Page 133 of The Lost and Found Girl

Maybe because the promise of Mac seemed to be what Chase had gotten, and she hadn’t felt like that was the case for her. And that lie, the lie of who she and Mac had been, the lie of what had been between them and how she grieved... It stood as a pillar between her and her entire family. And it was even worse with Chase, because she didn’t care about him. But he cared about Mac, and she...

Well, it didn’t bear thinking about. But that was the problem—when he was around, she thought about it. She thought about it obsessively and endlessly.

“Because I’m not.” She cleared her throat. “I was unaware that as a grieving widow I needed to give a dissertation on my feelings.”

“I loved him too,” Chase said.

She tightened her arms around herself. “I know you did.”

“He was like a brother to me. I might have been back and forth between my house and theirs, but his mother is more a mother to me than my own has ever been...”

“You don’t know what bothers me, Chase,” she said.

Because how could she ever say. How could she ever say that she had been on the verge of asking for a divorce when he was diagnosed with ALS. How could she ever untangle the impossibility of all that grief? Of the role she was stuck playing. And that she didgenuinelygrieve him as the father of her children. A man who had died too young.

As the man she hadwantedto love.

But she just hadn’t. Not anymore. Not like that.

But you couldn’t be the woman who left a dying man.

At least,shecouldn’t have done it.

Because shehadloved him, loved his family, and hers loved him. Because she hadmarriedhim. Because she had vowed she would be there in sickness, and they’d had years of health before, so didn’t she have to do that part?

So all of her plans had been put on hold. The life she’d painstakingly decided to build for herself as a divorced woman.

It hadn’t been an easy conclusion to come to even when he hadn’t been sick. She’d known it would mean untangling lives that were so enmeshed in each other that the process would be painful. Would leave damage and scars.

And she’d decided it was time, because they both deserved more than a life of quiet resentments that were aging into bitter roots, down deep in the lowest parts of their souls.

She’d decided to take that step.

And then the path had turned again, and while she might have been able to figure out how to live as a divorced woman, she hadn’t yet discovered how to live as a widow.

She hadn’t anticipated how much it would tangle her up in the grieving. And how much it would make her feel boxed in.

How much it would leave her unable to deal with her feelings.

“You can tell me,” he said.

She imagined a wall going up between them. Smooth, pristine and impossible to scale. “Yeah, I’m gonna pass on that. You and I were never friends. It’s not going to happen now.”

“I don’t need to be your friend,” Chase said. “I know that might shock you.”

She started to walk away from him, her own words echoing in her head.We were never friends.

They hadn’t been. It had been him and Mac, thick as thieves, and she’d been along for the ride, mooning over Mac’s blue eyes and brown hair and dimples. He’d been sweet, she’d thought. She hadn’t liked Chase’s overabundance of energy, his quick temper or his blunt observations.

Later, though, she’d realized Mac’s sweetness was a deep passiveness. He went along with things. And when life got hard, he took a step back. He went out drinking even when she didn’t want him to. If he didn’t want to deal with a problem, he didn’t.

And there was nothing she could do to make him.

They might not havefought, but she realized now it wasn’t because he was nicer or kinder than the average man.

“I heard your sister’s back,” Chase said.

She stopped, her shoulders stiffening.