Chapter 3

3

" A re you crazy?"

Jilly was furious, and Iris's defenses were down.

Dusk had fallen as Iris had driven home. She felt battered by everything that had happened today. Coming face-to-face with Callum for the first time in ten years. Meeting his sons, miniature versions of their daddy—but also different, with traits that had to have come from their mother. I fought you were gonna die and go to Heaben like Mama. Their deceased mother.

Battered by everything that had transpired in that hospital room.

Iris and Jilly stood halfway between the ranch house and a minivan Iris had borrowed from a friend. Brandt and Levi were sleeping inside the vehicle, strapped in a pair of booster seats. And Iris had just told Jilly that she'd offered to let Callum and his kids stay with them.

Standing there in the near-darkness, Iris knew she needed to get the boys inside the house, in a real bed. And then try to formulate some kind of plan for the next few days.

Running away from home seemed like a good option.

Jilly was right. She was crazy.

"He broke your heart, remember?"

As if Iris could forget.

"You walked around like a zombie for months after he left."

Jilly's words landed like punches, and Iris's temper snapped. "Of course I remember. I was the one he walked away from!"

She'd been seventeen. Desperately in love with Callum and blindsided when he'd stopped answering her calls just hours after a freak car accident that caused one of their friends to lose his eyesight.

She still felt the echoes of devastation, the complete emptiness, that had overtaken her for almost her entire senior year.

Jilly wasn't one to back down just because Iris had yelled at her. "So, what is this, some kind of quest for closure?"

The spring evening was warm, but Jilly wore a long-sleeved T-shirt with her jeans and had her arms wrapped around her middle as if she was cold. Her headscarf served as a brutal reminder of what she was going through. She'd had a chemo treatment yesterday and looked like she might float away if the wind gusted hard enough.

Iris gentled her voice. "I don't need closure. I've moved on."

Jilly's wrinkled nose showed her skepticism. Iris hadn't dated much since she'd returned to Sutter's Hollow from Manhattan, but who could blame her?

"And so has he," Iris added. "Obviously." Callum had children of his own. He wasn't hung up on her. He was just in a tight spot and needed help.

"It's only for a couple of days, okay? He probably doesn't want to be around me any more than I want to be around him."

Her exasperation and exhaustion must've leaked through, because Jilly's expression softened.

"Are you okay?" Jilly asked.

Iris shrugged. "I need to make up the guest room upstairs. Can you stay out here for a couple minutes? In case one of them wakes up." She gestured to the minivan.

Jilly agreed, and Iris jogged up the steps and into the house. The downstairs lights were off, but that didn't matter. She'd spent every summer at Uncle Joe's since she was twelve, and she and Jilly had lived here together for the past five years now. She knew every nook and cranny in the place.

She strode up the stairs to the second floor and passed her bedroom and Jilly's, pushing into the third door. It'd been her childhood bedroom. Jilly had insisted she take over the master bedroom after Joe had passed.

She had a lot of good memories in what was now the spare room.

And some terrible ones.

There was a light layer of dust on the bedside table. She and Jilly didn't come in here often, didn't have time to clean rooms that went unused. The cleaning would have to wait. She fetched a clean set of sheets from the closet.

Jilly had a right to be angry. Her home was about to be invaded.

Iris hadn't been thinking about Jilly or her treatments when she'd made the impulsive offer. The chemo knocked out Jilly's immune system. And kids were germ-magnets. She'd have to figure out a way to keep Jilly separated from their temporary houseguests.

She hadn't been thinking at all.

She'd seen the mix of terror and determination in Callum's expression and reacted. It's just me and the boys . There was no one else to call.

His fear had gotten to her.

In high school, he'd been on his own. Abandoned by his parents and with no other family to take him in, he'd been in the foster system since he was eight. At fifteen, he was all rough edges and brooding silences.

He'd worked for Uncle Joe in some kind of partnership program with the boys' ranch-slash-group home where Callum had been placed. She'd crossed paths with him a few times as he'd mucked stalls or hauled hay. He barely mumbled hello.

She'd thought him standoffish and cold.

Until the day she'd discovered him behind the barn, stooped next to the outdoor faucet. She was fourteen and a tomboy and horse-crazy. He was rinsing off a bad cut at the base of his thumb.

He didn't acknowledge her. Maybe he didn't hear her approach over the splash of water in the red dirt. She reached out and touched his shoulder.

