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She was surprised when he came back in a few minutes later and set a bag on her desk. “Double stuffed brownies that Trace said are worth the drive there and back for these alone.”
She grabbed the bag and opened it. “There are four in there. Oh my God and they are huge.”
“Yeah,” he said. “For you and Daisy. I figured you might need them to work off some of the stress of the past twenty-four hours.”
She shouldn’t have been shocked that he knew she was stressed. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re going to be Daisy’s hero now too.”
“Got to keep your family happy.”
“Yeah,” she said. “You do. Bet you bought all those goodies today. Even all of Trace’s for Violet.”
His face flushed before he walked out.
He was a work in progress, but he washerwork in progress.
37
Lightness To Him
A month later, Heather and Luke were at his place. He’d gotten out of work earlier this morning and now was done with his shift for a few days, then going back on days.
She missed him and he’d asked her to come to dinner and maybe spend the night. She’d said sure.
“It smells good in here,” she said. She walked in the door and knew dinner was cooking. “I might get used to this. Coming home to a nice home-cooked meal.”
“I thought you got that from Daisy,” he said, grinning and coming over to give her a kiss.
There was a lightness to him in the past few weeks that she couldn’t explain.
They didn’t say they loved each other often. She didn’t think she’d be one of those people who did it daily or after every call. It didn’t mean as much to her if you said it as frequently as you said hi or bye to someone.
But less than a week ago the month was up that Luke’s mother could have checked into the rehab facility. She’d been afraid to ask him if there were any updates. There was part of her that knew it wasn’t her business and the other part that had to be there for him.
When that date hit, she didn’t have to ask, he brought it up, telling her he appreciated that she hadn’t said a word yet. But the time passed and his mother never checked in. That he’d hired Trace’s father, who was a PI, to look into his mother to see if she was discharged and still in town.
The answer to both of those things was yes and it seemed as if his mother went back to the life she’d always had.
Heather felt for him hearing that until he looked at her and said, “I can wipe it from my mind now. I guess I didn’t realize that until you convinced me to at least try. I’ve got no guilt for her decisions. I didn’t tell you, but when the date passed, I reached out to Windy. I didn’t know if she still had the number or not, I didn’t get a response, but it felt like enough closure for me to do it.”
“What did you say?” she asked, stunned she was just hearing this now.
“I told her to tell my mother to lose my number. She was dead to me as I was to her. If I could just change my number I would and I might.”
“It’s not easy to do that in your line of work to just get rid of your number so easily. Especially if people in your past military career need to reach you.”
“Exactly,” he said. “But I’ll do it if I have to. I think it’s done with my mother. It should be. She knows I mean business. The fact I had her john arrested and she had to find another source of income or someone to take her on probably pissed her off enough to write me off.”
She pushed those thoughts from another day away.
“I do get dinner from Daisy sometimes,” she said. “Daisy tends to get one or two days off during the week if she has to work on the weekends. When she is working and I’m home, I’ll cook for her.”
“So she is getting less now that you are spending time with me?” he asked.
“She’s good with it,” she said. “I mean we’ve talked. It’s not like anything is changing other than I’m not around much. She does go out and do things with people. She makes friends easily. Don’t say anything, but I think she might have gone on a few dates recently.”
“I thought you two talked about everything,” he said as he continued to cook. He opened the oven and she saw a dish in there that looked to have pasta with sauce on it.
“We do,” she said. “Or did. Which is why I’m not positive. I don’t know. We don’t see each other as much since she is working more with Rose having had the baby last week. And Rose was out of work for a week or two before.”
