More Than Neighbors (27 page)

Or maybe he was wrong. They might genuinely be oblivious to Ciara’s complicated feelings about her sister, and therefore about herself. They’d raised an autistic child and devoted a substantial share of their lives to her with admirable love, kindness and loyalty. Had that blinded them to Ciara’s conflicts?

Both thoughtful and disturbed, he walked back toward the pasture. When he reached the fence, he gave one last, frowning glance back toward the house. He didn’t like knowing he wouldn’t be able to talk to her until tomorrow, at the soonest, about the destructive feelings she’d been harboring.

How could she believe herself to be a terrible person, when her feelings were likely commonplace for kids with a seriously disabled sibling? Or did she hate herself because as an adult she hadn’t instantly sought a warm, close relationship with her sister?

Striding through the pasture, he found his footsteps slowing.
No, I’m missing the point,
he thought. Had to be. As an adult, Ciara wouldn’t be embarrassed by her sister anymore. This evening, her interactions with Bridget had seemed comfortable, kind. Natural.

The poisonous witch’s brew that had just bubbled forth, he knew suddenly, wasn’t about Bridget at all. Or, at least, not directly about Bridget.

Mark had a whole lot to do with it.

* * *

W
HEN THE DOORBELL
rang the next morning, Ciara was in the living room with a dust rag in hand. Her heart squeezed tight. She hadn’t heard a car engine. Unless this was one of the Ohler boys, it had to be Gabe.

“I’ve got it,” she called, when she heard a thunder of footsteps upstairs.

Gulp. Open door.

Gabe stood on her coir mat, looming over her, even though he was a step lower. He looked...handsome, she thought weakly, contradicting that long-ago first impression. The blunt angles and planes of his face were strong and interesting. She wished suddenly he
hadn’t
shaved off his beard. She hadn’t adjusted to the change yet. This man felt too much like a stranger.

“Gabe.”

He inclined his head. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Mark came galloping down the stairs accompanied by Watson. “Gabe! Cool. I didn’t know you were coming.”

He stuck out a foot to foil the dog’s dart for the opening to the outside and repeated, “I wanted to talk to your mom about something.”

By this time, Bridget and Mom had appeared from the kitchen. Only Dad was missing. If she wasn’t mistaken, the audience was making Gabe uneasy.

“Fine.” Ciara dropped the dust cloth on a side table and said, “Let’s go outside. Unless you’d like a cup of coffee?” The last was hopeful.

A twitch of one eyebrow suggested he knew she sought a reprieve. “No. Thank you.”

Everyone was still staring, Mark with mouth agape, when she stepped out on the front porch and shut the door in their faces. Oh, God—what did he want to say? Would he tell her she’d been ridiculously melodramatic? Or that she’d shocked him? Or...what?

“Enjoying your company?” he asked politely,

“Yes, of course.”

“Why don’t we walk around back?” Gabe suggested.

She nodded. She had an awful feeling they were being watched from the house. The whole family would probably run from window to window and try to lip-read.

“I think you stunned Mark,” she said, going for light. “You’re supposed to be
his
friend.”

Lines gathered on his forehead. “Do you think he’s jealous? Is that part of the reason you didn’t want him to know we were...seeing each other?” The pause was almost infinitesimal, but she heard it.

“No. I mean, I don’t know how he’d feel about us being involved.” Funny that she hadn’t worried about it. Because she’d never expected them to get to a point where Mark
had
to know? “He...seems happy when we’re all together,” she said stiffly.

They rounded the back of the house. The day was hot and dry, the sky a pale blue arch.

They were still walking, still both looking ahead, when Gabe said, “Mark isn’t Bridget. That’s what’s been eating at you, isn’t it?”

Her feet stopped.
“What?”

“You couldn’t admit Mark had a problem at all, because if you did, you were afraid you knew what it would be.”

Aghast, horrified, angry, she could only stare at him.

“When you looked at Bridget, and then you looked at Mark, you were afraid, so it was easier not to look at Bridget at all.”

She backed away from him, stumbled, but took another scrambling step when he reached out for her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said breathlessly.

