Casey closed the door softly behind him and walked to the crib to peek over the edge. “Hello, beautiful.”
“Little Miss Beautiful had a huge meltdown, so now she’s out cold. You don’t need to whisper.”
“You about to steal some sleep yourself?”
She tried to read his expression. There was intensity there, but not lust, she didn’t think. “I don’t have to.”
“Cool if I hang out?”
“Of course.” If Abilene had her way, his sleeping in her bed would be the default.
“I heard I missed your home cooking tonight.”
“No big deal.”
“I would’ve liked to have been there. You Texas girls can cook.”
“The trick is to never drain the fat out of anything,” she teased. “Did any of the deputies down the road give you grief on your way back here?”
“I got stopped, but they just checked my ID and called Don, got the go-ahead. Small price to pay for a little peace of mind.”
That gave Abilene pause, and she hoped she wouldn’t find herself in a similar position. She had no clue if her fake license was good enough to fool an actual cop, and to boot it didn’t match the name on her registration. She’d have little choice but to show them her real one, and that name wouldn’t ring any bells if they called Don. Allison Beeman? Never heard of her.
“Did you have that call you’d mentioned?” She asked it casually, though Casey had implied that whatever the conversation was about, it was miles from trivial.
“Yeah.” He joined her on the bed, sitting beside her with his back to the headboard and spreading his legs. He patted the space between them. “C’mere.”
She relocated, smiling broadly and glad he couldn’t see how goofy she must look. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, and his chest warmed her back through their T-shirts.
“So what happened?”
He wrapped his arms around her middle, linking his fingers at her belly. A few days ago, such a thing would’ve made her self-conscious, but he liked her body, just as it was. She trusted that much.
“This’ll be between you and me,” he said. “A few people know, but not many.”
She laughed, nervous now. “You’d better tell me before I start jumping to wild conclusions.”
After a deep breath, he did. “When I was about twenty, my mom started going crazy.”
“Okay.” She knew the gist of the situation, but not much. She covered his hands with hers, rubbing his knuckles. “Is this to do with her? Like a diagnosis or something?”
“Not exactly. But the backstory is she has some kind of early-onset dementia. She was just starting to get spacey and forgetful around the time I moved away. Now she’s pretty much checked out of reality, twenty-four-seven. Spends all her waking hours watching TV.”
“That happened to my great-grandma, but not until she was almost ninety. I’m sorry. I know how sad it is.”
“Yeah, it is . . . But so a few years ago, I started getting these funny spells myself. I thought they were seizures. Maybe they are; I’m not sure. Anyway. I was worried maybe those episodes were the first sign that I was going to lose my mind, like my mom did.”
In a breath, Abilene was worried. Terrified. She held his hands tight, bracing herself.
“She started declining when she was in her early forties,” he went on. “The, um . . . One of the reasons I told you I didn’t think you and I could be anything serious is because I didn’t know if that was happening to me, too. My mom has spells—not as violent as mine, but similar. It seemed likely it was related to her other issues. I was afraid to know for sure what it was all about, because me going crazy seemed like the most obvious explanation. And if I was, it didn’t seem fair to get into something with you. Like I’d be making a promise I might not be able to keep, if things ever turned serious.”
Jesus, she’d never have guessed his hesitation was down to something so intense. “So what was the phone call about?”
Another deep breath. “I sent DNA samples to a company that does genetic analysis. Mine and my mom’s and Vince’s. They can look at your genes and tell you if you have the markers for a load of diseases and mental disorders.”
She nodded. “I’ve seen the ads on TV.” She’d always thought it sounded like a terrible idea—she worried enough as it was, without knowing what latent illnesses might be scribbled all over her DNA. But in Casey’s situation, she could appreciate needing answers.
“The call I had was with an analyst from there,” he said.
“And?”
“And my mom has the markers for dementia. No shock.”
“And you?”
A long, ragged, quaking sigh, and his arms trembled around her waist. Her heart broke in an instant.
“Oh, Casey.” She wrapped her hands around his wrists and held on tight, as though that could fix it somehow. “I’m so sorry.” For him, and for herself. This was nothing like the theories she’d cooked up, for why he was being cautious about the two of them. So much worse. So much more—
“No,” he said through a hitching breath. “No, honey, I’m all right. I don’t have what she does.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to lose my mind.”
“You’re not? You’re sure?”
“As sure as science can make me. And Vince is fine, too.”
“Jesus,” she huffed, short of breath, heart racing. She craned her neck to meet his blue eyes and found tears glossing them, a sight she’d never seen before. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry.”
“I thought you were upset.”
“No, no. I’m just . . . I’m rattled. Relieved, but a little messed up. I’ve been operating either out of denial, or under the assumption that I was going to go crazy for so long . . . I think I’m in shock.”
“It’s good news, though. It’s all good news, right?”
He nodded—she felt the gesture and heard his relief in the next exhalation he let go. “It’s the best fucking news ever.”
“I wish you’d told me before, what it was all about.”
“No, you don’t. You’ve had enough to worry about.”
That was probably fair. But what did all of this mean for them?
“How long have you been worrying about this?”
“For a few years, now—that’s when the episodes started. But I blocked it out for most of that time. I can be real good at denial, when it serves me.”
Can’t we all?
“It was after I came home and saw how bad my mom had gotten . . . Then I was fucking scared to death. Too scared to get the testing done, even. It seemed better to just live in the moment and ignore what might be coming.”
“Why’d you change your mind?”
“Partly Duncan. He suggested the testing, last fall. And once we’d gone into business together, it started weighing on me more. I mean, before, my future was nobody’s concern except mine. But now I have him counting on me. And my brother, since I’ve started pitching in, helping with our mom. And . . . and you. You and the baby. You depend on me.”
“Well, yeah, I have. But you shouldn’t feel like—”
“No. No, I like that you do. Maybe a year ago, the thought of it would’ve sent me running for the hills, but now, here, actually being that for the two of you . . .” He unlaced his fingers and turned his hands around to take hers. He balled them into fists and squeezed them. “I meant what I said in the car. I like how it feels. Being useful. Or needed.”
A hopeful and possibly naive thought occurred to her. “Do you think this is going to change things for you? I mean, do you think that whatever it is you used to do—the shady stuff—do you think maybe you chose that because you figured you had nothing to lose? No future ahead of you, so fewer worries about doing something to mess that future up?”