Marriage By Necessity. Marisa Carroll
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be held by him, although while she was married to David, she’d buried the memory so deeply she almost believed she’d forgotten. She’d break down and give in to the terrible fear inside her if he showed her any tenderness at all. “I’m not asking you to be responsible for me if I’m not able to take care of myself. I…I’ve made arrangements.” She would tell him later, all the details of insurance and long-term care facilities, of living wills and “do not resuscitate” orders. She didn’t dare dwell on herself, on what might lie in store for her. It was Matty she had to safeguard.
He gripped the back of the lawn chair and leaned slightly forward. “Good God, Sarah, listen to yourself. Do you know what you’re asking? We ended up divorced because we couldn’t agree on having children. Why in God’s name would you trust me with your son?” His jaw tightened. He looked fierce and rock hard. And sad. Beneath the surface anger his eyes were dark with sorrow and loss, she would swear it.
“You’re a kind man. You’ll make a fantastic father.” She couldn’t stop a small, bittersweet smile. “I always knew that about you even if you didn’t know it yourself.” She kept on talking, not giving him a chance to deny it. “I know I could ask you to just be his guardian but that takes time, filings, court hearings, all those things. Until all of that was settled he would have to be placed in foster care.” She faltered a little over those words but kept going. “The lawyer said…it would be simpler if we were married. That it would be easier for you to make decisions for Matty if I’m not able to care for him.” This time she couldn’t stop the quaver in her voice. She didn’t know which nightmare was more terrifying. Death, quick and painless as it would be, or the alternative, the possibility of paralysis or years and years in a vegetative state, dependent on others for everything, while Matty grew up alone and unwanted, the way she had.
“He needs you, Nate. There’s no one else. David’s only sister is a single mother. Her youngest has Down syndrome. Matthew’s grandfather is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Carrie, my sister-in-law, has him to care for, too. And I…” She let the sentence trail off. Nate knew she was an orphan, abandoned at birth. She’d bounced around from one foster home to another throughout her childhood. She didn’t need to remind him of the loneliness and heartache of her youth. “The only family I ever really had was you.”
CHAPTER TWO
“I WONDERED HOW LONG it was going to take you to get yourself down the hill and tell me what’s going on at your place. Where you been all day?” Harmon Riley, bundled up in an ancient buffalo plaid wool coat and with a vintage Tigers cap covering his nearly bald head, was seated in an old metal lawn chair in front of the fire he built on the lakeshore most nights it wasn’t raining or blowing too hard. A plastic cooler sat on the ground beside him. His old tom, Buster, was curled up on his lap. The cat opened one eye, stared at Nate suspiciously for a moment, and then went back to sleep.
“I had business in Ann Arbor.”
“Don’t you mean we had business in Ann Arbor? I didn’t see that minivan with the out-of-state plates take off and leave, did I?”
“No. It’s still here.”
“So’s the woman that was driving it yesterday, eh? Not like you to have overnight guests. At least not the kind you don’t bring down to introduce to your old granddad. Sit down. You give me a crick in my neck standing there like that.”
Nate did as he was told and Harm handed him a beer from the cooler. He twisted off the top and took a swallow, then cradled the longneck with one hand and stared past the fire at the lights of the yacht club on the other side of the lake.
“This overnight guest anyone I know?” the old man asked bluntly, making no attempt to hide his curiosity. Subtlety was not a Riley family trait. Just ask any of the members of the Cottonwood Lake Development Committee. They wanted to gentrify the hamlet of Riley’s Cove just like the lawyers and doctors and the professors from the university were doing to Lakeview, the larger town that sprawled along the north shore of the lake. But the stubborn old man, who’d lived in Riley’s Cove all his life, wanted nothing to do with upscale condos and art galleries, and even, God help them, a Starbucks.
Harm wanted things to stay the way they were. Simple and fairly inexpensive and quiet eight months out of twelve. So there was no way he would give in to the committee and move the dozen or so campers and travel trailers he rented back from the lakefront, or tear down the rickety boathouse at the edge of the property. And most defiantly of all, he would not hear of upgrading the name of his establishment. Riley’s Trailer Trash Campground was here to stay.
“It’s Sarah, Granddad.”
“I’ll be darned. Sarah? I thought she looked familiar but I don’t see as good as I used to, so I couldn’t be sure. Never figured to see her here again, though.” He shook his head. “Sarah. She’s got a little one with her, I noticed. Boy or girl?”
“A little boy. His name is Matthew and he’s three.”
“Hard to tell these days the way they dress them alike. Does he favor her?” Harmon picked up his cigar from the cut-down coffee can that served as an ashtray and took a long pull. Nate watched its ember glow red and then fade. Disturbed by the movement, or maybe just because he didn’t like the smell of tobacco smoke, the old cat jumped stiffly down off Harm’s lap and stalked away into the shadows along the shoreline, tail held high.
“He looks a lot like her except he’s blond and his eyes are blue, not brown. He’s a sturdy little kid, but not real big for his age.”
“Three, you say? Same age as Tessa’s hellion. Don’t know how your sister copes with that one! Sarah’s not here to tell you he’s yours, is she?” The old man’s voice had gentled but Nate pretended not to notice.
“You know he’s not mine.” The words were hard to get out. He would like to have a son. He’d never thought too much about having children before the blowup with Sarah. And afterward? There didn’t seem much point especially considering what he’d learned about himself after the accident. “She married again right after the divorce. Her husband’s dead, killed by a hit-and-run driver in a goddamned store parking lot before the baby was born.”
“That’s a darned shame, but why’d she show up here after all this time? Don’t make sense to my way of thinking. Want to tell me about it? Might help later on. Your mother’s going to ask much tougher questions than I am.” Harmon rolled the cigar between his gnarled fingers, then looked over at Nate. “She’s been up here twice today trying to nose out what’s going on. She’s not going to be thrilled to hear it’s Sarah come calling.”
“I’ll talk to Mom and Dad first thing tomorrow. There’ve been a lot of details to work out today.”
“Details? What kind of details?”
Nate leaned his head back and looked up at the night sky. He couldn’t see many stars, he’d been staring at the fire too long, but the harvest moon hung low over the lake, yellow and immense. He loved this time of year, the colors, the smells, the slow retreat of summer’s warmth that almost hid the quiet, stealthy approach of winter. He took a few moments to order his thoughts. His grandfather stubbed the butt of his cigar into the sand in the coffee can and waited patiently. The cigar smoke drifted away and was replaced by the tang of a wood fire.
“Sarah’s ill,” he said at last. “Some kind of growth on her spinal cord the doctors aren’t sure they’ll be able to remove. When she learned the best doctor was here in Ann Arbor at the university, she got the idea of us getting married again so I could take care of Matthew if…the worst happens.” He might have been giving his CO a status report back in the old days. It was easier that way, not thinking about everything that could go wrong. To imagine Sarah dead, or paralyzed, unable to care for herself. A fate he was certain held more fear for her than death.
“Hell’s bells,” Harm said. For all his rough edges he’d never been one to cuss up a storm. “I didn’t figure that. That’s a darned shame. It ain’t fair having to face dying so young, just like your Grandma, God rest