Swearing, he looked at the moon for answers and knew he’d find none. But it was deep in the night, and Troy would stay and do what he should. He’d done it before, just never with a woman who turned him on his ear. He’d done it for his sister, Carly, for his brothers and his new sisters-in-law, even once for his nephew, Luke, when the little boy was sick with an earache and Troy’s brother was out of town.
He leaned against the window, knowing he would change positions many times before dawn. Troy settled in for a night watch. This time, he watched Sin as she slept.
Senada saw her mother in the casket, so beautiful but forever still, and she felt the unbearable pain again. “Mama, please don’t go! Please.” She shook her head at the woman, who tried to calm her. “No. She mustn’t go. I can’t let her leave!”
Grief and fear twisted inside her. Tears burned her eyes. She blinked, and it was no longer her mother in the beautiful casket. It was Senada. “No!” she screamed.
“You’re dreaming,” she distantly heard the male voice. “Wake up,” he said again, and she felt a firm shake.
Sin opened her tear-moistened eyes and stared straight into Troy’s concerned gaze. Realization flooded her. Relief followed. Sweet relief and a comfort that had been sorely missing from her life. She felt something strange and new, couldn’t label it for the long moment that his gaze held hers.
Trust, a faint voice echoed through her. Senada went still. Trust? She trusted Troy Pendleton.
She was insane.
Uncertainty made her heart skip. Not Troy, she told herself. “Ohhhh.” She covered her face with her hand. “Sorry I screamed,” she muttered for what felt like the tenth time.
“No need,” he said, and offered her a glass of water. Senada drained the glass.
“Bad dream about your mother?”
She nodded, pulling the sheet up around her shoulders. “She died when I was twelve.” She hesitated for a moment, then finished with a shrug. “Complications of diabetes.”
He nodded slowly in comprehension. “Tough age to lose a parent.”
“You would know,” she said, recalling how the Pendletons had lost both their parents within a few years of each other.
“My mom died when I was eight. I was a little older than twelve when my father passed away.”
“My father abandoned my mother the year before she died. He couldn’t handle her illness,” she blurted out, though she wasn’t sure why.
“And that’s why you two don’t get along real well,” he said, adjusting her pillow. “You hate his guts for that, don’t you?”
She opened her mouth to protest but couldn’t. “In a way, I guess I have. I’ve never forgiven him for not being there when she needed him.”
“His not being there put a lot more of the burden on you, didn’t it?”
She shook her head. “That wasn’t the point. She needed him.”
“There’s more to it than that,” he said. “I don’t know all the psychobabble, but Carly’s always talking about how we need to be aware that our communication patterns are affected by our upbringing, and that children who lose their parents are angry about a lot of things. They’re angry because they’ve been abandoned, and they’re angry because they feel like their childhood has been stolen.”
Senada just stared at him. Troy Pendleton, Mr. Insensitivity, had just nailed feelings she’d always kept secret. She was caught between resentment and admiration for his perceptiveness.
He tucked a finger under her chin. “Tell the truth. What did you do that last year your mother was alive?”
Sin looked away from him. Even in the darkness, they were too intense, too probing. “I went to school every day,” she said, remembering those days when the sun had never seemed to shine, when she’d never felt like smiling. “I played with a friend every once in a while,” she continued, trying to add a note of normalcy when there’d been none.
“How often?” he asked.
She shot him an impatient glance and sat up, grasping the sheet just before it fell below her breasts. “Okay. Not very often. I fixed dinner, did the laundry and sat on the bed with her every night. She was too weak to do anything else.”
“This is probably gonna tick you off, but did you ever go for counseling?”
“Not until it was too la—” Senada broke off. “Years later when I got in a little trouble in high school, my father made me go see a psychologist. I didn’t want to be there,” she said, looking back at him. “So it wasn’t a successful experience.”