Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(41)

And little by little, I become aware that I trust Sam Cade. It isn’t any specific moment I can point to, or anything he says or does. It’s everything he says, does, is. He is the calmest, easiest man I’ve been around, and every time I see him smile, or talk to my kids, or talk to me, I realize how poor my choices were before. How barren my life was with Melvin Royal. It had looked full.

It was as lifeless as the moon.

Before I’m even aware of it, two more weeks go by. My garden looks like something a home and garden magazine would feature, and even Lanny seems relatively happy. She moderates her goth to something edgy but cool, and lo and behold, my daughter tells me one day that she’s made a friend. Online at first, but she asks, with her usual blend of aggressive reluctance, if I’d drive her to meet Dahlia Brown at the movies. Dahlia Brown, the girl she punched out at school.

I’m dubious about this turn of events, but when I meet Dahlia, she seems to be a nice girl, tall and a little awkward with it, and self-conscious of her braces. The boyfriend, turns out, dumped her over the metal in her mouth. Best thing that could have happened to her.

Connor and I sit in the back of the theater, and Dahlia and Lanny sit together, and by the time Dahlia comes home with us for dinner, she seems to be entirely at ease. So is Lanny.

That becomes a regular thing, the movies, as summer wears on: Lanny and Dahlia together, besties. Dahlia picks up the black nail polish and emphatic layers of eye makeup, and Lanny adopts Dahlia’s style of flowing floral scarves.

By mid-July, the girls are thick as thieves, and they’ve attracted two more friends. I’m on my guard, of course; one young man is full goth, with a pierced septum, but his boyfriend is helplessly preppy, and they seem wonderfully good together. And wonderfully funny, which is a good thing for my daughter, too.

Connor seems much different, too. His D&D buddies are true friends now, and he even—for the first time—tells me he’s decided on a career.

My son wants to be an architect. He wants to build things. And as he tells me this, I find tears in my eyes. I have been desperate to believe he would have dreams, have a life beyond running and hiding, and now . . . now that’s true.

Sam Cade has given him dreams that I couldn’t, and I’m shakily, wonderfully grateful for it. I talk about Connor’s new passion to Sam the next night, as we sit together on the porch with our drinks. He listens in silence, says nothing for a long time, and then finally turns toward me. It’s a cloudy evening, with the heavy energy of a gathering thunderstorm; we’re under a tornado watch in this part of Tennessee, but so far there’s no alert.

Sam says, “You don’t say much about Connor’s dad.”

I haven’t said anything, in fact. I can’t. I won’t. So instead, I say, “Nothing much to say. Connor needed someone to look up to. You gave him that, Sam.”

I can’t see his face in the gloom. I can’t tell if I’ve frightened him or pleased him, or something of both. There’s been a guarded tension between us for weeks now, but beyond the occasional, almost accidental brush of fingertips passing tools or a bottle of beer, we haven’t so much as touched. I don’t know if I can feel romantic toward a man again, and there seems to me to be something holding him back, too. A bad relationship, maybe. A lost love. I don’t know. I don’t ask.

“Glad I could help,” he says. His voice sounds odd, but I don’t exactly know why. “He’s a good kid, Gwen.”

“I know.”

“Lanny is, too. You’re—” He falls silent for a few seconds and takes what sounds like a convulsive swig of his beer. “You’re a damn good mom to them.”

Thunder mutters off in the distance, though we can’t see any lightning. Behind the hills, most likely. But I can feel the weight of the rain coming. The air has an unnatural sticky heat to it, and I want to simultaneously fan myself and shiver. “I’ve tried to be,” I tell him. “And you’re right. We don’t talk about their dad. But he was . . . he was vile.”

Emotion makes me mute when I try to say more, because another letter arrived from Mel this morning. It’s back to his normal cycle, because this one is all small talk, all reminiscences and questions about the kids. It’s set me on edge, because now, having seen how Sam treats the kids, I can see the difference. Mel was a good dad in the stock photo sense: he showed up, smiled, posed for pictures, but it was all surface. I know that whatever he felt, whatever he feels now, it’s a shallow shadow of real affection.

I’m thinking about Mel as I sit here next to Sam, and it makes me want to reach out to Sam, to feel the warmth of his fingers on mine, more as a talisman than as any kind of attraction. I need to drive away Mel’s ghost and stop thinking about him. I realize, with a start, that I am on the verge of telling Sam the truth about Mel. The truth about me. If I do, he’ll be the first.

It’s so startling to me that I find myself staring at Sam, at his profile as he sips his beer and stares out at the lake. A distant blur of lightning illuminates his face, and for a strange instant he looks familiar. Not like Sam. Like someone else.

Someone I can’t place.

“What?” He turns his head and meets my gaze, and I feel my face grow warmer. That’s so odd it unnerves me. I don’t blush. I can’t imagine why I’m suddenly feeling awkward, out of my depth, while sitting on my own porch with a man who’s become so familiar to me. “Gwen?”