“Hi. It’s David Hunter. I just wanted to let you know that the news about the ball got out.” From beneath her lashes, Phoebe saw him wince. Mia’s little sister wasn’t happy.
He made a face. “Even my mother knows,” he said wryly. “She’s visiting and heard it from a retired firefighter friend of mine who got it through the grapevine. What do you want me to do?” He listened a moment, then shot a concerned look across the table and turned away. “You have an ETA?” he murmured.
Her head still down, Phoebe’s brows went up. ETA? Olivia was coming here?
Abruptly David rose and left the apartment and Phoebe wondered if he knew the door hadn’t shut behind him. “My mother is staying here,” she heard him say. “But I have a place we can meet. I’ll text you the address.”
There was silence, then his surprised voice. “You’ve identified her? Already?” More silence, then he said quietly, “Tell her father that we really tried. That I’m sorry.”
Phoebe sighed. Glenn told her that David had pulled a young girl from the fire, that she’d already been dead. David would worry over that. He’d go over it in his mind again and again, wondering if he could have done anything differently. If he could have fixed it. Saved the girl. Because that’s what David did. He fixed things. Saved people.
It was time her son saved himself, and if he couldn’t… then I will.
David disconnected, then reached for the doorknob, rolling his eyes when he found the door hadn’t closed. I need to fix that, he thought. With it cracked open, sound carried. It was reasonable to assume his mother had heard every word.
She looked up when he came back in, brows raised. “So how is Olivia?”
He swallowed his sigh. “The condo victims were homicides. She caught the case.”
“So where will you be meeting her tonight?” She lifted her hand when he started to protest. “I’m only asking because if you don’t want me here, I can stay with Evie.”
He sank into the chair next to her. “Ma.”
“I can keep secrets, son,” she said mildly. “Even the ones you haven’t told me.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. “What secrets haven’t I told you?”
She sat back, tilted her head, crossed her arms and studied him. He knew the look. It was the same one she’d used every time he’d gotten into trouble as a kid, and he knew what would come next would not be comfortable. “Well, for starters, that you fell in love with Dana Dupinsky at first sight.”
He looked away, his cheeks growing warm. “You knew all along?” he asked quietly.
“Yes. I knew you loved her, but she thought of you as a brother. I knew you worked tirelessly to support her work with battered women, along with supporting a dozen other charities in town. And I knew that it broke your heart when she married someone else.”
He closed his eyes wearily. “Who else knew about Dana?”
“The ones who figured it out for themselves. Max and Caroline.” David’s older brother and his wife. Long ago, Dana had helped Caroline escape brutal domestic abuse. For that alone, Dana would forever be part of their family. “The twins,” she added. Peter and Cathy were still “the twins,” even though they were pushing forty-five.
He opened one eye. “ Elizabeth, too?” he asked.
“Yes. Your little sister picks up on more than we all give her credit for. We kept hoping you’d find someone else, that you’d be happy. But you didn’t and we didn’t know what to do, so we didn’t say or do anything. Did we do wrong?”
He shook his head. “No. There wasn’t anything you could have done, Ma.”
“I know. Makes a mother feel helpless when her kids hurt and she can’t do anything. When you told me you were moving, I wasn’t surprised. I knew you’d have to get away. I was surprised you stayed as long as you did. When you told me Minneapolis, I figured you’d picked this town to be closer to Evie and Tom.”
David’s old friend Evie had left Chicago to escape demons of her own, and his nephew, Caroline’s son Tom, was a college basketball star here at the university. “I did,” he said, and that was partly true. “Though I don’t see either of them much. They’re both so busy at school, both with their own lives. And Noah watches out for Evie now.”
His mother smiled. “Which is how it should be. Now, that you and Olivia had a biblical… thing after Mia’s wedding? That I did not know until your friend Paige confronted you.” She lifted her brows. “Because I have ears like a bat.”
He rolled his eyes, his face on fire. “Ma.”
“David,” she returned, mimicking his tone. “I have to eavesdrop. You never tell me anything. Thanks to Paige, I have a fuller picture of the puzzle that is my son.”
“I’m no puzzle. Anyway, you seem to have had it all figured out.”
She shook her head. “Not really. There’s a piece of you I’ve never been able to completely understand. I’ve admired it, loved it, bragged on it, but never understood it.”
He found himself lifting his chin defensively. “And what’s that?”
“What drives you to serve. You went from a headstrong, bullheaded, narcissistic teenager who cared for no one but himself to a man who serves more than anyone I know. Almost overnight.”
David controlled his flinch, knowing she was watching him. God help me if you ever do understand, he thought as the pictures from the past flooded his mind. Broken bodies. And so much blood. It had been eighteen years and his throat still closed when he thought of Megan, huddled over her brother’s small body, protecting him with her last breath.
Because he’d been a headstrong, bullheaded narcissistic fool who’d cared for no one but himself. Their blood was on his hands.
He realized he was staring at his hands and looked up. His mother watched him with worried eyes. He forced a smile. “No real mystery. Dad died, and you and Max needed help with his therapy to walk again.” The car accident that had killed his father and paralyzed his brother had been another defining moment in his life. Helping his brother had become his salvation, the way to claw out of the abyss into which he’d fallen. After Megan. After that, service had become… necessary. “I had to grow up.”
“And you did,” she said, her gaze piercing as she studied him. “I know how much Max appreciates it. You dropped out of college after only one semester, gave up your own sports dream to get him through physical therapy, get him back on his feet again.”
He wanted to wince at the lie she’d always taken as truth, but didn’t. He’d already dropped out of college before his father’s accident, but his mother didn’t know that. He’d been failing, unable to concentrate on his studies. Unable to sleep. Unable to make the pictures in his mind go away. Nursing his brother back to health all those years ago had been the excuse he’d needed to keep his family from finding out what a failure he really was.
“He needed me,” David managed. His throat was raw, his chest hurt. He’d never understood the people who became comfortable with a lie. Eighteen years and it still tore him up inside.
“Yes.” His mother still watched him and he fought the urge to squirm. “But that still doesn’t explain why you picked women’s shelters and charities. Even before Dana’s shelter, that’s how you spent your time. Always working. Always helping.”
“It’s a good cause.”
“Yes. When it’s a cause. But for you, it’s more than that.” She sighed. “David, I was so devastated when your father died, events that happened around that time seemed to disappear. But the years passed and it began to occur to me that your focus on charity wasn’t a passing fancy or even a healthy hobby. It was your life, at the exclusion of everything else adults normally seek. No girlfriends, nobody special. I looked back, tried to figure out when it started. I started thinking about that year. There was a tragedy in the neighborhood the spring before your dad died.”