The Mechanics of Mistletoe - Liz Isaacson Page 0,76

and fished the keys from her pocket. She clicked the buttons on the fob, and the alarm silenced. She spun back to Lincoln. “I told you to bring in that stupid backpack.”

“I forgot,” he said, his lower lip trembling.

“You’re not supposed to leave the house without me either,” she said, grabbing his arm as she passed him. She closed the door behind them, Lincoln stumbling forward a few feet. “Repeat the rules to me.”

Lincoln faced her, tears running down his face. Sammy instantly regretted everything that had happened that evening, starting with the way she’d jumped down his throat when he’d dropped some silverware in the sink at her parents’ house.

“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping over to him and dropping to her knees. She gathered him into her arms and hugged him tight as he continued to cry.

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” he said, his voice too high-pitched. “I just didn’t want you to be mad about the backpack. I thought I could just get it.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” She stroked his hair as she kept repeating those two words. Maybe if she said them enough times, they’d be true.

The weekend passed, then another week. Sammy formulated a new schedule where she could leave the shop by four so she could have another couple of hours in the evening with her family. The shop was quickly falling behind on the cars that needed fixing. They just kept coming and coming, and Sammy wondered if she’d ever feel free form the mechanic shop.

“All right, buddy,” she said as she entered Lincoln’s room on Halloween morning. “Let’s get your costume together.”

He’d chosen to be a cowboy for Halloween, and earlier that week, he’d asked her for a hat “just like Bear’s.”

Sammy’s chest had frozen for a solid minute while she texted Bear to ask him where to get a hat like his. They’d exchanged a few texts—maybe eight or ten—before the conversation ended, and Sammy honestly didn’t know what she and Bear were anymore.

She picked up the red and black checkered shirt she and Lincoln had found at the second-hand shop in town. She’d splurged and bought the hat at the shop Bear had told her about. Lincoln was also wearing a brown belt with an enormous belt buckle, a pair of jeans, and his cowboy boots.

All in all, it was an easy costume to put together, and Sammy put everything into a plastic grocery sack and put it in his backpack.

“Sammy?” Lincoln asked as she picked up the backpack to take it downstairs for him. “Will we see Bear tonight?”

“Oh, uh, I don’t think so,” Sammy said.

“Oh.” Lincoln’s face fell. “He said he couldn’t wait to see my costume. I thought he was coming trick-or-treating with us.”

“When did he say that?”

“Over the summer,” Lincoln said.

Sammy smiled and sat on Link’s bed. She patted the spot beside her, and he came over and flopped down, looking at her with wide, innocent eyes.

How did she explain her on-the-rocks relationship with Bear Glover to an eight-year-old?

“Bear’s really busy on the ranch right now,” she said. “Did you know they decorate for Christmas in October?”

“They do?”

Sammy smiled and looked at the floor, her memories of that light show at Judge’s house replaying through her mind. “They’re all really busy, Link.”

He nodded, but he sure did wear his disappointment for the world to see. “Maybe we could go show him another night.”

“Yeah,” Sammy said, though she knew that wouldn’t happen. She wasn’t going to drive up to Shiloh Ridge Ranch just to show Bear her son wearing a cowboy hat just like his.

She got Lincoln ready for school and drove him across town. “Have fun,” she said as he got out of the car. “Don’t eat too much candy before lunch.”

“I won’t. Bye, Mom.” Link slammed the door and ran toward the door that led past the cafeteria and right out back to the playground.

The word mom rang in her ears and reverberated through the car. She pulled away from the curb when someone beeped at her, and she wasn’t quite sure how she’d gotten to the shop. After almost six years. Lincoln had called her mom.

A smile formed on her face, and she reached for her phone. Bear would—

She stalled, her thoughts derailing completely. She hadn’t spoken to Bear in ten days. She scrolled through their texts and counted them.

Eleven.

Something cracked in her chest, and it felt dangerously like her heart.

“Dear Lord, what have I done?” she whispered. The answer to