them, lined up behind the jelly jars that served as juice glasses. Melodie felt a twinge of irritation. Where was the expensive set she’d sent her mother? Probably gathering dust in the back of a closet with the rest of her gifts or possibly rewrapped and recycled as a present for someone “more needy.”
Melodie picked up the mug closest to her. The words To Mother With Love were handpainted across the dull white enamel and emblazoned with foolish-looking tulips. It had been Grace’s favorite, a Mother’s Day gift from her second-grade daughter. The rim was chipped, the handle had been glued back on and much of the paint had not survived countless washings.
It seemed that her mother’s entire life was embodied in that sentimental mug. A life spent in selfless devotion to others. A life based on the principles of hard work and an unwavering faith in God. A life so filled with frugality that no two glasses on the shelf matched.
Accepting for a fact that she in no way deserved the love that her mother had lavished on her since the day she’d been born, Melodie pulled the garbage can out from its concealed space beneath the sink and dropped the mug in. One by one she tossed in every single jelly glass as well. It was doubtful that Buck would have attempted to extract them as Grace surely would have done, but Melodie was nonetheless determined that every glass shattered as it hit its mark. The sound covered a muffled sob. Her tears glistened amid shards of broken glass.
Seeing her shoulders shake, Buck conjectured the cause of Melodie’s distress. Once upon a time a mismatched table service would have held no shame for the sweet, guileless girl who had been raised within these four walls.
“Must be hard coming back here after living in a mansion,” he ventured.
The tone behind that simple observation was sharper than the icicle dagger he seemed intent upon driving through her back.
Fearing she might choke on them, Melodie chose her words carefully. “It’s not that. It’s just that she deserved better.”
“Yes, she did,” Buck agreed, biting back the oath scalding his tongue. “She deserved a whole lot better than what you gave her, and I’m not talking about a blasted set of dishes either!”
That cruel accusation caused Melodie to spin around on her heels. Eyes the color of a stinging winter sky snapped with indignation.
“And just what gives you the right to judge me? To sit as both judge and jury on my feelings for my mother?” she demanded.
Matching hers in intensity, Buck’s eyes threatened to burn a hole right through her.
“Years of being by her side, watching her scrimp and save to leave you a ‘respectable’ inheritance, months of holding her hand and watching her waste away from cancer and heartache as she waited for any scrap of attention you might deem to send long-distance.”
“Self-righteous words from the dutiful son my mother never had. Between her sainthood and your martyrdom, I doubt if there would have been enough room at her bedside for a sinner like me!” Melodie snarled in return.
Despite the vehemence of her response, Melodie’s shoulders slumped beneath the weight of her guilt. Sucker punched by Buck’s resentment, she turned aside to hide the depth of her pain. Placing both hands on the dated Formica countertop, she attempted to steady herself. Her hands were still trembling when she reached for the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. As if hoping to somehow warm herself all the way through with its meager heat, she wrapped her fingers tightly around it before turning back around to face her grand inquisitor.
What possible good would come from trying to explain that Randall wouldn’t let her come home? That juggling a demanding job and a manic-depressive husband simultaneously was all she had been able to manage at the time. The excuse sounded pathetic even to her own ears. Squaring her slender shoulders, Melodie strode back to the table with her chin tilted defiantly up. Taking her seat, she brought the cup to her lips to blow away the steam that rose like an incantation from the dark brew.
The silence was deafening. They looked at one another more as strangers separated by strands of barbed wire than as one-time soul mates. Swishing a sip of hot liquid around in her mouth, Melodie forced herself to swallow it along with yet another tough piece of leftover pride.
“Look, Buck,” she began, daring to meet his eyes dead on. “You’re certainly entitled to your feelings, and God knows I owe you a debt of gratitude not to mention a long overdue apology. But it’s unlikely that the years of hurt between us are going to be healed over any cup of coffee. Since we’ve both got a couple of hard days ahead of us, do you think we could postpone our mutual animosity until after the funeral?”
For the first time since she had stepped inside the house, his features visibly softened.
Taking in the hard line of Melodie’s jaw and the way her throat pulsed as it closed around unshed tears, Buck realized just how near she was to breaking down. After years of cherishing the idea, he was surprised to discover how distasteful the actual possibility was.
Unbidden memories tugged at his conscience as he recalled the last conversation he’d had with her mother.
Don’t be too hard on my little girl when she comes home, Grace had begged him on her deathbed. She was awful young when she hurt you, and you don’t know what kind of struggles she’s had to endure these past years.
Buck didn’t dare squeeze the frail hand that clutched his. Grace’s bones were brittle, her skin almost translucent, her eyes dark hollows of concern—ever filled with concern for the daughter who had abandoned them both.
I won’t, he had replied over the bile that rose in his throat.
There was little Buck could refuse Grace. Abandoned as a child by an alcoholic single mother with the morals of an alley cat, he spent years being bounced from foster family to foster family. Grace had literally snatched him off the road to the reform school when she offered him a job.
And a home.
And an opportunity to be accepted for who he was and what he had to contribute to their family. She had treated him as if he truly were her flesh and blood. Although she pleaded with her eyes, Grace had not openly asked him to forgive her daughter. Buck was grateful for that. Some things were simply too reprehensible to warrant forgiveness, and being cheated on was one of them. He wasn’t likely to ever forget the fact that Melodie had made a fool of him. A broken heart is hard enough to heal in private, but when a proud man is made the target of public snickering, it is often easier to simply discard his heart than to attempt resuscitating something damaged beyond repair.
While Melodie waited for a response to her request for a temporary truce, she stiffened her nerves with another shot of caffeine. She could almost feel the strong, black coffee eating away the lining of her empty stomach.
“Fair enough,” Buck conceded grudgingly. “I suppose the least either of us could do for Grace is call a cease-fire for the time being.”
“Thank you,” she said, rising on shaky legs. “I guess I’d better get started unpacking.”
Buck did not respond with so much as a grunt let alone an offer to help her bring in her luggage. Facing his past had proven harder than he’d imagined. In recurring dreams, he’d told this woman exactly what he thought of her, lashing out with brutal honesty until she melted into a puddle of remorse at his feet. Oddly enough, now that the moment had come, he found he simply didn’t have the heart for it. Grace had always maintained that vengeance should be left to the Lord. Maybe she was right. Looking into Melodie’s guarded eyes, Buck saw a glimpse of someone who’d been through hell on earth. He doubted whether anything he had to say would penetrate the protective mask she was wearing. That brittle facade was so firmly fixed in place that he wondered if behind it there remained a single trace of the sweet girl with whom he had once upon a time fallen so desperately in love.
Suddenly his anger was overcome by a staggering sense of loss. What was the use of venting so many years after the fact? What could possibly be gained by inflicting even more pain upon one another now? Having embraced Grace’s faith some time ago, he recalled