Call her cynical but she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn Caroline was in on the matchmaking efforts. But maybe she was only being hypersensitive.
“Okay,” she agreed. “Good idea. Why don’t you come inside where it’s cooler while I pour some.”
“I’m...all right out here. It’s the next thing to being in the garden myself. The sun feels good.”
How many afternoons of June sunshine did Caroline have left? Alex’s heart broke all over again.
“The sunshine feels nice after a long winter, doesn’t it? I’ll fix you a snack then, and bring you some lemonade.”
“I hope there’s enough. Helen can...make more. She was coming back today. Or was it...tomorrow? I can’t remember.”
Caroline’s brow furrowed and she looked out at the garden as if she could find the answer there. Alex squeezed the fingers that rested on the curved rocking-chair arm. “I don’t know how you keep everything straight, between all your appointments and your medications and the hot guys you have coming over all the time. We can find out easily enough. I can simply look at the hospice schedule on the refrigerator, my dear.”
The woman’s tension relaxed and she seemed to sink back into her chair. “Would you? Thank you.”
She saw that Helen was indeed coming that day, and the next. In fact, the hospice had scheduled someone to come every day, indefinitely, which meant they knew Caroline was failing, too.
Fighting back the burn of tears, she busied herself with pouring several glasses of lemonade on the same tray she had served Caro’s soup the other day. She found some of the cookies she had brought over as well and arranged them prettily on a plate.
When she carried the tray back out to the porch, she found Sam sitting in the rocking chair beside Caroline. Ethan was sprawled on his stomach on the sidewalk, watching something on the concrete with a peculiar intensity.
It seemed strange to have them here, in this place, with her friend.
“What have you found?” she asked Ethan as she set the tray on the small table at Caroline’s elbow.
“A snail. He’s all slimy. I read in a book that snails produce mucus to reduce friction so they can move better. Don’t you think that’s cool?”
Yeah, not really. The only thing she considered cool about snails was how very delicious the right kind could be cooked in butter and a good wine sauce.
“Sure,” she answered anyway.
He smiled up at her just as the sun passed between a couple of the clouds and a sunbeam landed directly on his head, bathing him in golden light.
Out of nowhere, she was suddenly overwhelmed with love for this boy who had suffered great loss but could still find joy in little things like a snail streaking slime across a sun-warmed sidewalk.
She wanted to sweep him into her arms and hold him close.
She couldn’t. It wasn’t her place. Someday Sam would probably marry again and that woman would have the right to smooch Ethan’s cheek and straighten his collar and tuck him in at night.
She cleared her throat. “I brought you and your dad some lemonade. Do you want some?”
“In a minute,” Ethan said absently, and she was forced to turn back to Sam.
He took a glass from the tray and sipped it and she found herself ridiculously fascinated by the slide of his throat up and down as he swallowed.
“I...appreciate you helping me out today,” Caroline said in her garbled, thready voice. She was used to having to strain in order to understand. Sometimes people who didn’t know Caro well grew frustrated with it but Sam only smiled with patience.
“You’re welcome,” he answered.
“Used to be, I could...take care of this place on my own. It’s hard to watch...others handle what I...should be doing.”
“We’re happy to help, ma’am. You’ve got a beautiful place here. What a view! Have you lived here long?”
She wondered if Sam was purposely trying to distract Caroline from the reality of all she could no longer do. Yes. Of course he was. She had no doubt. Beneath that tough, masculine exterior, he was just that kind of man.
Wonderful.
“You could...say that,” Caroline said. “Eighty-five years now. I...was born in this house and moved here as a...young bride, after my parents died.”
For the few short months of her marriage, before her husband was killed, she must have been so happy here.
“I want to...die in this house.”
“Not for a long time,” Alex answered promptly.
“Humph” was Caroline’s answer.
She asked Sam where he was living and the two of them engaged in a conversation about his house and the previous owners, all of whom Caroline had known from the time the house had been built when she was a girl.