Preston's Honor(61)

“I got him a train table, but it was too big to wrap so I left it inside. That’s a couple of trains to go with it.”

“Oh gosh, he’ll go crazy for that.”

“I know,” I said, pleasure sliding through me at the thought of how my son would react to seeing the train table. He was obsessed with them. We’d read his few Thomas the Tank Engine books so many times I had them memorized. So did he, as a matter of fact. I knew because when I tried to skip pages, he’d call me on it by making a sound of outrage and turning back to what he knew I’d missed. “Is he awake yet?”

“He should be in a minute. I’ll go change him and bring him down.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

I went back into the house. Lia hadn’t called me the night before, and I’d woken up with her heavy on my mind.

I don’t think you’re available for anyone. You’re still not over Annalia.

I’d admitted it to myself, and I’d admitted it to Tracie. The question was, what in the hell was I going to do about that? Anger hadn’t worked. Denial definitely hadn’t worked. So what now?

Open up to her, my mind whispered. Do it. Be brave. Could I? And after I’d closed myself off, turned away, hurt her when she’d been so vulnerable, would she even listen to anything I had to say? Could I take the chance that she might just be . . . done?

I’d almost picked up the phone and called her first thing this morning, but I’d known I was going to see her in a few hours so I’d held off. It would be better to talk in person anyway. That and part of my morning had been spent running out to get a gift for Hudson.

“Preston, darling, there you are. Have you seen Tracie?”

“Yeah, she’s out back.”

“Wonderful. Didn’t she do a marvelous job with the party setup? She really is a gem.”

“Tracie’s great, Mom.”

“How did your date go?”

“It wasn’t really a date. We just had dinner.”

She put her hands on her hips. “It sounded like a date to me. And I’m so glad you took my advice. I think—”

The doorbell rang, and I used the excuse to escape my mother, walking out of the kitchen into the foyer. My heart skipped a beat to find Lia on the other side, biting her lip, and for a moment I felt like a seventeen-year-old boy, tongue-tied and dry-mouthed at the mere sight of her. Annalia gave me a nervous smile. “Good morning.”

“Hi,” I said, pulling the door open wider. “Ma’am.” I nodded to Lia’s mother who was standing beside her, and she nodded back, giving me a thin smile. I’d never given her too much of a reason to like me, although I had paid for her apartment and any minor expenses she incurred when Lia had stopped working and moved in with me. And I’d kept supporting her financially when Lia left. She was Hudson’s grandmother and what had happened between Lia and me wasn’t her mother’s fault. Plus, I was the one who had gotten her daughter pregnant and essentially put the family breadwinner out of commission.

In any case, though, I was pretty sure her mother was a withdrawn person and getting her to warm to me would be a Herculean task that I definitely didn’t have the skill or the charm to tackle. Cole could have. Of course. But not me.

During the few times in the past year she’d visited, she’d barely looked at me and had seemed impatient to leave. Of course, given that her English was so limited, if she’d wanted to say anything to my mother or me, Annalia had to interpret. That probably added to her discomfort.

When Lia left, we’d had no way to communicate that wasn’t cumbersome and inconvenient. The time I’d gone there to question her about whether she knew where Lia had gone, I had to use Google translate just to ask simple questions. It had been awkward and strange, and I’d been wrung dry with panic and hurt and only stayed long enough to find out Lia had told her she was leaving but hadn’t told her where she was going.

Lia stepped forward and the mere memory of that time made me want to reach out and grab her, shake her, and then wrap my arms around her and beg her not to leave me again—not ever to cause me to experience the misery and dread of loss.

I forced myself to relax, my eyes moving from her hair to her sandal-clad feet, her loveliness washing over me like a balm. She was wearing a flowered sundress in different shades of purple and the bright colors made her bronzed skin look rich and flawless. Her hair was loosely braided and fell over one shoulder.

A sudden vision filled my mind of Lia curled up in the upholstered rocker in Hudson’s room with her hair in just the same way, the baby at her breast and how I’d stood and stared at them, a desperate pride filling my heart so full that it had hurt. She’d opened her eyes and the look in them had been . . . desolate. I felt a dull throbbing in my chest now, the phantom pain from a memory I’d purposely put away, because looking at it out in the open made me feel guilty and raw.

I’d turned away, walked out of the room, and gone into mine. When I’d closed the door, I had stood with my back pressed to it as if I’d needed to bar it against something. Only . . . the thing I was running from was inside of me—a deep, aching torment I couldn’t escape. Not with hours and hours of backbreaking work, not with the silence I’d built around myself, not by pretending I didn’t see how much Lia was hurting, too.