Chapter 3
Fourteen years ago
Olive’s stomach rumbled. She’d forgotten to bring lunch, so she got in line in the school cafeteria. But when she searched her pockets, she remembered she didn’t have any money.
“Hey, loser, the line’s moving, keep up.”
Turning, she came face to face with Cindy, her tormenter in both sophomore math and science. Cindy liked to poke at weakness, which made Olive an easy target. Stepping out of line rather than admitting the truth, she ran smack into Noah coming into the cafeteria.
“Skipping lunch?”
He never missed much. It was self-preservation, she knew. His dad expected perfection from him, and his mom needed it, both having to focus all their concentration on getting Katie through school. Olive refused to add to his burden. “Not hungry.”
“You’re always hungry.”
“Not today.”
Something came and went in his eyes before he thrust out his own lunch.
The guy had run track early that morning and had a baseball game later, he needed the calories far more than she did. “No, really, I’m fine.”
“Olive—”
“Gotta go.”
She hightailed it out of there, because she could handle a lot of things, but pity wasn’t one of them.
An hour later, just before her last class, she opened her locker and found a turkey on wheat sandwich and an apple. For a moment she was too choked up to eat, but only for a moment because when she opened the sandwich, it had lettuce and tomatoes—gross—and no mayo. Noah didn’t believe in polluting his body.
He had no idea what he was missing.
Still, she was hungry enough to inhale it all, even the apple. And the warm fuzzies he’d given her almost made up for the lack of chips or cookies.
Present day
Noah watched Olive walk toward the car she’d nearly run him over with. He considered himself the master at navigating the unexpected and unpredictable, but clearly his internal GPS was still broken around her. Or maybe it was the way her dress clung to her gorgeous, curvy bod, scrambling his brain cells.
Olive Porter had most definitely grown up.
Luckily, he needed to focus if he was going to be any help to his family, and the last thing he needed was a distraction.
But the biggest distraction he’d ever met was pulling a big duffel bag from the back of her car and . . . turning toward Katie’s house? “What are you doing?”
When she didn’t answer, probably because she had to stagger under the weight of her bag, he scooped it from her and shouldered it.
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
Right, because she’d rather keel over dead. At least that had been the old Olive. He knew nothing about New Olive. She’d vanished from his life when he’d needed her the most and he’d moved on.
They played tug-of-war over her duffel bag. “Why are you heading toward my mom’s house like you’re staying there?” he asked.
“Because I am.”
She was out of breath. “Let go.”
“Why are you staying there?”
he asked, letting go of her bag. She nearly fell to her ass. “Sorry.”
She sent him a fulminating look. “Katie insisted.”
He had no intention of sharing space with this woman. He’d already shared his heart and she’d decimated it. “Bad plan.”
“Ya think?”
She sighed. “Gram rented out her extra rooms. And it’s Katie’s house now, remember? And for the record, I offered to stay in a hotel.”
With a groan, Noah tipped his head back and stared up at the sky. Once Katie had married Joe and they’d had little Joey, they’d built their mom a brand spanking new apartment above the garage. Free of the big house responsibilities, she’d been able to travel with her friends and enjoy herself. In fact, she’d been on a monthlong adventure in Portugal when Noah and Joe had been in their accident. She’d come home right away, of course, which made it the first time they’d all been in Sunrise Cove together in a long time.
But Noah had been gone the most. He had a house on the south shore and an efficiency studio apartment in Yosemite, but also spent time in D.C. at the NPS—National Park Service—headquarters. Joe, down two paygrades, worked far less hours than Noah, and either stayed on Noah’s couch in Yosemite when necessary or commuted from Sunrise Cove.
Olive eyed him suspiciously. “Where are you staying?”
Noah caught sight of Katie plastered up against the living room picture window watching them. She winced just before she yanked the blinds closed.
At his side, Olive snorted. “Busybody.”
No doubt. “Wait here a sec.”
He strode up the front steps.
Holmes the Hound woke with a snort, his long ears rumpled and wrinkled. Seeing Noah, he tipped his head back and let out a soulful but happy howl, tail thumping.
With a smile, Noah crouched down to love up on the old guy, named Holmes because, like Sherlock, the hound could sniff out anything. Well, mostly food, but still. He weighed in at seventy pounds, his belly scraped the floor. So did his ears. He drooled, had gas that could wipe out the entire ecosystem, and could howl until the windows rattled if left alone. He couldn’t see much past his own nose anymore, but he loved his people fiercely and was loyal and devoted. So much so that he’d been depressed for months after losing his best friend when Sassy Pants, the family’s fifteen-year-old cat, had passed earlier in the year.
Noah gave him a quick belly rub. “I’ll be back,”
he promised, then rose and reached for the door handle, colliding with Olive doing the same.
He glanced over at her. “I see you still take direction well.”
“And you’re as bossy as ever.”
She sent Holmes a sweeter smile than Noah had ever gotten from her. “Hey, boy.”
Then, since neither of them had let go of the door handle, she went back to fighting him for it. They were still wrestling when the door suddenly opened, and they tumbled inside.
Olive leaped up so fast, she nearly fell over again. Noah took longer, refusing to acknowledge the stab of pain in his leg, or let anyone see it. His sister clapped her hands together in delight. “I’ve been waiting for this day for years.”
