Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,190

the other things now, because we don’t have that long before we land.”

“Right. Go.”

“I arranged for Alison and the family to fly over, because I can’t imagine six hours in the car with two little kids, facing this. They’ll be there by the time we arrive. I hope that’s all right.”

“Sure. How about Vanessa?”

“She was working a flight, but she’ll get here as fast as she can. Probably tonight. And I called your grandparents and arranged their tickets and their room, too. They’re coming tomorrow evening. I thought …” She took a breath. “That they’d want to be here with you right now, and that you’d want to bury your mom as soon as you can. She’s been alone long enough.”

That was it. He tried, but … he lost it.

Jennifer was beside him in the aisle. On her knees, her arms around him. He managed to say, “You need to … get back in your seat. Seat belt. And … Bug. I shouldn’t …”

“Yes,” she said, her voice fierce, and so tender, too. “You should. Annabelle needs to know that this hurts everybody, that it’s safe to hurt this badly, to let herself feel it. And you all need to say goodbye to your mom. You need to tell her you love her. You need to grieve, and you need to do it together.”

He shook his head, his hand over his face, still crying like he couldn’t stop. That place that was numb—the anesthetic had worn off, and it hurt.

It hurt.

She was still holding him. “Harlan,” she said. “Go on and cry. The grief doesn’t go away, otherwise. It just sits like a hard ball in your chest until you can’t breathe around it. You need to feel it.”

No chance of doing anything else. Finally, though, he was mopping up, and she was back in her seat. He took a few more deep, shuddering breaths, got himself back under control, and said, “Right. Next.”

She hesitated, then said, “I didn’t make final arrangements for the funeral. I wasn’t sure if you’d want her to be buried there, or maybe with your grandparents. Or even out in Portland, near you and Annabelle. I figured you all could talk about it tonight. I made some preliminary choices in case you wanted to do it in Bismarck, but I can cancel them. Or change them.”

“OK.” It was too much to think about, and she was right. They needed to do it all together.

“Last thing,” she said. “Your dad.”

“Where is he?”

“At the house. He’s still out on bail until sentencing. I didn’t make any decisions at all about that. That’s up to you.”

60

Love Wins

It was Friday afternoon, high summer in Bismarck. A day for kids to ride their bikes to the pool and run through the sprinklers and get purple tongues from their popsicles. And Harlan was driving to the house, the route as familiar as a recurring nightmare. The sky around him summer-blue, the clouds puffy-white. Field after field of yellow sunflowers lifting their cheerful faces.

Behind him, Vanessa said, “Mom loved the sunflowers. She always had a big vase of them in the house. Do you remember that? We’d tease her that you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing sunflowers, but she said they made her happy, and we could just hush.”

“I remember that,” Alison said from beside Harlan, and Annabelle said, “I don’t.” Sounding so sad. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Vanessa had her arm around her.

The four of them, doing this together. That had been Jennifer’s suggestion yesterday afternoon, when she’d come back from her swim and found him sitting on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, unable to work up the energy to get up and shower after his workout.

He was never stuck. He didn’t let himself be stuck. He was stuck now.

“You know …” she said when she’d gotten the hard words out of him, “you could skip this. Of course you could. You don’t need to let him justify himself to you. If you need to confront him, to make a statement, you can do it at the sentencing hearing. That’s part of what that’s for, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But I want to do it now. And I don’t want to do it at all. Go back into that house … I don’t want to. But I feel like I need to.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw and tried to think, but it just wasn’t coming. Like when you had