Page 3

Two

Sheridan Cobert’s heart raced as she hurried from room to room.

While it was nice to know that particular organ was still functioning after everything she’d been through the past several days, she wasn’t pleased with the universe for giving her a reason to bring it back to life.

Apparently, the universe didn’t have a mercy rule. It simply continued to test her.

A fine sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead.

Her nephew was the only other living member of her immediate family, and she’d already lost him.

It wasn’t like Jamie and Madison lived in a mansion anymore.

For the past several years, their house was a modest rancher with three bedrooms and two baths.

Sheridan knew all its nooks and crannies intimately because she’d grown up inside it.

Given the amount of grief its four walls had endured over the past two decades, it was a wonder the place was still standing.

There was no sign of Finn in the kitchen. Not that there was room to move in there anyway. Neighbors stood practically shoulder to shoulder, trying to organize the fridge and freezer so they could cram in the never-ending stream of casseroles that kept appearing at the side door.

She peeked into the den, where the late afternoon sunlight flickered off the wall of trophies belonging to her brother.

Jamie’s friends congregated in the room, drinking and reminiscing about his short-lived glory days.

Some of the people gathered were from as far back as middle school and his junior team.

Others were regulars from their father’s bar, where Jamie held court every night.

Make that used to hold court.

She pressed her palm against the wall as another wave of sorrow washed over her. It had been like this since she’d gotten the news of the fatal car accident three days before.

This can’t be happening.

Except it was. And not even her library of self-help books seemed to be of any use to her right now. The only thing she knew for certain was that she had to be strong because there was a little boy who was hurting likely more than she was.

If only she could find him. She’d looked in every hiding place in the house. Finn wasn’t in any of them.

Sheridan stepped outside to check the backyard. The kids from the local hockey team Jamie coached milled about aimlessly, trying in vain to look cool despite their shock and heartache. Finn worshipped those kids, shadowing them everywhere. Except not today.

That left her with only one other place to look. Behind the door she had been dreading opening since she arrived back in New Hampshire yesterday.

Jamie and Madison’s bedroom.

She forced herself to turn the knob and was rewarded with the muffled sound of her nephew talking to someone.

Hattie, the family’s big Bernese Mountain dog, greeted Sheridan with a forlorn sigh and a swish of her tail.

The dog didn’t bother lifting her head from where it rested on Jamie’s favorite sweatshirt.

Sheridan dragged in a rough breath. The poor animal was hurting, too.

She glanced over at the display of photos on the dresser, her eyes immediately drawn to a photo of Jamie and Finn she’d taken years earlier when her nephew was a rambunctious tow-headed three-year-old.

She’d expected his hair to have darkened to the same brunette shade as hers and Jamie’s, but so far, it hadn’t.

Her brother’s hazel eyes, so similar to her own, were shining with the unbridled joy of a man at the top of his hockey career. It had been a long time since she’d seen Jamie look that happy. She choked back a sob, realizing she never would again.

Finn’s voice filtered out from the partially opened closet door.

“My dad and mom are dead,” she heard him say.

“Finn!” she cried as she yanked the door all the way open to find him huddled beneath his mother’s dresses, still hanging neatly from the rod. He had a cell phone pressed to his ear. “Where did you get that phone? And who in the world are you talking to?”

God , she sounded like the worst kind of shrew.

Not exactly how her interactions with her nephew usually went.

She was supposed to be Finn’s favorite aunt.

Never mind that she was his only aunt. But she had no idea who he was telling such delicate and personal information to.

She’d watched enough Dateline to know how easily someone sinister could prey on a grieving little boy.

“It’s Dad’s phone,” Finn replied, his tone defensive. “The policeman brought it back this morning while you were at the funeral home.”

She swallowed roughly. Finn had begged to go with her.

To not be left among a house full of mourners.

But picking out caskets was not something an eight-year-old boy should ever have to do.

She knew that firsthand. Her father had been too distraught to do it when her mother died eighteen years ago. She and Jamie had done it for him.

Sheridan forced her features to relax so as not to scare Finn any more than he probably already was.

