prefer he stay away, but he’d never been one to shirk duty and didn’t plan on starting now. For whatever time he was legally charged with caring for Melissa’s kids, he would. Out of the memory of what they’d once shared, he owed her that much.
The storm made it tough to see the road, but Mason was familiar enough with the route to his former in-laws’ he could’ve driven it blindfolded. He’d shared a lot of good times with Melissa and Hattie’s parents. This afternoon, like the day of Melissa’s funeral, wouldn’t be one.
The back-and-forth drone of the wipers transported him to another snowy day. Weeks after his divorce had been finalized, he’d been fresh off the boat from a grueling two-month Yakutat king-crab season to find himself with his dad at the Juniper Inn’s Sunday brunch seated two tables down from newlyweds Melissa and Alec. As if that weren’t bad enough, Akna and Lyle were also in attendance. As long as he lived, he’d never forget their disapproving stare. Melissa’s betrayal—and Alec’s—had been hard enough to bear.
His dad counseled to play it cool. Not to let them get beneath his skin. They weren’t worth it. But all through middle and high school, throughout his and Melissa’s two-year marriage, he’d loved Akna and Lyle. They were good people. It killed him to think for one second they blamed him for his marriage falling apart. Yes, he’d spent a lot of time away from home, but he was working for Melissa—them. Their future.
Losing their baby hadn’t been anyone’s fault.
He remembered a fire crackling in the inn’s too-fussy dining room. His chair had been too straight-backed and uptight. Even though the weather outside was bitterly cold, inside struck him as annoyingly hot. As long as he lived, he’d never forget the way the snow pelting the windows melted on contact, running in tearlike rivulets that reminded him of Melissa’s tears when she’d asked for a divorce.
She’d claimed his distance had driven her to Alec—not physical distance, but emotional. She’d said the miscarriage changed him. Mason believed that a crock. She was the one who’d changed. His love had never once faltered.
On autopilot, back in the present, he parked his dad’s old pickup in front of Akna and Lyle’s house.
Though the temperature had dropped to the teens, his palms were sweating. Countless dangerous SEAL missions had left him less keyed up.
Hattie pulled into her parents’ driveway ahead of him. She now teetered on their front-porch steps. What’d gotten into her? The Hattie he remembered struck him as a practical, no-frills girl who knew better than to wear high-heel boots in a snowstorm. But then, that girl had also been a tomboy, doe-eyed dreamer who’d preferred the company of her dogs over most people. It saddened him to realize he no longer knew the striking woman she’d grown into. They might as well be strangers.
She damn near tripped, so he hastened his pace to a jog.
“Slow it down.” He took her arm. “You act like this is somewhere you want to be.”
Wrenching her arm free, she grasped the railing instead of him. “Where else would I be? This is my family. Used to be yours.”
He snorted.
At seventeen, he and Hattie had helped Lyle build this porch over a warm summer weekend. Melissa had sat in a lawn chair, supervising. Over ten years later, the wood groaned beneath their footfalls. Bitter wind whistled through the towering conifers that had given the town its name.
The front door popped open. Lyle ushered his daughter inside. “Hurry, it’s cold. Your mom and I were just wondering what took so—” He eyed Mason. “What’re you doing here?”
“Nice to see you, too.” Mason trailed after Hattie, easing past her father. In the tiled entry, he brushed snow from his hair.
Hattie bustled with the busy work of removing her coat, then taking his.
Took about two seconds for Mason to assess his surroundings well enough to realize he’d stumbled deep into enemy territory.
Akna sat on one end of the sofa holding an infant wrapped in a pink blanket. Sophie Reynolds—a buxom busybody he remembered as being a neighbor and clerk down at Shamrock’s Emporium—held another pink bundle in a recliner. Despite a cheery fire, the room struck Mason as devoid of warmth. As if the loss of their child had sucked the life from Hattie’s parents.
Unsure what to say or even what to do with his hands, Mason crossed his arms. “Brutal out there.”
Akna flashed a hollow-eyed stare briefly in his direction, before asking her daughter, “I suppose you’re here for the girls?”
“Mom...” Hattie leaned against the wall while unzipping one boot, then the other. “Honestly? You probably need some rest. And it’s not like you can’t see the twins as often as you like.”
Sophie noted, “A body can never see too much of their grandbabies.”
Mason didn’t miss Hattie’s narrow-eyed stare in Sophie’s direction.
While Mason stood rooted in the entryway, Hattie joined her mother on the sofa, taking the baby into her arms. Her tender reverence reminded him that Alec had been the one who’d ultimately given Melissa her most cherished desire. Part of him felt seized by childish, irrational jealousy over his once best friend filling his wife’s need for babies. But then the grown-up in him took over, reminding Mason the point was moot, considering both parties were dead.
“It’s not the same, and you know it.” Akna angled on the sofa, facing her daughter and granddaughter. “Right, Sophie?”
Sophie nodded. “Amen.”
Akna said, “Your sister betrayed me.” By rote, she made the sign of the cross on her chest. The official family religion had always been an odd pairing of old Inuit ways blended with Lyle’s Catholicism. A gold-framed photo of the Pope hung alongside Melissa’s and Hattie’s high school graduation pictures.
“Oh, stop. Melissa loved you very much.” Hattie’s voice cracked, causing Mason to shift uncomfortably. As much as he’d told himself he hated Melissa, wanted her to hurt as badly as she’d hurt him, he’d never wanted this. Hattie regained her composure. She’d always been the stronger of the two sisters.
“Obviously, not enough. And how could she have ignored Alec’s parents? When your father called to tell them the news, poor Cindy had a breakdown. Taylor’s got them on the first flight out in the morning so she can see her doctor.”
“Such a shame,” Sophie murmured.
“Akna, I’m sorry about all this.” Mason left the entry to join them. “Which is why—soon as possible—I’ll sign over my rights to Hattie. What you all do from there is your business.”
“Hattie,” Akna asked, “with the time you spend at the bar, do you even feel capable of raising twins?”
Hattie shrugged before tracing the back of her finger along her sleeping niece’s cheek. “If this is what Melissa wanted, I feel honor bound to at least try.”
Lyle ran his hands through his hair and sighed. “A few weeks ago, Melissa and the girls rode along with me while I covered for one of my delivery guys.” A former bush pilot, Lyle now owned a grocery distribution center that served many nearby small communities. “Looking back, she acted jumpy. She mentioned not having been sleeping. Didn’t think much of it at the time—chalked it up to her being a new mom. She talked a lot about wanting Hattie to be the girls’ godmother, and that if something ever happened to her, she wanted them raised young.”
“What does that even mean?” Akna asked through the tissue she’d held to her nose.
“Ask me, this is all unnatural,” Sophie said. “The girls should be with their grandparents who love them.”
Hattie ignored the neighbor and forced a deep breath. “Mom, no offense to you and Dad, but Melissa brought up the godmother thing with me, too. At the time, I told her she was talking crazy, but she