It was time to pack up and head for Boston.
Holly brought the last load of clean clothes upstairs and stopped in Chase’s room to drop off his things. His suitcase lay open on the bed, mostly empty, while he was sprawled on the floor leafing through a baseball magazine that Sam had bought for him the other day. Chin on his hand while he skimmed through the pages filled with facts and player photos, he looked totally dejected.
She could relate, Holly thought with a grimace. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who was reluctant to leave the quaint, close-knit New Hampshire town that had begun to feel like home to both of them. It didn’t feel quite right to her, but staying didn’t, either. She’d come to terms with her decision, so her wishy-washy attitude bewildered her. And that certainly didn’t help her frame of mind any.
“Hey, bud,” she greeted him, setting the basket on his bed to join him on the floor. Sitting cross-legged, she angled to see what he was looking at. “Is that the new Red Sox pitcher?”
“Yeah,” Chase replied on a deep sigh. “Sam said they just brought him up from Pawtucket, and he’s setting the league on fire.”
That wasn’t the kind of thing an eight-year-old would say, so Holly knew he was quoting their neighbor verbatim. Just as she’d feared when they’d first arrived, he’d gotten attached to Sam and now would be forced to say goodbye. This wasn’t exactly the scenario she’d envisioned with such dread, but the result was the same.
Her son was heartbroken, and even though she’d gladly take the hurt away from him, she couldn’t. Rubbing his back, she said, “I know you’re sad about leaving, Chase, but we’ll come back to visit. I promise.”
“It won’t be the same,” he reminded her in a resigned tone. “Hanging out with Sam is kind of like—”
He stopped abruptly, clamping his mouth shut around something he obviously thought would upset her. But Holly had learned the hard way that it was worse to keep negative emotions bottled up, never knowing when they’d come shooting to the surface. So she dredged up a smile and nudged. “Like what?”
“Having a father,” he finished in a rush, as if he couldn’t keep the words in even a second longer. “Like my other friends in Boston did. Like Cody does. Sam and me like the same stuff, and he taught me a lot about how to build things. I think it’d be fun to do that for real someday.”
Chase was a hands-on kid, always taking things apart to see how they worked and then putting them back together. Well, trying, anyway. There always seemed to be a few parts left over, but she encouraged him to do it because it made him happy. Replacing a few small appliances seemed like a small price to pay for nurturing his innate curiosity. “I think you’d be great at that, but you have plenty of time to decide what you’re going to do when you’re all grown up.”
“I wanna be like Sam,” her son announced confidently, eyes shining as he talked about his hero. “Big and strong, and always ready to help people when they need me.”
Holly’s mind instantly translated the childish goal into something more serious, and she swallowed back her terror so she could speak normally. “Those are good things to be.”
“Not a soldier, though,” he added somberly. “Because that would make you sad.”
Unsure if she’d be able to talk without sobbing, she gathered him into her arms and held him tight. Just the thought of her only child being assigned to some far-off place where he’d be in harm’s way made her crazy with fear. That he’d picked up on her reaction and chosen to protect her from that made her prouder of him than she’d ever been.
Grasping his arms, she held him away and gave him a smile full of gratitude. “Thank you for that, Chase. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”
He tilted his head with a wary expression. “Are you gonna cry?”
“Maybe a little,” she admitted with a laugh. “Because you just made me very happy.”
Judging by his perplexed look, her explanation made absolutely no sense to him, but he politely avoided saying so. Instead, he glanced at his waiting suitcase, then back to her. “If I don’t pack my stuff, can we stay?”
Now all the lollygagging made sense. He thought if he dragged his heels long enough, time would run out and they’d have to remain in Liberty Creek. Kid logic, she mused with a grin. You had to love it.
So, despite the fact that she’d found them a lovely new town house and had made all kinds of arrangements for them in Boston, she stood back from her usual practicality and reconsidered. Again. Only this time when she looked, the path was so obvious, she couldn’t believe she’d missed seeing it before. Her mother’s offer echoed in her mind, and Holly realized that for the first time in years, she had a viable option other than the circumstances she’d been forced to accept.
“Do you really want to live here?” she asked.
“Yes!” Swiveling around to his knees, he fixed her with a hopeful look. “Can we, Mom? Please?”