“Maybe this is a mistake to say—” Gabe sounded weary “—but I think somebody has to. Ciara, I know you love Mark. He’s a good kid because you’re a good mother.
But he’s not Bridget
.” Intensity vibrated in his voice. “You’re acting as if he is. Like your parents do with your sister.”

“That’s not true.” Her voice shook, as did all her certainties.

“He won’t need you forever, the way she needs them.” Every line in Gabe’s face deepened, making him look older. “Not if you let him grow up. Take some knocks, learn to stagger to his own feet instead of you picking him up.”

“You think I’m...I’m...”

“You’re trying to protect him.” There was that kindness, but this time it seemed mixed with pity and...something else. “To keep him safe, you’ve got him wrapped so tight he can’t...” Gabe hesitated.

Ciara didn’t let him finish. “You don’t know what it was like for him!” she yelled. Oh, God, she sounded vicious, hateful. “You don’t know anything!”

“Breathe,” he said quietly, although anger had sparked in his gray eyes, too. “He can’t breathe. You’re smothering him. Which is fine if what you really want is to devote the rest of your life to him—”

Feeling sick, she stumbled back a few more steps. A hot fire burned inside her.
I loved this man. I
do
love him. And this is what he thinks of me.
Then the irony struck. She’d been so afraid he would despise her, and here it turned out he did. Just not for the reason she’d thought.

“How can you say things like this?”

“Tell me, Ciara.” His voice was hard now. “If I hadn’t been around, would you have taken one single step since you arrived to give Mark a chance to meet other kids? To join an activity, play a sport, learn anything you didn’t teach him?”

No
. The answer hit her like a blow.
No
. But because she’d been afraid, not because she wanted to coddle Mark or...or keep him to herself. Give herself a reason for living. That’s what he was suggesting, wasn’t it?

“I don’t mean this the way you’re taking it.” Compassion looked different with his face shaved clean. “This is why I keep my mouth shut most of the time. I’ve made it sound—”

“You said what you thought.” She sounded almost calm, although her fingernails bit into her tightly crossed arms. “I suppose I should say thank you, because it’s Mark you’re worrying about.”

He looked at her with resignation. “But you’re not going to, are you?”

“I...have to think. Please leave now.”

“Ciara.” The way he said her name, a husky plea, shattered what was left of her composure, but she wasn’t going to run away from him again, not the way she had last night. “What you said last night—”

“You’ve said your piece,” she interrupted. She could not bear to hear what he thought about last night’s admissions. “That’s what you came for. Now I’m asking you to go.”

Muscles flexed in his jaw. “All right. For now.” After a last, long look, he walked away, disappearing around the corner of the house.

Ciara, unmoving, heard voices, both male. Mark? Or had her father come out to talk to him? She couldn’t face either. She turned and hurried the other way, through the open woods. Not until she was close to the creek did she finally hear the murmur of it, so low now in midsummer that much of the rocky bed was dry. Sunlight refracted off the rippling ribbon, momentarily almost blinding her.

You’re smothering him.

She thought of her terror when Mark disappeared, that first time, to ride his bike down to Gabe’s. And all the terror since—when she knew he was using power tools, when he went in the pasture for the first time, first got on horseback. Left her side to hang out with the group of kids at the cutting-horse competition. Was invited to go trail riding.

You were afraid.

Of so much. A keening sound left her throat. So much.

Was what she’d done really so terrible? Weren’t parents supposed to keep their children safe?

Of course they were. But they had another imperative: to teach those same children to fly, so that when the time came they could go confidently into the world. Even her parents were doing their best to find a way for Bridget to do that.

He won’t need you forever, the way Bridget needs your parents.

That’s not what she’d wanted. It wasn’t.

She stood there dry-eyed, and tried to understand her most corrosive fears, the ones whose existence she’d never let herself admit.

And, like Gabe, she finished the experience not much liking herself.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“
W
OULD YOU LIKE
me to make you a pillow?”

Bridget rarely wanted anything new, but she was showing unusual interest in the pictures of custom pillows that Ciara had hung on a giant corkboard on the wall as well as using on her website. Bridget had already fingered fabrics and said she thought the pillow Ciara had just finished was ugly.

