They’d gone for coffee on their first date and talked for hours.
Brynne had told Clay all about growing up in Painted Pony Creek, Montana, and Clay, a lifelong citizen of Boston, had told her about his career—he’d been born to be a cop, he’d said, following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He was recently divorced, he said, with two children, a boy and a girl—the marriage had been solid for a long time, but the stresses and strains of his job had worn him and his wife down.
Finally, there had been nothing left besides their mutual love for the kids, and they’d sadly agreed to call it quits.
Brynne closed her eyes at the memory of that long-ago, sunlit afternoon on the patio of a café near the gallery.
She’d fallen for Clay somewhere between meeting him on the agreed street corner and the final café Americano long after the sun set.
More dates followed: dinner, movies, concerts—the usual things.
Unlike the college boys and entry-level executives she’d dated previously, Clay didn’t expect sex from the get-go. He’d wooed her, actually wooed her, the old-fashioned way, with flowers, phone calls, handwritten notes and the like, and when she’d talked, he’d listened, instead of simply waiting for her to shut up so he could speak, the way the others had done.
A year later, Brynne moved in with Clay.
Gradually, she got to know his children, Davey and Maddie, and come to love them almost as deeply as if she’d given birth to them herself.
Clay’s ex-wife, Heather, had been friendly enough, on the rare occasions when she and Brynne encountered each other—family birthday parties for the kids, brief vacations, picking them up for or dropping them off after their weekends with their father.
Back then, Brynne’s mom and dad were still living in Painted Pony Creek and running the family business, and as soon as their daughter had given up her apartment to share Clay’s larger one, they’d started asking when she intended to bring her “boyfriend” out west for a visit.
Naturally, they wanted to meet him.
Size him up as a potential son-in-law.
Although they never said so outright, Brynne had known her parents were bothered by the fact that Clay was (1) divorced, and (2) a cop, with all the dangers and other drawbacks of the job.
Brynne and Clay hadn’t really discussed marriage at that point.
Being together had been enough.
Brynne’s days had been full, between her work at the gallery, which she loved, and her own art. Most evenings, Clay was home, and they talked, read, cooked together and made love. Sweet, vibrant love.
The folks at home had begun to ask pointed questions during their weekly phone calls. Brynne loved her mom and dad, and hadn’t blamed them for wondering where her relationship with Clay was headed—she was an only child, after all—but she’d avoided direct answers.
As wonderful as Mike and Alice Bailey were, they’d been somewhat too eager to see Brynne married, settled, and producing grandchildren. Alice, not surprisingly, had been the one most invested in the dream.
Clippings had begun to arrive in the mail—Brynne’s mom had never gotten the hang of email—images of bridal gowns, exquisite floral displays, glamorous venues ranging from mountaintops to European castles, towering cakes fit for a Windsor wedding.
Brynne had barely registered those pictures at first, but she’d stuffed them into a drawer instead of tossing them. They’d accumulated, over the weeks and months, and they’d become harder to ignore.
Then Heather, Clay’s ex, a trust fund baby, had suddenly married her personal trainer, temporarily transferred full custody of their children to Clay and dropped the kids off at the apartment to set out on a six-week world tour with her new husband.
Brynne had been thrilled to have Davey and Maddie around full-time; in those six weeks, she’d played mom and delighted in every aspect of the role. She’d taken them to school, picked them up afterward, brought them to the gallery, where they remained until quitting time.
Clay was pleased with the situation, too—he was an excellent father and sorely missed his children when they weren’t around—but, although Brynne hadn’t realized it then, something inside him had shifted when Heather remarried.
It was a subtle change, but it turned out to be momentous.
Upon her return from the whirlwind honeymoon, Heather greeted her son and daughter with tears and hugs, but, as she confided to Clay and Brynne, she and her bridegroom needed “us time.” Time to get used to being married.
Would Clay mind keeping the children just a little while longer? She would see them regularly, of course, but she just wasn’t ready to be both a wife and mother just yet.
Again.
Clay had agreed, though he insisted on a new custody agreement, and Heather had gone along with the plan.
The kids, who adored their father, had been delighted, and Brynne had been, too.
Clay, too, had been glad to keep the kids, but he’d seemed oddly embittered all of a sudden regarding Heather’s new marriage. He’d scoffed when Davey and Maddie came home after a brief visit with their mother and showed him pictures of the places they’d visited and the things they’d done together, as a family.
He’d begun to refer to the new husband—”Geoffrey with a G”—as a gym monkey and a mope, the latter being cop slang for a loser.
And it wasn’t like Clay to be so petty.
Slowly, so slowly that Brynne hardly noticed, things began to go wrong between her and Clay. He was often short with her, and he began to work longer and longer hours.
Brynne busied herself with her job, her art and the children, and told herself to be patient with Clay. His job was difficult, not to mention dangerous, and the police had recently been under fire in the media.
The first crack in the relationship occurred when Clay’s partner was shot and nearly killed. Then she and Clay had stopped in at a convenience store to buy fountain drinks, and interrupted a holdup.
Clay had wrested the gun from the robber’s hand, and a second bullet had missed him by inches.
He’d taken the incident in stride—This is what it is to be a cop, he’d said—but Brynne, despite previous exposure to the high costs the job too often involved, had been deeply shaken. Before Clay’s partner’s shooting, she’d been one step removed from the realities.
Afterwards, she’d started having nightmares, fretting when Clay came home late.
Impatient, he’d called her clingy, and that single word had wounded Brynne almost as badly as what happened next. Where, she’d wondered, was the line between “understandably concerned” and “clingy”?
And what, exactly, had happened next?