And he whirled, throwing off her hand and knocking her to the ground with a shoulder tackle that would've made the football coach proud.

"Hey!" She couldn't catch her breath. He'd knocked the wind out of her.

He scrambled away, got to his feet. He was breathing hard, as if he'd run a marathon or something. His nostrils flared, and his eyes were so wide she could see more white than anything else.

"What'd you do that for?" she demanded.

He ducked his head. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let me help you up."

She flinched back when he reached out because his hand was covered in blood.

He gave up and hid his hand behind his back.

"I'm okay." She stood up slowly. She really was okay. Maybe she'd have a bruise where her tailbone had hit the ground, but she'd grown up around this ranch. She was tough.

He wasn't quite looking at her. "I didn't mean to knock you down."

"Yes, you did." He was at least a head taller than she, but she wasn't scared of him.

Color was rising in his neck above his faded T-shirt. His jeans were ripped at the knees, and she was pretty sure his boots were hand-me-downs from her uncle.

His chin hiked. "Are you going to tell your uncle?" Behind the defiant, I-don't-care stare, she could see he was terrified. Of what? Her uncle was a nice guy.

"Tell him what? That I snuck up on you and scared you?"

His obvious relief was quickly covered with a scowl. "You didn't scare me."

Yes, she had. And she wanted to know why he'd reacted so violently. She knew he lived at the boys' ranch with several other teen boys. Was he bullied? Had someone hurt him?

She had a couple of guy friends from school, and she knew he wouldn't appreciate it if she asked him such a sensitive question. They didn't even know each other.

"Your hand is bleeding everywhere," she said instead.

He looked down at the appendage, and his scowl intensified. "It's not that bad." He took a pair of leather gloves from his back pocket and started to pull one on to cover the injury.

"Don't!" she cried out. "Are you trying to get infected or something?"

His face flushed.

This time, he saw it coming when she reached out for him. She grabbed his wrist and leaned over his palm to examine it. His skin was streaked with blood. The gash was at least an inch long and deep enough that it probably needed stitches.

"You should go to the doctor and get this checked out."

"Not gonna happen."

She huffed a sigh. "At least let me put a bandage on it. Uncle Joe has a first aid kit in the barn."

She was close enough to see the surprise etched on his face before he blanked his expression.

He'd followed her into the barn and grudgingly let her put antibiotic ointment and a butterfly bandage on him.

For months after, he'd avoided her when he'd been working on the ranch. They hadn't become friends until she'd turned sixteen. Hadn't started dating until six months after that. She'd later chalked up his distance to him being shy, but that didn't quite fit.

She tried to shake away the memories with a flip of the cotton fabric of the full-size sheets. She hadn't thought about Callum in a long time. The months they'd spent together had been some of the most joy-filled of her life, even though he'd wanted to keep their relationship quiet. Their close-knit group of friends, including Jilly, knew they were dating, but nobody else.

She'd been so infatuated with him back then that she hadn't questioned it.

She hadn't questioned nearly enough.

In the hospital tonight, she'd had a visceral reaction to the fear hiding in his eyes—the same one she'd recognized from that summer day when they'd been teens. That was why she'd offered him a place to stay. Whatever demons had chased him back then, they still existed. And, based on his reaction when he'd declared his boys weren't going into the system, that they'd stay with him instead, she decided his demons were somehow related to foster care.

It wasn't going to be a big deal. She didn't even have to see him. She'd make up a bed downstairs in Joe's office—she still couldn't help calling it that, five years after her uncle passed—and Callum could sleep off the pain of the first few days of his recovery, and then get out.

Simple.

Her cell phone trilled, and she plopped the now-covered pillow onto the bed before digging in the pocket of her jeans with her opposite hand.

Dad .

"Hello?" she answered cautiously.

"Hey, baby girl."

A sense of unease raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck. He had never used that endearment for her. Not that she remembered. They'd never been close. He was mayor and had always put his work above his relationships with his daughters. Over the past years, their relationship had grown even more distant. She hadn't spoken to him in over a month. What was going on?

"Just calling to check on you."

Since when? They'd had a nasty fight months ago that he'd ended with, You two are adults . You don't need me to hold your hands anymore . I have my own life and my own problems.

She'd pushed too hard, asked him to be a part of Jilly's recovery. The fragile links holding their family together had been strained past their breaking point once Uncle Joe died.