“Well, we have to get you registered at school, but I’m sure Mrs. Rogers can help us with that.” The very capable young mother—now of four—might even have enough pull to get Chase into Cody’s class, which would make the transition that much easier for him. But Holly didn’t want to get his hopes up, so she kept that possibility to herself while making a mental note to call Sharon about it.
“I promise to help with the chores around here,” Chase went on excitedly, “and I can play junior football with Cody and his brothers.”
“Or soccer,” she suggested in an attempt to aim him toward a safer sport.
Her efforts earned her a smirk of disdain. “Soccer’s boring. No one ever scores.”
Since she had no ready comeback for that, she decided to table their sports conversation until later. “My phone’s in my room. Why don’t you go call Cody and tell him the good news while I talk to your grandmother?”
“Okay.” He bounded into the hallway, and she heard him greet the lady in question with a chipper, “We’re staying with you, Grams!”
From the surprised oof that followed, Holly guessed that he’d squeezed the stuffing out of their favorite diva before scurrying down the hall. Standing, she joined her mother on the upstairs landing with a smile. “I guess I don’t have to tell you the news.”
Genuine tears shined in the former actress’s eyes as she grasped Holly’s hands tightly. “I’m thrilled that you’ve decided to stay. I didn’t know how I was going to bring myself to say goodbye, much less live here in this big, empty house without you and Chase.”
“It would’ve been a lot quieter,” Holly pointed out as they walked downstairs arm in arm.
“But that’s the problem. This place is full of memories of the two of you now, and I would have missed you terribly.”
“And we’d miss you, too,” Holly assured her with a fond smile. Then, because now felt like the right time, she added a single word filled with meaning for both of them. “Mom.”
The tears sprang up again, but this time they overflowed despite her efforts to blink them away. “Thank you, Holly. Hearing that from you is the most precious gift you could possibly give me.”
Holly embraced her, sending up a silent thanks to God for helping her find a way to accept the truth and keep this quirky, loving woman in her life. Whatever mistakes she’d made in the past, Daphne Mills had always acted with her daughter’s best interests first and foremost in her mind. Holly suspected that she had some more sorting out to do to enable her to more comfortably exist in her new family structure, but she was confident she could make it happen.
After all, she was her mother’s daughter. And the Mills women never quit on the people they loved.
That thought reminded her that there was one more person she needed to share her good news with, and she gently pulled away. “Are you okay?”
Nodding, her mom gave her a knowing smile. “Go talk to Sam. I’ll keep an eye on Chase until you get back.”
Holly gave her another quick hug, then hurried out the front door and around the hedge that separated the two yards from one another. She found Sam under the hood of his work truck, and the muttering she heard alerted her that something in the engine was giving him a hard time. Not wanting to startle him, she stood on tiptoe and leaned over the radiator to look inside.
When their eyes met, he gave her a wry grin. “Sorry. Too loud?”
“No.” He tilted his head dubiously, and she laughed. “Got a minute?”
“Sure.”
And, as he’d done so many times since she first met him, he dropped what he was doing and gave her his full attention. When he pulled a rag from the back pocket of his jeans to wipe his hands, the very familiar action filled her with a rush of emotion for this kind, gentle man who’d fought his way out of his troubled past and had become her everyday hero.
Suddenly, she didn’t know what to say. His expectant look prompted her to shove her brain back into gear and explain why she’d interrupted him. “Chase and I have been talking, and I was just wondering something.”
“What’s that?”
Struggling to sound reasonably mature, she waited a beat before continuing. “How you’d feel if we changed our plans about going back to Boston.”
Hope flared in his eyes, quickly doused by a wariness that she knew was born of more anguish than anyone should have to bear. “If you’re asking my opinion, I think you should go wherever you and Chase will be the happiest.”
Taking a step closer, she smiled up at him. “We both agree we’d be happiest right here.”
“Here?” Sam echoed, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard. “In Liberty Creek?”
When she nodded, he let out a whoop of joy and swept her into a hug, spinning her around as if she was a little girl. Setting her on her feet, he stole her breath with a long kiss filled with the same emotions she’d been feeling but hadn’t had the nerve to confess to him.
Resting his forehead on hers, he let out a sigh so deep, she could almost feel the anxiety leaving his body. “I love you, Holly. I really didn’t want you to go.”
Framing his weathered face in her hands, she kissed him lightly and then smiled. “I love you, too, Sam. And so does Chase. More than you’ll ever know.”