Privately, Ciara agreed. Sentiment did not always equate with beauty, especially when that sentiment was felt by a customer who knew
exactly
what she wanted and wasn’t interested in suggestions.

But business was business.

“I like this one.” Bridget stared at the photo of an over-the-top mass of satin and frills and seed pearls created from a wedding dress with a few embellishments thrown in. The bride had loved her pair of pillows. Ciara hoped the groom didn’t have to actually rest his head on either of them.

“I still have most of those fabrics,” she said. She usually hung on to bits and pieces left over. Who knew when they would be perfect for another project? “The lace, too. Let’s see.” She opened a drawer that held some of her collection of lace.

Bridget grabbed. “There it is.”

“Yep.” Ciara hoped her sister didn’t tear it. That was bound to result in a record-breaking tantrum.

Or maybe not. Bridget had done astonishingly well during this visit. Tolerance was still not her way; she hadn’t liked a sandwich Ciara made for her yesterday, so she’d grabbed it, stomped out of the kitchen and thrown it on the floor in front of an astonished and delighted Watson, who gobbled it up.

“There!” Bridget had declared. Her eyes had narrowed when Ciara laughed, but even then, no tantrum.

And giving the sandwich to the dog beat having it smack her in the face, Ciara had decided.

“Tantrum? Oh, she still has them,” Mom said later, when Ciara commented. “Just not as often. And she seems embarrassed afterward.”

“Embarrassed?” Ciara refrained from snorting. Barely.
“Bridget?”

Her mother chuckled. “I did qualify it with
seems
. But really, I think she’s starting to measure her behavior against her friends’. Sometimes she’ll definitely be disapproving when somebody disrupts an outing she’d looked forward to.”

Bridget
had
changed. Not only recently, Ciara was disconcerted to realize, but over the years. She hadn’t let herself see how much. As a girl her sister had been closer to a wild animal than human; inconsolable when she sobbed or flailed her entire body in rage, unreachable when she drew into herself. Language had been slow to come, slower to develop.

Maybe better verbal expression helped. Or Mom and Dad’s never-ending patience. Physical maturity probably hadn’t hurt. The teenage years had been awful.

On this visit, Ciara was increasingly disconcerted to discover that she could actually enjoy Bridget’s company. She was reminded of times she had in the past. Bridget had definitely matured—
And maybe,
she thought,
I’m more patient
. She found she liked the idea of making something Bridget would keep with her, that would make her think of her sister.

A connection, when she’d spent so long wishing she could deny the relationship.

“Do you want me to make you a pillow like that one?” she asked.

“Yes!”

“Okay. I can work on it today,” she promised recklessly. Not like she didn’t have a backlog of orders, but she suspected those customers would handle waiting better than Bridget did. Besides...Bridget was here. She could watch the work in progress. That would reinforce the knowledge that this was something special from Ciara. She felt absurdly flattered at the covetous way Bridget still stared at the picture.

“Mom!” Bridget bellowed, making Ciara wince. Fortunately, before she had to repeat it, their mother appeared in the doorway.

“Oh, my,” she said, closing in on the corkboard. “You have some new ones here I haven’t seen on your website.”

“You keep an eye on the website?”

Mom shot her a look. “Of course I do.”

Of course
. Who knew? she thought bemusedly. It seemed she’d misunderstood everyone, not only herself.

She located the various fabrics she’d used in the pair of pillows, suspecting she shouldn’t deviate from what Bridget saw, at least not without asking permission. She hoped the customer wouldn’t mind her wedding dress being used to make someone else happy.

In the next couple of hours, she worked steadily, measuring, cutting, sewing and pressing seams, starching the lace. She was grateful for something that required her focus, that didn’t let her think.

If I hadn’t been around, would you have taken one single step since you arrived to give Mark a chance to meet other kids?

Don’t think, remember? Not now.

Bridget came and went, unable to settle, although she liked to touch. Ciara had to warn her away a couple of times when the sewing-machine needle was flashing up and down.