"I'm fine. Jilly had a treatment yesterday." She didn't know where the tiny kernel of hope that he'd called about her sister came from, but it died when he only hummed on the line, not really acknowledging what Jilly was going through. Why had he called, if he didn't want to check on Jilly?

"A drunk driver crashed into the city hall building earlier. Police chief told me you called in the accident."

Ah. Her father was following up on local gossip. Figured.

"Was the second driver apprehended?" she asked. "I didn't get a good look at the guy driving south. It wasn't a truck I recognized." In Sutter's Hollow, everybody knew everybody else. Surely someone could identify the red truck.

"Second driver?" Dad's question was muffled, as if he had the phone pinned between his cheek and shoulder.

"Yeah, it was a hit-and-run. The driver of a big red truck fled the scene."

Her dad didn't respond for so long that she checked the display to see if he'd hung up.

"Dad? Do you need me to call down to the police department to make a statement? I was—" She cut herself off. Her dad had never liked Callum. Better not bring him up. She changed tack. "I went over to the hospital after the accident. I didn't think about getting a statement recorded."

There was another pause. A shorter one this time. "Don't worry about it, Baby Girl. The P.D. will get everything sorted out."

He rang off, and she was left staring at her phone. Grief swamped her. For the relationship with her dad that she'd always wanted and never had. For what could've been. He hadn't cared to check up on Jilly. Iris wouldn't even tell her sister he'd called. She would keep the disappointment to herself.

What would've happened if Mom would've lived?

She smoothed a quilt that had been handed down from her maternal grandmother over the bed and went downstairs. Jilly was standing on the porch, shivering, rubbing both arms.

"Get inside," Iris said. "I'll bring the twins in. And thank you."

She made two quick trips from the van to the upstairs bedroom, her thighs burning by the time she'd reached the landing a second time with Levi in her arms. The twins had been subdued the entire afternoon and it had been like pulling teeth to get them to talk to her—a stranger—but she'd bribed them with a lollipop to find out that Levi wore a red shirt and Brandt a blue one.

The boy stirred awake as she made him take a quick trip to the bathroom. In bed, Brandt was already asleep again, burrowed under the covers with his knees bent and rear end in the air. Who slept like that? Apparently this kid. He had one thumb tucked in his mouth.

She tucked Levi beneath the covers. He rolled so that his back was tucked up next to his brother. She'd noticed that Levi had a small freckle on one side of his nose. He was the quieter of the two. He seemed to always be thinking, taking things in. Brandt was more demanding, not afraid to ask for what he wanted.

Both of them were smart as a whip.

Before she could step away from the bed, Levi whispered, "Miss Iris?"

She leaned closer.

"Will Daddy sleep at the hospital?"

"Yes."

"But won't he be lonely? Can we go there?"

Her heart lurched a little at the boy's compassion. Or maybe he just missed his daddy. She glanced at her watch. Maybe they could do a video call—no. Callum was probably still in surgery. She'd overheard the surgeon say it might take hours to attend to the damage in his leg.

"We'll see if we can visit tomorrow."

"Promise?" Levi clutched a worn bear to his chest.

"I promise."

She patted his shoulder awkwardly and left the room. She hovered outside the doorway, listening.

She really was crazy. She didn't know anything about kids. She hadn't babysat since her high school days. None of her married friends had kids yet.

Okay. She could do this. She'd feed them breakfast and then they'd go to the hospital to see Callum. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was something.

She heard a soft whisper. Then another slower, sleepy response. And then it was quiet.

Dreams she hadn't thought about in years pressed close. Hot tears compressed her chest.

At seventeen, she'd wanted a family with Callum. Not right after graduation, but someday.

If things had been different, the two boys sleeping in that bed could've been their boys. What must it have been like to hold them as newborns? To witness their first steps?

Since Callum disappeared, she'd had one serious relationship. Georgio, a dancer in New York, had swept her off her feet. They'd dated for almost two years, been talking about marriage. And then she'd injured her back. While she was away from the dance company, Joe died. And somewhere in the grief-filled months that followed, she found out that Georgio had cheated on her.

She'd been devastated.

Kind of like how she felt now. Which was silly. Because Callum hadn't cheated on her. He'd just left her without a word.

Didn't matter. She hadn't even thought about him in years.

But seeing Callum again, being with his sons... Tonight was bringing back all of the might-have-beens .