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know how long she’d been back before she finally called. Then, when she did come home, she didn’t tell us ahead of time. I was away with Brandon that weekend, so she only saw Dad.”
“How was she then?”
“Okay, as far as I know. He didn’t tell me otherwise. Three days later, he had the stroke.” Rose sucked in a breath, then let it out shakily. “When I called to tell her, she promised to come, to meet me at the hospital, but she never did. After Dad passed, I found out she’d come home, but she never came up to the hospital.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly in the healthiest frame of mind myself at the time.” She glanced from the window to Colt. “Why are there Beanie Babies sitting on the windowsill?”
She’s changing the subject. She and her sister are more alike than either of them would admit to. “I leave gifts for your sister,” he explained, deciding he’d pried enough for a moment. “She laughed at my reaction to seeing the science classroom at school for the first time. It’s the home of our local mountain man’s taxidermy collection. Have you seen it?”
Rose nodded. “Celeste showed me. She thought I might be able to use it in my book.”
“How’s that coming?”
“I’m enjoying the process. It’s good therapy.”
Which brought him back to the question at hand. Colt released a frustrated sigh. Two weeks had passed since his conversation with Sage on the pier, and so far he’d been unable to coax her into revisiting the subject of Africa. Even worse, she’d begun to pull away from him, attempting to push him back beyond the outer ring of castle walls he’d labored for months to breach.
He wasn’t about to allow that. She’d given him the ultimate weapon for this particular war. She’d told him she loved him, and he’d be damned if he’d let her try to snatch it away now.
“What do you know about post-traumatic stress disorder, Dr. Anderson?”
Rose blew out a sigh and rubbed the back of her neck. “I used to work for the Department of Veterans Affairs. I’ve seen my fair share.”
“I’ve seen it in my work, too. From what I can tell, your sister is a classic case. If you don’t know what happened, I guess you don’t know if she ever sought treatment?”
“No. Like I said, the timing stank. Our relationship didn’t survive our father’s death.”
He gave her a narrow-eyed stare. “But you came to Eternity Springs to fix the problem, didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “It was a thought. It didn’t get a lot of traction. You know all this, Rafferty. Why are you asking these questions again?”
“Because Sage is stubborn and scared and she needs professional help. I need help convincing her to get it.”
“Well, don’t ask me.” Rose’s words held a distinctly bitter tone. “Ask Nic Callahan and Sarah Reese and Celeste. Give Ali Timberlake a call in Denver. They all are much closer to my sister than I am.”
“Maybe that’s true, for the time being, anyway.” He’d talked to all of them already, in fact. “But you are her sister, Rose. She needs you in her life, and you need her, too. You should settle your differences with her for your own sake.”
“Have I walked into the middle of an Oprah show?”
Colt shoved out of his chair and paced the office until he ended up in front of the window. He gazed across the narrow space between the buildings and stared into the studio where one of those frivolous fairy paintings stood half finished on her easel. “I think she’s trying to do this all on her own. What’s that old saying? Physician, heal thyself? Maybe she saw someone before she came to Eternity Springs, but she’s not seeing anyone now. Until recently I thought she might be able to pull this off herself if I was around to help. Not anymore. This is bigger than I’d realized. Definitely beyond my pay grade. What am I going to do?”
“You really love her, don’t you?”
He turned and met her gaze. “I do. I want to marry her, raise a family with her. I want to make a life with her.”
Rose winced, sighed heavily, then pulled her phone from her jeans pocket and asked, “What’s your email address?”
He told her and she continued, “I know a psychologist who works at the Atlanta VA Medical Center. I’m sending you her contact information, and I’ll send her an email telling her to expect your call. She