“Yeah,” she said. “Just like that.”
FOUR
US Highway 101
SUV caravan
Family vacation—ten years ago
“Ethan! Chloe! Don’t go too far!” Sam shouted at the bobbing heads of the two nine-year-olds who had started running down the trail without waiting for a parent or an older sibling, and of course she was halfway into the back of the SUV trying to get lawn chairs and a cooler out of the mountain of weird stuff her kids had jammed into the car for their trip to the beach house for the week.
The house, which they’d parked right next to, had beach access down a winding trail and a steep staircase, and of course the kids didn’t want to wait to get into the sand. To get sand intoeverything.
“I’ve got them.” Will jogged ahead, running after the kids, with Aiden and Jude on his heels, which left her with all of the stuff.
And Logan.
This was the first time they’d gone on a vacation since Becca’s death four months earlier. Will had thought it would be a good idea to invite Logan and Chloe. Sam was all for it. It was just she was used to having Becca as a buffer.
She loved Becca.
She had loved so much how Logan cared for Becca.
But she and Logan…
She didn’t know how to talk to him. Maybe, horribly, even more so, she didn’t know how to talk to someone who had just lost the love of their life. She didn’t know how to handle it. She wanted to say something comforting every time she saw him and knew the impulse was probably annoying. She also didn’t know what could possibly be comforting.
It had been six months of shocking, awful hell. How could a thirty-year-old woman have cancer like that?
Cancer that moved so fast.
Cancer that responded to nothing.
When she looked at Logan, she felt that pain fresh every time.
When she looked at Chloe, it doubled.
Chloe had stayed with them for a week after Becca’s death. The little redheaded girl hadn’t cried until the fifth day.
Then she hadn’t stopped.
Sam felt like a part of herself had broken during that torrential outpouring of grief, and it had never quite healed itself.
“Let me get that.” Logan reached over her and easily got the cooler out of the mass of detritus it was wedged into.
“I’m fine,” she said, as he also took the lawn chairs right from her hand.
“Samantha.” There was a faint note of scolding in his voice, and she didn’t know what to do with that, except she relinquished the lawn chairs.
She stood awkwardly for a moment, suddenly empty-handed—a phenomenon she had no idea how to handle—and then slowly folded her arms. “Thank you,” she said.
“No problem.”
He started walking ahead of her down the trail.
“How is Chloe?” she asked, because she wanted to also ask how he was, but she just had a feeling it wouldn’t be well received.
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
