”
Her phone buzzing brought her back to the moment.
She unburied herself from the sheets and rolled to the side, reaching down and fishing her phone out of her purse.
It wasn’t Thomas this time.
It was her mother.
RACHEL
“You called me?”
Shock bloomed in Rachel’s stomach when her sister walked into the dining room. And it was also shock that registered on Anna’s face when she looked around the room and saw that they were all here.
Her sister no longer looked unflappable. No longer the smooth, perfect pastor’s wife.
No.
She had felt, strongly in her soul, that her brother-in-law had undone all of that with a few words from the pulpit this morning. But she could see, judging by the bruises blooming underneath her eyes from lack of sleep, and the lines that bracketed her mouth, that perhaps Anna had unraveled it herself.
“We were looking for you,” her mother said.
“We were worried,” Emma said.
Rachel felt a momentary stab of guilt that her daughter had been the first one to offer concern.
But Rachel still felt like she was lost in a fog of her own grief, and she resented the guilt. She didn’t have the room for it.
“Is it true?” Wendy asked.
“Is what true?”
“You must have known he was going to announce it today at church,” Wendy said.
“I...”
“You did,” Rachel said. She tried to keep the accusation out of her voice. But why hadn’t Anna warned them? They had just been sitting there exposed to...
“I guess I didn’t really believe that he would,” Anna said. “I mean, I wouldn’t have thought that he would want to make such a—a spectacle out of it. But I guess that he needs to... He needs to have it done.”
“He shouldn’t have done that,” Emma said, the conviction in her daughter’s voice filled with the kind of purity that only the young could feel.
“Were you going to tell me?” Rachel asked. “Ever?”
Anna blinked. “Why would I tell you right now?”
“I don’t know. You couldn’t wait to blow your life up until I was through all of this? You might as well have confided in me. You could’ve talked to me.”
“Enough,” Wendy said. “It’s not time to fight. If you need a place to stay, Anna, you know you can always stay in the Shoreman’s Cabin. It’s available.”
“Right,” Anna said. “I’m sure the Forest Service won’t mind at all if we negatively impact the revenue by giving me a place to stay.”
“We built this place,” Wendy said. “For us. And I reserve the right to benefit this family with what we’ve built. You need a place. We have a place.”
“Thank you,” Anna said quietly.
Rachel couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her sister quite so unraveled. It reminded her of younger Anna. Who used to explode at the drop of a hat and then put herself back together and become a cheerful, sweet child minutes after the storm.
She had been replaced by the smooth creature that had made Rachel’s stomach hurt the day of the funeral. But she wasn’t entirely sure she was ready for windswept, hurricane Anna yet, either.
She wondered what was wrong with her that she couldn’t find any compassion right now. Maybe it was just that the well was dry. Because her husband was dead and Anna had betrayed hers.
Her stomach tightened.
She knew it wasn’t that simple. She knew that it couldn’t be. Because what Thomas had done rang so hollow and so false that even if he was telling the truth... She knew that it wasn’t the whole truth.
But she still couldn’t find it in her to be soft. To be forgiving. To let somebody else have a problem when her own life had been destroyed.