Noah straightened. “So you admit this was planned.”
Katie rolled her lips into her mouth. Everyone knew she was incapable of lying convincingly, so whenever she got cornered, she zipped her lips as if to keep the words from falling right out.
Olive stepped past Noah and pulled Katie in for a hug. As always when confronted with physical contact, she turned into a corpse with rigor mortis. Her phone and glasses fell from her hands and hit the floor. “My phone. My glasses,”
she said, while waiting for the hug to end.
Looking amused, Olive pulled back. “Sorry, it’s been too long.”
“It’s never too long to not hug.”
Olive laughed. “Okay, then, how about this.”
And she kissed Katie noisily on the cheek.
Katie squirmed. “Worse. Way worse.”
Ignoring all of that, Noah gave his sister a long look.
“Hey,”
she said. “My husband’s in a coma, my son’s missing his dad, and I’ve been scrambling to keep my life together. On the surface I might be cool as a cucumber, but on the inside I’m a squirrel in traffic. So sue me for wanting my brother and my best friend here under one roof.”
She paused. “Don’t be mad.”
“We’re not,”
Olive said, taking Katie’s hand in hers.
True. Noah couldn’t be mad, because he was the reason Joe was in a coma. He’d been trained in evasive driving. He should’ve been able to handle the car. In fact, he should’ve seen it coming. Instead, he’d been arguing with Joe over his choice in music. “Whatever you need,”
he told Katie. Money, time, babysitting . . . my jugular. “I’m here for you.”
Olive nodded. “What he said.”
“What I need,”
Katie said, “is for the two people I love so dearly to help me with Joey and be there for Joe.”
“Done,”
Olive said.
“It won’t be easy. Today alone I said four things I never in a million years imagined saying.”
She held up a finger for each point. “?‘Sorry I flushed your poop before you said goodbye.’ ‘If you’re going to stick your hands down your pants, you have to wash them after—with soap.’ Oh, and let’s not forget ‘Don’t lick the dog’ and ‘Who ate the stick of butter I had on the counter?’ Which, by the way, if Joey says he has to go potty today, I suggest you run, don’t walk.”
Olive had a hand over her mouth, looking both horrified and like she might laugh.
Katie pointed at her.
Olive shook her head and got herself under control.
Noah turned back to the door to get Olive’s duffel bag, and not, as he’d have liked, to get into his truck and keep driving until he was in another state. On the other side of the country.
“Wait—where are you going?”
Katie asked in her demanding sister voice.
“Calm down.”
Katie narrowed her eyes and turned to Olive. “My brother just said ‘calm down’ like he wants his own Dateline special.”
Noah rolled his eyes and dropped Olive’s duffel bag at her feet. “I’m going to sit with Joe for a bit.”
Where he’d hold his brother-in-law’s hand and try badgering him back to the land of the living.
He caught Olive staring at him, expression hooded, nothing visible except for maybe irritation at having to . . . what? See him?
Ditto, babe. He gave her a curt nod, brushed a kiss to the top of Katie’s head, and then he was on the road, windows down, nearly freezing his brain with the biting spring mountain air, all so he couldn’t think too much.
And yet he still managed to do just that.
Twenty minutes later, he sat at Joe’s side in an uncomfortable chair that had his ass numb and his leg aching unbearably. Ignoring this, he hunched forward, eyes on Joe’s face. “Hey, man.”
Nothing.
He let out a breath. He’d been here every day since the accident and still it was a shock. Awake, Joe was in perpetual motion, usually smiling or laughing, always joking around. The life of the party. Seeing him like this, so damn still, shook Noah to the core. “So, uh, everything’s okay at home. Joey walks around in your favorite Giants hat.”
The room remained silent. Well, with the exception of the whooshing and beeping of various equipment working hard to keep Joe alive. “He won’t take it off, not even to sleep. Katie’s holding up in her usual stoic way. She’s reorganized your closet three times and, don’t hate the messenger, she threw out all your old socks, including your lucky basketball pair. I tried to save them, but the trash guys had already come.”
He paused. Maybe he should go with positive stuff. “On the other hand, you know how you’re always after her to check the oil on her POS car that she won’t let you upgrade? Well, she’s finally doing that. Like daily.”
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “She misses you.”
I miss you . . . “I’m doing my best to make sure they have everything they need.”
Except you . . . No one can replace you . . . He swallowed hard, keeping a few facts back for himself. Such as how Joey kept crying for his daddy and wasn’t sleeping well. But then again, none of them were. “Oh, and the good news is that you were called up for jury duty last week, but you got out of it, seeing as you’re here snoozing.”
Still nothing.
They’d been told not to expect reactions, not a flicker of an eyelid, not a squeeze of the hand, nothing, but hearing it was one thing, experiencing it was another. He leaned forward. “Listen, man, the truth is that I’m failing Katie. I’m failing Joey. Hell, I’m failing everyone, and I need you to wake up—”
He froze. Had Joe’s eyelids flickered? He stared at Joe for five long minutes but didn’t see it happen again.
A nurse spoke from the doorway. “Sir? I’m sorry, but time’s up.”
He looked at Joe. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
He squeezed his best friend’s hand.
Joe didn’t squeeze back.
Right. Because he was in a goddamn coma.