for her only remaining shred of righteous anger like a drowning woman reaching for a scrap of flotsam. “You could have told us.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything. But I tried to tell Kelsey. I had to leave right away, but I called.” He flashed her a furious glare. “Thanks to you, she erased the message without listening.”
Kelsey nodded, looking down at her folded hands. “You kept telling me I shouldn’t listen to him, shouldn’t let him sweet-talk me. So I didn’t play the message. I just erased it.”
“Oh, shit,” Sarah said softly.
“Yeah, exactly,” Mike said. “I figured she didn’t want to talk to me, and the oil fields up there are out of cell range anyway. So I just kept working. And I saved almost all of it.” He cast Sarah a hard look. “That night you saw me was the first time I’d been to a bar in three months.”
“He thought he had to earn his way back to us,” Kelsey said. “So he came home and slapped—how much was it?” She looked at Mike and the two of them laughed.
“A thousand dollars,” he said. “Slapped it right down on the table in cash. Her eyes sure got big when she saw it.”
“And then I cried.”
“I can’t believe you thought I’d never come back.” Mike stroked Kelsey’s arm and cast her a lovelorn look that reminded Sarah of a cow. Not a steer or a bull, but a dairy cow, all soft brown eyes and foolishness.
“Why wouldn’t she think that?” Sarah asked. “How many nights did you go to the bar while Kelsey stayed home with Katie?”
“A lot. I was a lousy husband, okay?” Mike straightened in his chair and lost the lovelorn look as he turned to Sarah. “I married too young, and I was a jerk. I thought I wanted to hang out with my buddies more than I wanted to be with my wife and kid.” He reached over and placed his hand over Kelsey’s, and Sarah felt her stomach flutter with unease. She’d seen Mike as the villain so long that her protective instincts were still running full strength. She wanted to smack him away from her sister, drive him from the house, but now she had no reason to hate him. She felt limp as a hot-air balloon with the air let out.
“But let me tell you, you spend three months with nobody but a bunch of oil workers and you get pretty damn sick of hanging with the guys.” He interlaced his fingers with Kelsey’s and they sat there like a couple of newlyweds, beaming at each other. “I missed you and Katie so much, honey. So damn much. I never knew how much I loved you ’til I couldn’t get to you.”
Sarah blinked, surprised to find tears in her eyes.
“I know I was a jerk, Sarah, but I’ve learned my lesson and I’m back to stay.”
“To stay?”
Kelsey melted into Mike’s arm, still clinging to his hand. “We’re going to try again,” she said, flashing Sarah a heartbreakingly hopeful smile. “Be happy for me, Sis.”
Sarah looked from one to the other. She hadn’t seen Kelsey look so happy in months—not since Mike left.
“Isn’t this kind of sudden?” she asked.
“We had a long talk.”
“Just now? How can you forgive him so fast?”
Kelsey blushed. “And—and last night. And a few nights before that.”
“Oh, no. Has Katie seen him?”
The sound of a rumbling engine filled the room as air brakes gasped on the street. Sarah glanced out to see her niece hurtling down the steps of the school bus and tearing up the front walk, an oversized sheet of construction paper flapping in her hand.
“Daddy,” she shouted as she charged in the door. “I made you a picture!”
Without even glancing at Sarah, she threw herself into her father’s lap and held up the paper as proudly as Christopher Wren revealing the plans for a new cathedral. “Look, it’s a tree! And this is a cat, and a dog, and a woodchuck.”
“A woodchuck,” Mike said. “Nice.”
Katie went somber. “He’s going to eat the tree, though.”
“No, that’s beavers,” Mike said. “Woodchucks eat beetles and stuff.”
“Oh! Okay.” She slid off his lap and ran to her room, as if all the world’s problems had been solved by animal identification.
She still hadn’t noticed Sarah, who hiked her purse up on her shoulder and turned to go.
“Wait, Sarah,” Kelsey said. “You haven’t told me why you stopped by.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sarah said. “It doesn’t matter a bit. I just