Her problems with Jim went back more than three decades, but what about Cal? She could read between the lines of what Jane had told her well enough to understand that Jane wanted a lifelong commitment, but Cal wouldn’t give it to her.

What was it about her son that made him fight marriage and commitment so ferociously? He’d been raised in a loving family. Why was he so resistant to having one of his own?

Even as a very young child, competition had been everything to him. She remembered teaching him hopscotch when he was so small he’d barely been able to walk, let alone hop on one leg. She’d been little more than a child herself, and he’d been her play companion as well as her son. She’d drawn a chalk outline on the old sidewalk outside the apartment where they’d been living, and she’d never forget the sight of that bottom lip caught between his teeth, all his toddler’s concentration focused on beating her. Now she suspected that the permanent ties of a wife and family had become one more symbol of the fact that the most important part of his life was coming to an end, and he had nothing to take its place.

Cal would undoubtedly have called his father right after he’d talked with her and told him about the baby. She’d been married to Jim long enough to know he’d be overjoyed at the idea of having new life in their family, and like her, he’d be concerned about Cal’s happiness. Unlike her, however, he wouldn’t be at all concerned about the feelings of the young woman sleeping in the spare room.

Lynn gazed over at her mother. “Cal must care about Jane, or he wouldn’t have lied to me the way he did.”

“Calvin loves her. He just don’t know it yet.”

“Neither do you. Not for a fact.” Even though she’d asked for it, her mother’s know-it-all attitude irritated her. Or maybe she wasn’t yet ready to let go of her hurt that Annie knew Jane better than she did.

“You can believe what you want.” Annie sniffed. “I know some things.”

“Like what?”

“She don’t put up with any of his nonsense for one. He likes that about her. She’s a fighter, too, and she ain’t afraid to go after him. Janie Bonner’s as good as they come.”

“If she’s such a fighter, why is she leaving him?”

“I guess her feelin’s got too much for her. She has a powerful love for that son of yours. You should see the way the two of ’em look at each other when they don’t think nobody’s watchin’. ’Bout set your eyeballs on fire.”

She remembered Cal’s recent happiness, along with the tears in her daughter-in-law’s eyes, and thought there was a good chance her mother was right.

Annie regarded her with shrewd eyes. “That baby of theirs is gonna be a smart little cuss.”

“It seems inevitable.”

“You ask me, it ain’t good for a special child like that to grow up all by itself. Look how bein’ an only child traum’tized Janie Bonner into gettin’ in this predicament in the first place.”

“You have a point.”

“She told me she felt like a freak growin’ up.”

“I can see how she would.”

“A child like that needs brothers and sisters.”

“But the parents would have to be living under the same roof for that to happen.”

“You’re sure ’nough right about that.” Annie leaned back in her rocker and sighed.“Seems me and you don’t have much choice, Amber Lynn. Looks like we’re gonna have to catch ourselves another Bonner.”

Lynn smiled to herself as she walked out on the porch after her mother had gone to bed. Annie enjoyed believing the two of them had single-mindedly laid a trap for Jim. It wasn’t so, but Lynn had given up trying to tell her mother that. Annie believed what she wanted to believe.

It was nearly midnight and chilly enough that she zipped the front of an ancient Wolverine sweatshirt from Cal’s college playing days. She stared up at the stars and thought how much better she could see them from the top of Heartache Mountain than from their house in town.

The sound of an approaching car broke her concentration. All the men in her family were night owls, so it could only be Cal or Ethan. She hoped it was her oldest son come to claim his wife. Then she remembered her promise to Jane that she would keep him away and frowned.

As it turned out, the car that appeared at the top of the lane didn’t belong to either Cal or Ethan, but to her husband. She couldn’t believe it. Not once since the night she’d left had Jim driven up here to see her.

She remembered the bitterness of their parting on Friday and wondered if he’d come to dangle the business card of his divorce lawyer in front of her. She had no idea how anybody got a divorce, beyond making an appointment with a lawyer. Was that how it happened? A person made an appointment with a lawyer, and, before they knew it, their marriage was over?

