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front of him, a lightning-quick punch, like a striking snake.
    “I’d be mad, too.”
    “He’s always been this big guy. Huge. Like nothing could ever get him.”
    “No, my mom’s huge. She weighs like a million pounds. Your dad’s hot. I’ve seen him on TV.”
    He ignored that. “He’s always been on the go, you know? Now he doesn’t look like he has the strength to go anywhere.”
    “Maybe that means he’ll stay around for a little while. Wasn’t he the one who took off and left your mother?”
    Jared didn’t like to think about that, but not surprisingly, he’d been thinking about it all day. He understood the basics of his parents’ divorce. His dad saw the whole world as his home. His mom saw this little corner of the Shenandoah Valley as hers. She hadn’t wanted to raise her sons here and there, without roots or friends they could count on. She hadn’t been willing to leave Toms Brook and the inn that meant so much to her.
    So his father had simply taken off and left them all behind.
    “He hurt her,” Jared said. “He hurt all of us.”
    “Maybe you don’t know everything that happened.”
    “I know he’s the kind of man who runs out on the people he’s supposed to take care of.” He looked at her. “You know what I mean?”
    “I know you’re angry at him.”
    Jared wondered, but he didn’t think so. His father had been gone most of his childhood. He’d watched other fathers at Boy Scout banquets and campouts, and he had wished that his dad had been there with him. He’d been angry then. And there had been plenty of times when Eric had promised to spend time with his sons and something more important had come up, at least more important to Eric. He’d been angry then, too.
    But deep down Jared knew that Eric was just Eric. That he loved his oldest son as much as he loved anybody. That he would do whatever he could for the family he left behind. That he lived simply and never begrudged his ex-wife and children the money he sent them each month. He hadn’t left Jared’s mother for a younger, prettier woman. He hadn’t left his sons because they disappointed him.
    He had simply left because that was the kind of man he was. A man who let the wide world seduce him away from his commitments.
    He turned away from that thought and explored another. “When my mom told us what had happened, all I could think about was how much I wished I could have been the one to save him. And that if he hadn’t gone there, if he’d stayed here with us, or even just somewhere safe in the U.S., none of this ever would have happened.”
    “Even I know things don’t work that way. Maybe if your father had stayed here, somebody would have crashed into him on the interstate, or shot him because he got in the way of a drug raid, or maybe just forgot to tell him the floor was slippery after they mopped it. Things just happen.”
    There was more he could have told her, more guilt, but he doubted she would understand. “You don’t think we control things?”
    Brandy had smooth, cushiony skin, skin that Cray insisted would sag before she was twenty-five. But looking at her now, watching the way her honey-hued face creased with laughter and her black eyes danced, Jared felt hot all over again.
    “Jar-Jar,” she said, “we don’t control hardly a thing. You know better. All we can do is reach out and grab whatever comes our way and hang on to it. Hard. As hard as we can. Hang on for dear life.”
    And that, of course, was what Eric Fortman hadn’t done, and what Jared’s mother could and did do so well.
    “And I’m right here to hang on to, if you want me,” she added.
    Jared couldn’t tell Brandy that he wasn’t ready to hang on to any one. There were some things it was impossible to say.
     
    Several years ago Gayle had realized that in order to continue operating the inn at something of a profit, she had to boost her occupancy rate. Insurance costs had skyrocketed, and competitors had increased.