The Best Man (Blue Heron #1)(108)

The Black Swan was where they’d spent their wedding night.

“Fine,” he said. “Get it over with.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

SO HIS EX-WIFE WAS BACK.

Faith sighed. Tried not to worry. Failed. Took another bite of Peanut Brittle. Another sigh. She held out the spoon for Blue—it was his favorite flavor—and took another bite for herself. A movie flickered on the TV—one of those stupid old black-and-white movies she didn’t like—but it was better than the infomercials for those hellish workouts where the “before” body looked a helluva lot like the one she was in, and the “after” looked way too much like Nina Rodriguez’s.

Levi’s wife. He was mad at her, sure, but he’d loved her once.

Would he want another shot at that? The chance to do a better job? Maybe just to show that he hadn’t been wrong about the woman he married? She could see that, understand how Levi, who tried so hard at everything, would want a better result than a quickie divorce in which he’d had no say.

When she was first in San Francisco, Faith would occasionally dream that Jeremy was knocking on her door, confused as to why she wasn’t at their wedding. No, of course he wasn’t g*y, where had she been? The wedding disaster...that was the dream. She should come with him; everyone was waiting at the church.

Waking up from those dreams had always been like a kick in the stomach.

She wondered if Levi had similar dreams after Nina left.

“She can fly a helicopter,” she told Blue, who was staring at the pint of Ben & Jerry’s. She gave him another bite.

Levi was home, she knew. She’d heard him come in after midnight, muted the TV and leaped for the door. Waited for his knock, which hadn’t come. Saw through the peephole that he was alone.

O’Rourke’s closed at eleven. So where had he been?

Faith sighed and got up from the still-muted Bogart movie. Maybe Levi had sent her an email; he never had before, but it was worth checking, even if it did qualify her for Pathetic Female status.

Nothing except a note from Sharon Wiles saying she had a permanent tenant for the apartment, so if Faith could pack up her stuff and be out by the end of the month, that’d be great.

Crap. She liked it here, across the hall from her man. Who might not be her man anymore.

No, no. No reason to think that (yet). Faith shut down the computer and went back to the couch. Fluffed the cushions. Folded the blanket.

This was where a mother would come in very handy. Pru would listen, but she wasn’t great with advice, and given her recent marital roller coaster, might well be wearing Vulcan ears and doing her husband. Jack—no. Dad, ditto. Honor’s mysterious boyfriend hadn’t materialized, and she probably wasn’t in the mood to listen to Faith’s relationship woes. Also, it was 2:32 a.m.

But a mother...

Faith stopped at the picture of her family on Pru’s wedding day, the last one taken of all of them. Next to it was the rose quartz heart. Levi hadn’t denied giving it to her, but he hadn’t admitted it, either.

Of course it was from him.

Faith picked up the photo.

The tarry guilt she’d felt all these years wasn’t easily scraped away. Faith could feel it lurking, waiting for another chance. But there’d been flashes since Levi had unveiled the facts of that day. Flashes of pure memories undimmed by the belief that she’d caused the accident. Memories of her mother’s love so pure and bright and strong, they were shocking.

2:47 a.m.

“Want to go for a ride, Blue?” she asked her dog, whose ears pricked up at the magic word. “Want to go in the car?”

* * *

FOR TWO DECADES, FAITH had not been on either Lancaster or Hummel Brook roads. It had taken some doing. Hundreds of miles of avoidance. Her heart began thumping as she approached the intersection, and she exhaled shakily as she pulled over and turned off the engine. Rolled down the windows halfway so Blue could have some cold, fresh air.

It was beautiful here, the place her mother had died. The night was clear, the fields bathed in white from the nearly full moon. Faith had been afraid that the land had been sold to a developer, who’d slapped up some McMansions and stuck in a painfully awkward street named Ciderberry Circle or Owl Hollow Lane or some such ghastly moniker.

But no. It was the same.

Blue whined, wagging his tail, eager to go out.

“You stay here, boy,” she said, her voice loud in the perfect quiet.

Pretty soon, maybe even later this week, Dad would start the ice harvest, calling up the troops at two o’clock in the morning at the very second the temperature fell to seventeen degrees. But tonight, it was only in the twenties.

Only the twenties. Spoken like a true upstater.

Their car had been broadsided right here. Right in the intersection. Maybe her mom had died on impact, maybe it had taken a few minutes. She hoped with every molecule of her heart that her mother hadn’t suffered, but the truth was, she’d never know.

Faith went to the bank that ran along the edge of the road, climbed down. This was where the car had rolled. A long way, all the way to the maple tree. Kevin Hart had been going fast indeed.

Over the years, she’d looked him up on Google from time to time; he’d had a concussion from the accident, and broken the ring finger on his left hand. A college student at the time, not drunk, just driving far too fast on the lonely country road, unaware that during his first semester, a stop sign had been put up at the intersection. The judge had given him community service. He was a civil engineer now. Maybe the kind who studied where stop signs should go.