“We never meant to hurt you, Dawn. We’d have done anything to keep from hurting you.”
“You don’t understand, Daddy. I’m not crying over the past, I’m crying over the future. Over what’s almost definitely, positively, absolutely going to happen to Nicky and me. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize. We’ll—we’ll break each other’s hearts, is what we’ll do, and I’d rather walk away now than let that happen.”
Annie smoothed her daughter’s hair from her forehead. “Dawn, honey, I can point to lots of marriages that have succeeded.”
“More fail than succeed.”
“I don’t know where you got that idea.”
“It’s not an idea, it’s a fact. That Family Life course I’m taking at Easton, remember? My instructor showed us all these statistics, Mom. Marriage is a crapshoot.”
Annie gritted her teeth, silently calling herself a fool for having convinced Dawn that she ought to at least attend classes at the local community college, now that she wasn’t going to go away to school as they’d planned.
“There’s an element of risk in anything that’s really worthwhile,” Chase said.
Annie gave him a grateful look. “Exactly.”
“So, when people get married, they should be aware that they’re taking a gamble?” Dawn said, looking from her mother to her father.
Annie opened her mouth, then shut it. “Well, no. Not exactly,” she said, and cleared her throat. “People shouldn’t think that.” She looked at Chase again. Say something, was written all over her face.
“Of course not,” Chase said quickly. “A man and a woman should put all their faith in their ability to make their marriage succeed.”
“And if that turns out not to be enough?”
“Then they should try harder.”
Dawn nodded. “And then they should give up.”
“No! What I mean is...” It was Chase’s turn to look at Annie for support. “Annie? Can you, ah, explain this?”
“What your father is saying,” Annie said, stepping gingerly onto the quicksand, “is that sometimes a man and a woman try and try, and they still can’t make a relationship work.”
“Like you and Daddy.”
Annie could feel the sand shifting, ever so slowly, under her feet.
“Well, yes,” she said slowly, “like us. But that doesn’t mean all marriages are failures.”
Dawn sighed. “I guess. But other people’s marriages don’t mean much to me right now. All I could think of today was how wonderful it would be if you guys got back together again.” She buried her nose in Nick’s handkerchief and gave a long, honking blow. “And then, when I saw you guys kissing...when I thought I saw you kissing...”
“We were,” Chase said. Annie’s head sprang up as if somebody had jabbed her with a pin. He saw the look of disbelief she flashed him but hell, there was no reason to lie about something as simple as a kiss. He laced his fingers through Dawn’s and smiled gently at her. “You didn’t imagine that, sweetheart. You and Nick were right. I was kissing your mother. And she was kissing me back.”
Dawn’s tearstained face lit.
“You mean...” She looked at them, her lips trembling. “I was right? You guys are thinking of getting together again?”
“No,” Annie said quickly. “Dawn, a kiss doesn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t mean they’ve reached any decisions,” Nick said. “Right, Mrs. Cooper?”
Oh, Nick, Annie thought unhappily. She rose to her feet and put her hand on his arm. “Look, I know what you both would like to hear me say, but—”
“Just say there’s a chance,” Nick said, his eyes pleading with hers for time, for hope, for understanding. “Even a little one.”
Annie could feel the delicate pull of the quicksand at her toes. “Chase,” she said urgently, “please, say something!”
Chase swallowed hard. It was years since Annie had looked at him this way, as if he were her knight in shining armor. Dawn, too. He couldn’t remember his daughter turning to him since she’d stopped skinning her knees playing softball.
Both his women needed him to come to their rescue.
It was a terrific feeling. Unfortunately he hadn’t the faintest idea how to do it.
Think, he told himself, dammit, man, think! There had to be something...
Dawn’s eyes filled again. “Never mind. You don’t have to spell it out for me. I’m old enough to understand that a kiss isn’t a commitment.”
Annie let out a breath that felt as if she’d been holding forever.