Jim got out of the car and moved toward her with that long graceful stride that had set her heart to beating for as long as she could remember. She should have expected him. Cal would have talked to him by now, and the prospect of a new grandchild would give him another excuse to browbeat her. She braced herself against one of the freshly painted posts that held up the tin roof of the porch and wished he hadn’t found her so unworthy.

He came to a stop below the bottom step and gazed up at her. For a long time he said nothing-he merely studied her-but when he finally spoke, there was an odd formality in his voice. “I hope I didn’t scare you showing up here so late.”

“It’s all right. As you can see, I’m still awake.”

He dropped his gaze and for a moment she had the curious feeling he wanted to bolt, but that couldn’t be so. Jim never ran from anything.

He looked up at her, and his eyes held that stubborn glint she knew so well. “I’m Jim Bonner.”

She stared at him.

“I’m a doctor in town.”

Had he lost his mind? “Jim, what’s wrong?”

He shifted his weight as if he were nervous, but the only time she had ever seen his confidence shaken was when Jamie and Cherry had died.

He clasped his hands together and then immediately dropped them to his sides.“Well, to be honest, I’ve got a thirty-seven-year marriage that’s on the rocks. I’ve been pretty depressed about it, and instead of taking to the bottle, I thought it might help me if I found a little female companionship.” He drew a deep breath. “I heard in town there was a nice lady living up here with her old battle-ax of a mother, and I thought maybe I’d stop by and see if that lady’d like to go out to dinner with me some time. Or maybe catch a movie.” A flicker of amusement caught at the corner of his mouth. “That is if you don’t have any qualms about dating a married man.”

“You’re asking me out on a date?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m kind of rusty at this sort of thing, so I hope I’m going about it right.”

She pressed her fingers to her lips, and her heart swelled. During lunch on Friday she’d told him she wished they could meet as strangers so they could start all over to see if they liked each other, but he’d been so angry at the time, she hadn’t thought he’d even heard her. After all these years, she had never imagined he could surprise her, but he just had.

She resisted the urge to throw herself in his arms and tell him all was forgiven. She didn’t hold herself so cheaply that this small bit of effort on his part, as much as she appreciated it, could erase decades of not being good enough. She wondered how far he was willing to take this.

“We may not be compatible,” she replied, testing the waters.

“Maybe not. I guess we won’t be able to decide unless we give it a try.”

“I don’t know. My mother might not like it.”

“Now you leave your mother to me. I’m real good with old ladies, even mean and crazy ones.”

She nearly laughed. Imagine stubborn, hardheaded Jim Bonner doing something this romantic. She was charmed and touched, but not completely. Something saddened her, and it took a moment to figure out what. She’d spent most of her life feeling like a beggar for Jim’s affection-always agreeable, always the one to make concessions and appease. He’d never had to put himself out for her because she’d never made any demands. She had never put a single roadblock in his way, and now she was getting ready to run back to him just because he’d made one small effort to please her.

She could still remember the feel of his randy teenager’s hands on her. Those first few times they’d had sex, she hadn’t liked it very much, but it had never occurred to her to say no, even though she would rather have been sitting in the back booth at the drugstore sharing a Coke and gossiping about their classmates. Suddenly that made her angry. He’d hurt her when he’d taken her virginity. Not deliberately, but it had hurt nonetheless.

“I’ll think about it,” she said quietly. Then she gathered the sweatshirt tighter around her and went back inside.

A moment later, a spray of gravel hit the house as he peeled away, driving for all the world like an angry eighteen-year-old.

Chapter Twenty

F or two weeks, Cal stayed away from Heartache Mountain. During the first week, he got drunk three times and took a swing at Kevin, who’d refused his demand to get the hell out of Dodge. During the second week, he started to go after her half a dozen times, but his pride wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t the one who’d run away! He wasn’t the one who’d screwed everything up with unreasonable demands.