The flame danced and flickered, turning wood to ashes, and ashes to dust. Goodbye, Mom, she thought. I love you.
And, just like that, the if-onlys were gone.
She looked up, feeling like she did when she delivered a baby. The heady rush of freedom had her smiling. Hell, she almost felt like laughing.
Rebel wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the fire. “But not your father?”
Dad—well, Dad hurt, but in a different way. “He died of a heart attack in his sleep last year.” The leading cardiologist in Columbus dead at sixty-seven from a massive coronary event. And if Mellie had been upset when Mom died, she’d been inconsolable about Dad. Mellie had started on the if-onlys. If only Madeline had gone into cardiology like she was supposed to. If only Madeline had read the signs a little better. If only they both hadn’t gone out to dinner without Dad that night. It hadn’t been more than three hours after the funeral before Mellie had burst back into Madeline’s guilty silence, sobbing so hard that Madeline had barely been able to understand her apology. Which had almost made it better, but not quite. “It was just one of those things.” That’s what she told herself, anyway. That was what she had to tell herself.
He nodded. So he hadn’t guessed everything. She was willing to bet he didn’t have to guess about much more now. “That’s not how your—younger sister, right? That’s not how she saw it.”
Her jaw dropped, but she tried to snap it shut. Unsuccessfully. It was like he was reading her mind, and if that was the case, she was screwed. Big time. “You’re doing it again.”
The firelight caught the faint smile. Could he get any better looking? “I didn’t change the subject.”
She tried to glare at him, but something in her wouldn’t let her. She couldn’t find a part of her that was irritated, not even a little. Just wonderment. “If you tell me you had a vision that I had a younger sister, I’ll throw a boot at you.”
Oh, there was that blush again. Or maybe it was just the sunset that made his face glow like that. “You are, I beg your pardon, a bossy know-it-all who has to be right all the time. Pretty standard for an oldest child.”
The sudden—well, not quite an insult, because it was probably all true—took her back. “Excuse me?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say your sister is some free spirit who always got away with everything. Like Jesse.”
This was becoming a disturbing trend. Was there anything he hadn’t guessed right on today? “Well, maybe not just like Jesse.” Sure, Mellie had the unique capacity to drive her bonkers, but Madeline didn’t take on personal responsibilities for her, not like Rebel seemed to do for Jesse. Still, there might be enough similarities to rub him wrong. “Free spirit doesn’t begin to describe her.”
And she didn’t get away with everything, just more than Madeline did. “She’s artistic, but unfocused. One year she’s in England, studying the masters. The next, she’s learning how to weld so she can understand outsider art better. Some of her stuff is okay...” And God only knew what Mellie would do in front of someone like Rebel—a verifiable hunk who was a verifiable artist? Madeline put her money on swooning.
“So what does she do with her art if she’s not any good?”
“Actually, she spends a lot of time doing after-school stuff with city kids. She’s a big believer in the healing power of art and all that.” It occurred to Madeline that Mellie would love Nelly. She could just see the two of them drawing huge murals on the side of the clinic, or making sculptures out of found objects, or whatever it was Mellie did that made kids love her. Heck, their names even went together. Mellie and Nelly would really tear up this town.
“And you spent how much on that bag for her?”
He was doing it again. Maybe she should focus all of her efforts on not thinking about his body. Maybe she should be thinking about the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. Safer than thinking about verifiable hunks. She tried to shrug off her amazement. “It was your work, you know.” Yeah, that’s right. No big deal, not several grand on ceremonial pipes, not skinny dipping and certainly not the way he was looking at her, like he really was reading her mind. “I figured I would have spent the money on supplies anyway, and you’d probably use most of it to pay someone’s bill. She’s a nice sister. She should get something out of it.”
“Hmmm,” he hummed, and she swore she felt the vibrations from a foot away. Then he turned to look at the fire again. “I’m sorry about Walter.”