He never would have imagined back in those heady days of starting their lives together that a decade later, he would be a widower raising those children on his own, that they would lose their cherished house in a fire, or that he would upend everything to move himself and his children to a crumbling house on the Oregon coast.
Tracy would have loved it here, he thought. She would have found peace knowing Zara and Finn were safe, happy and loved, that they were living close to their grandmother and were making new friends in this community that had already embraced them.
He suspected that Tracy would have loved Rosie, too. The two of them would have gotten along great, bonding over their shared love of books.
“Almost there,” Rosie said, tugging him out of his thoughts.
“Sounds good.”
“I think you’ll like everyone. The Sea Witches have been meeting in some form or another for about twenty years. People come and go, but the core group of about ten of us have been there forever. We’re pretty eclectic in our reading choices. We like everything from sci-fi to historicals to nonfiction. It depends on who is hosting the group that month. They get to pick what book we read.”
“In my experience, book clubs are only peripherally about the books. Is that the case with yours?”
She laughed, a sound that rippled through her vehicle.
“Guilty,” she admitted. “We do talk about the book for a nominal portion of the book club. The rest of the time is spent visiting, catching up on our families and what’s happening in our lives. They’re a fascinating group. Barbara, for instance, recently got back from a monthlong cruise around Japan. I can’t wait to talk to her about what she saw. My other friend Shara is trying to adopt a child through the foster system, since she and her husband haven’t had any luck conceiving. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about the status of their application. We’ve supported each other through all kinds of things—divorce, problems with our kids, loss of our spouses.”
“They must have been a big help to you after your husband died.”
She nodded and grew silent. “Amazing. I would have been lost without them. And my mom, of course.” She sent him a look across the width of the vehicle. “Did you have someone to help and support you when your wife died?”
“My mom, of course. She came to live with us after Tracywas first diagnosed. I also have a couple of good friends. We’ve been tight since we were in boarding school together. They’re more like brothers to me.”
“Where are they now?”
“Pete lives in Palm Beach. He’s an attorney. Jonas is actually in Africa working for an organization that helps villages access clean water.”
“A worthy cause.”
“The two of them couldn’t be more different but they were still both rocks in their own way.”
“Boarding school,” Rosie said in a surprised tone. “I’m not sure I would have taken you for a boarding school kid.”
The first few years, he had hated every moment of it. He had desperately wanted to go home but of course his father wouldn’t allow it.
“My dad would never have considered anything else for his sons.”
“Sons?”
He frowned, wishing he hadn’t let that slip. He either had to ignore the question or talk about a topic he usually tried to avoid.
He found he didn’t mind sharing that part of his life with Rosie, for reasons he wasn’t sure he was ready yet to analyze.
“I had an older brother. Will. He was two years older than me. He died when I was eight.”
She shifted her gaze from the road and he saw her green eyes looked murky with compassion. “Oh, Andrew. I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I’m not sure your mother ever mentioned her other son.”
He wasn’t surprised by that. Nancy had done all her grieving inwardly. Will’s death had devastated what had already been a dysfunctional family.
“He drowned,” Andrew said, his clinical tone at odds withthe grief that still felt raw. “Every summer we would go to a family cabin on a lake. He went out for an early morning swim one day without permission and... never came back. He was a strong swimmer but they think he had a leg cramp or something.”
“How terrible for your family.”
“It was rough.”
He remembered that time vividly, waking up and being angry that Will must have gone swimming without him. He had rushed to the lake to yell at him, only to find his brother floating twenty yards from the shore.
He had screamed and screamed his brother’s name and could still recall how his father had shoved him aside as he dove into the water.