us still have integrity, morals and, oh, yeah, loyalty to those we love. But then,” she continued softly, “you wouldn’t know anything about any of those things, would you, Neil?”
* * *
MADDIE HAD TO give him credit. He didn’t flinch. Other than the slight tightening of his jaw, he gave no reaction to her verbal slap.
Just as well. It had been a cheap shot. Deserved, but cheap all the same.
Good thing she didn’t mind fighting dirty if the situation called for it or she might be forced to issue her own apology.
“I don’t want to argue with you,” he said—though he did pluck the hammer from her hand and set it on the sawhorse behind him. Out of her reach. “I want to know what’s going on with my sister.”
Nothing new there. Even when they’d been kids and she’d had a good mad going on, he’d remained calm and completely in control, making her feel immature and reckless for itching for a fight. And Fay had always been his first concern. His sense of responsibility toward his sister had been one of the things Maddie had admired about him. She’d foolishly thought he kept his true feelings carefully hidden in order to protect himself from getting hurt.
And then she’d realized that it didn’t matter why he kept himself so closed off. Not when all she’d ever wanted was for him to open up—wholly, gladly and without reservation—to her.
“If you want to know what’s going on with Fay,” Maddie said, “I suggest you ask her.”
“She was too tired when I got in this morning and she was still sleeping when I left the house to come here.”
“Sleeping? At—” Maddie checked her watch “—eleven a.m.? What about the boys?”
“Gerry and Carl were watching them.”
Of course they were.
“What?” Neil asked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but there’s something on your mind.”
She frowned. He shouldn’t know that. She’d changed. She wasn’t the same girl she’d been so there was no way he could still read her so easily.
Damn him.
“I don’t think enabling Fay to wallow is in her best interest,” Maddie said, sounding prim and, yes, a tad sanctimonious. So be it.
“We’re not enabling her. We’re helping her through a rough time.” He leaned against the sawhorse. “I would’ve thought you’d be on board with that.”
“I’m on board with Fay getting her life back but I don’t think spending most of the day in bed is the way to accomplish that.”
He straightened, the move somehow graceful despite the suddenness of the motion. “She spends all day in bed?”
Guilt, rarely acknowledged and not often accepted, crept up on Maddie. Made her feel as if she was giving away her friend’s secrets. As if she was spitting on that loyalty she’d just—oh, so self-righteously—claimed to have.
“Not every day,” she said slowly, her worry for Fay’s well-being nudging her into the admission. She slid a screwdriver out of her tool belt, turned it in her hand. “Enough that we sort of had a...disagreement over it.”
“You and Fay had a fight?”
“Please, you know Fay doesn’t fight. She gets quiet. Withdrawn.”
It seemed as if Maddie had spent most of her life trying to draw Fay and Neil out, hoping she’d say the right thing, do what was needed to get one or both of the Pettit siblings to open up.
She was starting to wonder why she bothered.
“So instead of letting Fay keep her thoughts to herself,” Neil said equably, “you pushed.”
Maddie shoved the screwdriver back into its pocket. “I suggested...nicely...that she should stop crying over someone who wasn’t worth her time, energy or love and start living her life again.” A lesson Maddie had learned thanks to the man in front of her. “She said she appreciated my concern and advice—in that sweet, polite tone of hers—but that she didn’t want me worrying about her and her problems.”
“Which is her way of telling you to mind your own business.”
“You got it.”
Maddie had backed off. Not that she had any intention of letting her closest friend go through the worst time of her life by herself, but she could understand Fay’s need for space. For time to heal on her own, in her own way.
Even if Maddie didn’t agree with how she went about that healing.
“I’m here now,” Neil said. “I’ll talk to her. Take care of it.”
Fay didn’t need him to take care of her. She needed to learn to stand on her own two feet, to make her own way without him.
Just as Maddie had.
Not her place to say anything,