tables.” Matt popped open the can of lemonade he was holding, and gave it to the flushed youngster. “You ready for lunch?”
“Am I ever!”
“Then let’s get this show on the road.”
As the threesome made their way from the baseball field to the adjoining park, Stuart ran on ahead while Molly tucked her arm through Matt’s.
“Too bad you couldn’t have come to that movie with us last night,” she said. “You’d really have enjoyed it.”
“Yeah. But I didn’t get out of the office till after seven. I don’t remember when I was ever quite so busy.”
They stopped by Matt’s dusty black Taurus, which he’d left in the carpark adjacent to the street, and he hefted his picnic cooler from the trunk. Molly slammed the lid.
“I hope,” she said as they headed into the park, “that you took time to eat dinner.”
“I took home a pizza.”
“There’s lots of nourishment in a good pizza.”
“I guess.”
What he didn’t tell her was that he hadn’t eaten one crumb of the takeout pizza. By the time he and Beth—he and Liz!—had finished talking—had finished arguing!—the last thing on his mind had been food.
Frowning, he mulled over his present situation.
He knew he had to tell Molly that Max Rossiter’s daughter had turned up and had moved back into her old home.
His home, now.
Although she was, apparently, determined to battle him for it.
He hadn’t found quite the right moment to tell Molly of this new development; and he wasn’t sure he knew why he was so reluctant to bring it up.
“Hey, Mom, over here!” Iain waved to them from a picnic table. “Let’s get that cooler open, I’m starving!”
“Hold your horses, young man!” Matt placed the cooler on the table, and the two boys immediately set themselves to unlatching the lid.
Matt helped Molly to her seat, but as he sat down beside her, his eyes were on the two brown-haired boys kneeling on the bench at the other side of the table as they eagerly unpacked the food and set it out.
He’d made a point of spending as much time as he could with them after they lost their dad. And with Molly, too. Unknown to Molly, before Dave died he’d asked Matt to take care of her after he’d gone. And that promise, made to his longtime best friend, was sacred to Matt.
“You seem a bit distracted,” Molly said. “Is something wrong?”
“Sorry. My mind just wandered for a bit. Everything’s fine.” He made an effort to concentrate, and kept up his part in the conversation during their lunch.
After they were finished, they packed up, and the boys ran over to a set of swings by the nearby tennis courts.
He and Molly walked back to the car, and as he put the cooler in the trunk, she said,
“I’m going to pop over to the washrooms. Be right back.”
Matt strolled over to the swings. Leaning against one of the uprights, he smiled as he watched the boys fly high.
After a couple of minutes, they jumped off, and they all three walked back to the Taurus.
As the boys got in, Matt saw Molly come running toward him, the sun dancing in her brown hair.
She’d had it cut last week.
“Very short,” she’d told him that evening, over the phone. “For the summer!” And short it was. But it suited her dainty features, and emphasized her large hazel eyes.
She’d lost a lot of weight in the months following Dave’s death, but now he noticed how nicely she was filling out her T-shirt again, and how attractively her denim skirt lay over her trim hips.
When she came to a breathless stop beside him, he smiled. “You’ve put on a bit of weight. It suits you.”
“If I keep eating the way I’ve been doing lately, I’ll soon be ‘deliciously plump’ again!”
Matt laughed with her as they recalled the teasing words Dave had always used to describe his wife’s curves.
“Yeah,” he said. “Dave would be pleased.”
“You know, Matt, if someone had told me, just after Dave was killed, that one day I’d be laughing again, I wouldn’t have believed them. But now…”
“Yeah. Time heals. I guess it’s really true.”
She put a hand on his arm and looked up at him. “I don’t know if I’d have survived, if it hadn’t been for you.”
“It works both ways, sweetie. I’ve missed Dave, too.” He put an arm around her, and as he embraced her, he inhaled her floral scent, which was as familiar to him now as the feel of her soft body in his arms. He had comforted her—as she had comforted him—so many times…but never in any sexual way. Nor was there anything sexual in their embrace now.
“Come on, you guys!” Stuart said. “Iain’s gonna be late for his chess lesson!”
Once Matt had settled Molly in the car, he walked around to his own side, but before he opened his door, he heard a car idling in the street and got the feeling that someone was watching him.
He glanced across and saw that the vehicle with the idling engine was hovering at the far side of the road.
It was a midnight-blue Porsche. The driver was Liz.
Their eyes met. Her expression was startled.
And that was all he had time to see before she rammed her foot down on the accelerator and raced away.
Liz’s thoughts were in turmoil as she drove home.
She could have kicked herself for pausing at the park. She’d been passing by it and when she’d chanced to see Matt stroll from his car, alone, she had—on an impulse—slowed her own car down.
It had occurred to her that she might join him. She had some questions she wanted to ask him, about her father. Then he’d started chatting with a couple of boys who’d been playing on the swings.
She decided to wait till he was alone again, but all three walked over to his car. Then a woman ran up. It was immediately obvious that she was with Matt. And when Matt took her in his arms and held her close, it was just as obvious that they were in a relationship.
Knowing she should move on but unable to drag her gaze away, Liz had felt a heavy ache in her heart. She had assumed that Matt lived alone. Well, perhaps he lived alone…but he wasn’t unattached.
She herself wanted nothing to do with him…yet why did seeing him with someone else upset her so?
She’d been about to drive on when he’d spotted her.
Their eyes had locked, and even from the distance she had seen the surprise in his. What had he seen in hers? she wondered. She only hoped he hadn’t seen her distress.
It was going to be intolerable living at Laurel House with him. Even if he and the stranger weren’t actually cohabiting, she would surely be a frequent visitor.
And Liz knew she couldn’t bear to see them together. Just the sight of him with another woman in his arms had torn every old scar off her heart. And she knew, with a sinking feeling of despair, that even after all these years, Matt Garvock still had the power to hurt her.
He didn’t come home that night till well after nine.
Liz was upstairs in the small room which had been her study as a teenager. She’d spent the evening sorting old correspondence and school papers, tossing out most of it, saving only items