With the boys settled for the night and happy to be here with their family, Sierra headed downstairs for the talk she knew her mother wanted to have about what came next.
She found her mom in the living room on the sofa, feet tucked up beside her under a blanket, and a mug of tea in hand. Sierra rounded the sofa, picked up her mug off the table, sniffed the fragrant apple cinnamon tea that reminded her of Big Red gum, and sat in the corner of the sofa, facing her mom.
“It can’t be easy to go through what you’ve been through this past year. Losing your husband . . . Well, I never thought you’d go through something like that so young. I know the fire took everything you owned, but you still have what’s important. Those boys. Your family.”
“Really, that’s all that matters, Mom. Getting the boys to safety . . . It was scary.” Even now, thinking about it made her heart race. “For a little while there, sitting in the car, surrounded by the heat, caustic smoke, and flames so close . . . I really thought . . .” She swallowed back the fear and took a sip of tea to calm her nerves.
Dede leaned forward and put her hand on her thigh. “You made it out. Now what? You as much as told Heather you’re planning to make a life here. Is that what you really want?”
Sierra sighed. “I don’t have many options.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Sierra had made up her mind the second she called home and knew that’s where she belonged. “Yes. I want to live here. I think the boys would be happy here. Going back to Napa . . . Well, there are too many memories.”
“Good memories that make you sad, or memories you want to escape?”
Leave it to Mom to dig deep.
“If we still had the house, I’d want the boys to be there, so they’d have an easier time remembering their father. But without the house, there’s only the ghost of him and our life there. It’s going to be a long time before everything’s rebuilt. I’ve been told it could take more than two years. That’s too long to make them wait. I don’t want them to settle in here then uproot them again. It’s too much. We’re staying put.”
“Okay, that’s settled. You’ll enroll them in school here, find a job, and once the insurance settlement comes through, you can buy your own place and start fresh.”
“I’m afraid the insurance settlement won’t be enough for me to buy a house here. At least not right away.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s the outstanding mortgage and—”
Her mother eyed her over her mug. “And?”
“Before David died, he took out a large loan.”
One eyebrow shot up. Her mother carefully asked, “Were you having financial difficulties?”
“No. Everything was fine until he took out the loan.”
Questions lit her eyes. “What did you use the money for?”
“I didn’t use it for anything. I only found out about it after he died.” Her gut tightened just thinking about that huge sum and the daunting task ahead of her to pay it off.
Dede sat up straighter. “You have no idea what David used the money for, do you?”
“No.”
“An investment of some sort?”
“Not that I could find.”
As always, her mother went the direct route. “An affair?”
Sierra shrugged and tried to stave off the ache in her chest and the anger that wanted to surge. “That would have been my guess, too, but I can’t find any evidence of one.” She couldn’t prove it one way or another. Which left her in a constant state of wonder and suspicion and second-guessing everything she knew and thought about her husband.
Sure, they’d had their problems.
But she didn’t think they’d had secrets.
She’d been wrong.
“Did you find anything in his office when you cleaned it out? In any of his papers?”
“After he died, I glanced through the boxes that arrived from his office.”
“You didn’t clean it out yourself?”
She shook her head. At the time, she simply couldn’t deal with the mundane task. Not when she had two heartbroken kids at home missing their father and wondering if she’d die, too. Oh, the questions they’d asked. Hard questions like Where did Daddy go? Easier ones like Can I put my toy truck in his casket?
Sierra didn’t need to ask why Oliver wanted his father to have his favorite truck. He’d wanted his father to remember him wherever he went.
It broke her heart.
And as sad and overwhelmed and lonely as she’d been those first few weeks, she’d also felt extremely guilty. Her mind spun a million things she wished she’d said to David. They carried on a hundred imagined conversations in her head that she wished they’d had in person. Ever present was the nagging feeling that the distance and silence she felt from David those last few months leading up to his death were fraught with his indecision. And she didn’t even know the questions he pondered. She’d catch him about to say something to her, then he’d stop himself and turn away or say something mundane about dinner or Danny’s homework. Once he’d even commented on the weather when it had been warm and sunny for days so there wasn’t much to say about it.
Why didn’t I just ask him what he wanted to say?
She’d asked herself that question a thousand times.
She’d been scared of the answer, afraid that her suspicions were true. Either he was having an affair, or he simply didn’t want her anymore.
There’d still been love there, especially for their children, but they hadn’t truly connected in a long time. They went through their days and lived together, but the intimacy in their relationship suffered. They didn’t put their relationship ahead of everything else.
And frankly, at the end of a long day, she hadn’t been all that receptive to his needs. Switching from mom to wife when she walked through their bedroom door hadn’t been as easy as flipping a switch.
She saw the marriage suffering, but she hadn’t made a real effort to fix it. She blamed the distance he put between them, the sneaky way he’d shut down his computer screen when she walked into his office and covered by saying he was done with his work email, and the way he explained away overnight trips he had recently started taking when his company had never asked him to travel in the past.
She made excuses for him. He didn’t have a lot of time to himself. Neither did she. She got it. Maybe he shut down his computer because he didn’t want work to interfere with their home life. Maybe his company really did need him to visit a customer here and there to make them happy or seal a deal. Maybe he snuck away to recharge so he could be better for them. Lord knows, she’d thought about a weekend retreat, maybe a few days with her sisters in Carmel and a long day being pampered at the spa where Heather worked.
He didn’t mean to snap at her, he’d had a long day.
He didn’t want to miss Danny’s soccer game, but work needed him to be out of town.
Dinner out wasn’t an option because he had a call with a client and would be home late.
“The last thing I wanted to do after the funeral was pack up his office and go through his things. I took what they sent me and put it in the garage. He was gone and I missed him and I was angry he left me and the boys. I know that’s terrible to say because it was an accident, but that’s how I felt. I had two little boys who missed their father and grieved for him and I blamed him for taking that last-minute trip instead of being home with us.”