Page 73 of Delivery After Dark
“Or they’ll bicker like Blaine and I did until recently.”
“Nah, cousins don’t fight like brothers do.”
“That’s true.”
“He’ll be close in age to Shane and Katie’s baby, too, and the new quads and Mac and Maddie’s twins. So many kids.”
“They’re going to have to add on to the school.”
“Seriously.”
“The town council is already talking about it.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
Julia laughed. “That’s funny. The great Gansett Island baby boom.”
“Our baby will be lucky to grow up with so many friends.”
“That crew will be something as teenagers.”
“I can’t wait for a front-row seat to that show.”
* * *
On the advice of her husband, Charlie, Sarah had given her son Johnny space to deal with whatever he was going through.
“If he needs you, he’ll say so,” Charlie had said when John first retreated from them.
But Sarah wasn’t so sure of that. Her children had become experts at hiding their true feelings during an upbringing marred by violent outbursts from their unpredictable father. She wasn’t at all convinced that Johnny would ever tell her—or anyone else, for that matter—what was making him so desperately unhappy.
She’d talked to Jeff about it that morning, asking him if anything had happened when the brothers had been together in Providence after Jeff was first injured.
“Nothing that would cause him to act like this for months,” Jeff had said.
He and his fiancée, Kelsey, were living with her and Charlie while they continued to recuperate from the injuries they’d sustained when the roof at Kelsey’s home had collapsed on them during the hurricane.
“I don’t know what to do,” Sarah had said. “The longer this goes on, the more worried about him I am.”
Johnny had all but retreated from anything that wasn’t work in recent months, hunkering down in the guesthouse on Charlie and Sarah’s property since her parents, Russ and Adele, were in Florida for the winter, and rarely joining in any family get-togethers. She went days without laying eyes on him. His car coming and going was the only proof of life she got.
After having been through a suicide attempt when Jeff was much younger, she’d like to think she was more alert to the kind of trouble that needed to be addressed with her kids. Johnny was a grown man who deserved his privacy, but her maternal radar was attuned to something seriously amiss.
So she made meatloaf, mashed potatoes and corn and invited him to come for dinner after work, hoping to tempt him with his favorite meal.
Sorry, he’d replied. Can’t make it.
I’m not asking you. I’m telling you to come for dinner. And don’t give me any excuses. Dinner is at six thirty. Be here.
She could see that he’d read the message, but he didn’t reply.
Charlie came up behind her and massaged her shoulders. His love was such a gift in her new life on Gansett, with six of her seven children living close to them, along with his daughter, Stephanie. “Why’s my honey so tense?”
“I told Johnny he’s coming for dinner after he said he couldn’t, and he hasn’t replied.”
“If he knows what’s good for him, he won’t defy his mama.”
