No longer sure what she would say, could say, she walked across the grass to stand with him by his mother’s grave.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to . . . disturb you,” she began. “That’s why I was waiting over there.”

“It’s all right.”

She looked down at the grave, the fresh flowers spread over the grass. Perhaps she did know what to say. “Flynn and I come here once a year.” She cleared her throat. “His father, my mother . . . and yours. We, ah, try to come right after the first real snowfall. Everything’s so peaceful and white and clean. We bring her flowers.”

She shifted her gaze from the flowers and saw he was staring at her. “I thought you’d like to know we always bring her flowers when we come.”

He didn’t speak, but his eyes said everything. Then he simply lowered his forehead to hers.

They stood like that, silent, while the wind whipped around them and fluttered the petals of the pink carnations.

“Thanks.” He straightened slowly, as if he were afraid something in him might break. “Thank you.”

She nodded, and they stood, silent again, looking out at the hills.

“This is the first time I’ve been out here since I’ve been back,” he told her. “I never know what I’m supposed to do in a place like this.”

“You did it. Carnations are nice. Simple.”

He let out a little laugh. “Yeah, that was my thought. Why are you here, Dana?”

“I had things to say to you, that maybe I didn’t say the right way this morning.”

“If it’s along the lines of we can still be friends, maybe you could wait a couple of days on that.”

“Not exactly. I don’t know if this is the appropriate time or place to talk about this,” she began, “but after Malory finished reaming me out this morning, I decided she had a few points, and that I owed you—myself—I owed both of us something better than the way I ended things.”

“I hurt you. I could see it on your face. I don’t want to hurt you, Dana.”

“Too late for that.” She lifted her shoulders, let them fall. “You were careless with me, Jordan. You were careless and you were callous. And though I might have spent some happy hours over the years dreaming about paying you back in kind, I realize that’s not really what I want. So my being careless and callous with you this morning wasn’t any more satisfying for me than it was for you.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I went back last night, courtesy of Kane.” She frowned up at his pithy comment. “I don’t think you should use that sort of language over your mother’s grave.”

For some reason, the remark loosened a knot in his belly. “She’s heard it before.”

“Nevertheless.”

He shrugged, and there was something of the boy she’d loved in the gesture. Just enough of him to twist her heart again. “Where did you go?”

“I went back to the day you were packing to move to New York. I experienced it again. Watched myself experiencing it. It was very strange, and no less horrible knowing I was watching a rerun. It was like standing on both sides of a one-way mirror. Watching us, and still being a part of it. Everything you said to me, everything you didn’t say to me, was just as painful as when it happened.”

“I’m sorry.”

She tipped her face up to his. “I actually believe you are, which is why I’m here rather than burning you in effigy. But you see, it hurt, all over again. And I have the right, I have the responsibility to myself, to step back from that. I’m not willing to let my heart spill at your feet again, and I can’t be with you and keep it intact. Maybe we can be friends, maybe we can’t. But we can’t be lovers. I just needed to explain that to you.”

When she stepped back, he laid a hand on her arm. “Would you walk with me?”

“Jordan—”

“Just walk with me for a few minutes. You said what you had to say. I’m asking you to listen.”

“All right.” She put her hands in her pockets to warm them, and to avoid contact with his.

“I didn’t handle it well when my mother died.”

“I don’t know that you’re supposed to handle things like that well. My mother’s buried over there.” She lifted a hand to gesture. “I don’t really remember her. I don’t remember losing her. But I miss her, and sometimes still I feel cheated. I have some of her things—a blouse my father saved that was her favorite, some of her jewelry, and photographs. I like having them. The fact that I don’t remember her, that I was too young to remember losing her, doesn’t mean I don’t understand what it was like for you. You wouldn’t let me help.”

“You’re right. I wouldn’t let you help. I didn’t know how.” He took her arm briefly to steady her over the uneven ground, then let her go as they walked toward the trees.

“I loved her so much, Dana. It’s not the sort of thing you think about every day when things are normal. I mean I didn’t wake up every morning thinking, boy, I sure love my mother. But we were a unit.”

“I know.”

“When my father left us . . . well, I don’t remember him very well either. But I remember that she was a rock. Not cold, not hard, just sturdy. She worked like a f**king dog, two jobs until we were out of the debt pit he’d put her in.”

Even now, he could almost taste the bitterness of it. “She must’ve been so tired, but she always had time for me. Not just putting a meal on the table or handing me a clean shirt, but for me.”

“I know. She was so interested in everything you did, without breathing down your neck over it. I used to pretend she was my mother.”

He glanced down. “You did?”

“Yeah. You didn’t think I was hanging around your house when I was a kid just to annoy you and Flynn and Brad, did you? I liked being around her. She smelled like a mother, and she laughed a lot. She’d look at you—sometimes she’d just look over at you, and there was such love in her face, such pride. I wanted a mother who would look at me that way.”

It moved him to hear her say it, and the faint tang of bitterness washed away. “She never let me down. Not once. Not ever. She read everything I wrote, even when I was a kid. She saved a lot of it, and she would tell me that one day, when I was a famous writer, people would get a big kick out of reading my early stories. I don’t know if I would be a writer today if it wasn’t for her. Her steady, constant faith in me.”