“Okay. Why are you hiding in a closet? And who are you talking to?” Those were fair questions. He couldn’t hate her for asking, could he?

“It’s Alek Bergeron.”

His curt answer had her reaching out to steady herself with a hand on the doorjamb. She pressed the other hand to her roiling belly.

Alek Bergeron.

He’d been such a fixture in her life during Jamie’s college years. She’d had such a crazy crush on the guy. More than a crush. She believed he was her forever love—right up until he became the source of her greatest humiliation.

She hated how much she still missed those penetrating light blue eyes of his, and how, when he focused them on her, Sheridan used to feel like she was the center of the universe.

At least his universe.

And how many times since their mortifying last encounter had she longed for that easy smile of his?

The one that always seemed to make everything better.

She was a little bit ashamed, thinking what she wouldn’t give to have it aimed at her right now.

To have him help shoulder the grief and the pain of this unbearable loss.

Always the steady one, Alek would know how to navigate through the tough days and months ahead with more certainty than she could muster.

Except that wasn’t ever going to happen. The friendship they once shared had dissolved beneath the weight of some very bad decisions made nearly a decade earlier. Guilt for the part she played in the drama gnawed at her chest.

“He wants to talk to you,” Finn said, refocusing her attention on the here and now.

A painful lump formed in her throat as she took the phone from Finn’s outstretched hand and pressed it to her ear.

“Hello?” she croaked.

“Sher.”

Hearing the deep timbre of his voice again made her knees buckle. She slid down the wall to the floor, landing beside the dog.

“Christ, Sheridan. Is it true? Are they . . . are they gone?”

Tears burned the back of her eyes. She nodded forcefully before realizing he couldn’t see her.

“Yes,” she managed to utter. “It’s true.”

Alek’s sigh sounded tortured. She could picture him running his fingers through his thick hair like he always did when he tried to come to grips with a difficult situation.

“When? How?” he asked.

She cleared her throat, but the pain remained. “Thursday evening. They were coming home from Finn’s back-to-school night.”

He gasped. “Finn wasn’t with them, was he? Is he injured?” he demanded.

The concern for her nephew, a boy he’d never met, was so like Alek that the knot strangling Sheridan began to loosen. She was thankful the man she knew and adored was still there. Even after everything that had happened.

“No. He was with a babysitter.”

She glanced at Finn, still sitting in the closet, his arms wrapped around his knees as he listened intently.

“Thank goodness,” she added as she shot him a soft smile.

“Yeah,” Alek agreed. “How is your dad taking it? And you?” His voice softened. “How are you, Sheridan?”

Of course he wouldn’t know about her father. Why would he? The break nine years ago had been clean and permanent.

“As my dad predicted, he didn’t live to see his sixtieth birthday,” she told him.

Alek made an agonized noise, and she immediately felt sorry for hitting him with more bad news.

“He was never the same after my mom died. It literally broke his heart when Jamie had to step away from the game,” she explained.

It had broken all our hearts.

Jamie, leading the league for points scored during his fourth season, took a punishing cross-check from an opposing player.

He went down hard on the ice when a teammate tripped and landed on the back of Jamie’s neck.

Her brother was lucky that the only damage was a loosening of the first and second cervical.

Doctors were able to fuse the two using part of Jamie’s pelvis.

But it was the end of his promising career.

No team would take a chance on their star player receiving a hit that could paralyze him.

She swallowed roughly. “The one consolation was my dad passed away in his sleep.”

His fractured breathing was the only sound audible on the other end of the phone.

“It’s okay, Alek,” she reassured him in much the same way she’d comforted her older brother for most of their lives. “We’re okay.”

She reached over and laid her hand on Finn’s forearm.

“We’re going to be just fine,” she said as she gently squeezed.

Finn shook off her hand and jumped to his feet, startling the dog.

“He needs to be here,” he demanded.

Hattie barked in solidarity as she stood, too.

“Dad would want him here. Alek, will you come? Please?” He was shouting now, his face growing blotchy red as his bottom lip curled in defiance.

Confused, Sheridan struggled to stand. Her nephew was the most even-natured kid she knew. “Finn, you need to be reasonable. Your dad and Alek were friends a long time ago.”