Prologue
Yesterday.Haditonlybeen yesterday? She and Elijah had taken the boat into town for breakfast and a few supplies. He had shown off her slightly bulging belly with pride to the Trading Post owners, Marge and Silas—the older couple whom they sort of adopted as parents. Elijah was so proud; their first child—they were both overjoyed. Elijah’s persistent headache hadn’t dampened his beaming smile, the way his eyes lit up, the love that had shined from them when he looked at her.
Blood tests told them it was a boy; they had agreed to name him Blake, after Elijah’s favorite poet. If it had been a girl, her name would still have been Blake. Cassidy joked she was glad she hadn’t been pregnant with twins because she would have had Blake One and Blake Two, not unlike Dr. Seuss’s Thing One and Thing Two. Deadpanning, Elijah had wondered what would’ve been wrong with that.
Marge and Silas had laughed along with the joke, overjoyed for the year-round lake-dwellers who didn’t drift in and out with the seasons. Elijah was a writer who taught online courses in English. Cassidy was a homemaker who worked seasonally in the local bar. Unlike typical lake-dwellers, they weren’t wealthy, but they owned a lovely one-story lakefront home and dock complete with a boathouse. Their boat was the fastest way to get into town, which was how they liked it. They’d named itThe Caseli, as a mash-up of their names.
Cassidy was happy, too. Over-the-moon, how-could-this-be-her-life, won-the-lottery, clichéd kind of happy. She had a handsome husband with big brown expressive eyes, a closely-cropped beard, and sandy blond hair always flopping over his forehead. He often gathered it up in a man bun that was sexy on him.
He ran every day to keep in shape, his fit body type complementing her lean physique. She was slender, but she wasn’t a runner herself. Elijah liked to call her breasts fun-sized; they weren’t small but they seemed small in a world that worshiped super-size.
Her straight, red hair was Elijah’s obsession when he read. His favorite thing was to have her lay her head in his lap while he ran his fingers through her silken tresses. It was calming for them both. Through her morning sickness, her late-night panic attacks over her readiness to be a mother, he was there, pulling her into his lap, soothing her, and stroking her hair.
Until yesterday.
They had decided on a whim to go into town. They’d walked Main Street. They conversed with those they wouldn’t see again after the end of the season when most people returned to their other lives in the cities or suburbs. They’d glowed about baby Blake, whom they would be excited to introduce to their sometimes-neighbors next season.
That’s what she remembered: breakfast, joy, sun, happiness, peacefulness, love.
And then Elijah had left her.
Suddenly. No warning.
His dark eyes had met hers one last time. She saw his fear, sorrow, regret, and apology, all conveyed in a split second.
The love of her life, her forever, the father of her child—he left her.
He’d had her hand one second, and the next, he’d let go.
“Mrs. Teague?” A man’s insistent voice invaded her numbed mind. He was storming toward her with purpose.
Cassidy’s eyes shifted from the hospital family room’s ceiling tiles where she had been sitting, too numb to leave. This morning—hours ago—she’d been told Elijah wasn’t coming back. Her last look, the last memory she had of him, was seared into her mind. He had collapsed while reaching up to escort her onto their boat, his fingers wrapped around hers.
Silas had been quick enough to keep her from tumbling off the dock after him. The older man had pulled her back even as she’d cried out in panic, Elijah’s fingers ripped away from hers, eyes closing—his eyes, not hers. Hers had been wide open, unbelieving, fighting to understand what was happening, desperate to hold on.
That was yesterday.
Today, her soul was ripped from her a second time. She hadn’t known it was possible to lose your heart twice.
Chapter one
Cassidy
VAINGLORIOUS PRICK
Twenty months later
“Morning,girlie!”Silassaid.
“Hi, Silas!” Cassidy called back, throwing her line to him. He caught it, securing it to the dock cleat.
The white-bearded, weather-beaten man gave her his usual once-over. Cassidy was used to that look by now; every time she saw Silas since that awful day almost two years ago, he was watchful, looking for signs of either further breakdown or a breakthrough. Something beyond her merely existing. It was a lot of pressure. Existing, after everything she had experienced, was pretty good, if you asked her.
It helped if she talked while getting into and out of the boat. The memory of taking Elijah’s hand and seeing the moment his aneurysm exploded haunted her. She recalled his realization something fateful was occurring, something he wouldn’t be able to escape.
It didn’t help she still had the same boat. Then again, this was Elijah’s boat. She didn’t want to sell it. She didn’t want to sell the house or get rid of his books, or his clothes, or the stupid, hideous painting he’d bought at a flea market they’d fought over. She now had it hanging in the bedroom as though it was theMona Lisa—the bedroom in which she still couldn’t sleep.
As she clambered onto the dock, she asked, “Where’s Marge? I want to tell her I planted those potatoes, but I’m still skeptical. We’re going to have another snow, I just know it.”