Justine sighed. This was almost a daily occurrence, and she worried about the effect of so much tension on their son, who couldn’t possibly understand why Daddy was mad or Mommy sometimes cried.
“Did he growl at you?” Justine asked, then roared like a grizzly bear, shaping her hands into make-believe claws. With Penny barking cheerfully, she crawled across the mattress after her son, distracting him from worries about his father.
Leif shrieked and scrambled off the bed, racing for his bedroom. Justine followed and laughingly cornered the boy. Leif’s eyes flashed with delight as she set out his clothes. He insisted on getting dressed on his own these days, so she let him.
After saying a perfunctory goodbye to her husband, Justine delivered Leif to preschool. When she pulled back into the driveway, Seth came out the door to greet her. The April sky was overcast, and rain was imminent. The weather was a perfect reflection of their mood, Justine thought. A sunny day would’ve seemed incongruous when they both felt so fearful and angry.
“I talked to the fire marshal,” her husband announced as she got out of her car.
“Did he have any news?”
Seth’s frown darkened. “Nothing he was willing to tell me. The insurance adjuster’s taking his own sweet time, too.”
“Seth, these things require patience.” She needed answers as much as he did, but she certainly didn’t want the fire marshal to rush the investigation.
“Don’t you start on me,” he flared. “We’re losing ground every day. How are we supposed to live without the restaurant?”
“The insurance—”
“I know about the insurance money,” he said, cutting her off. “But we won’t get anything for at least a month. And it isn’t going to keep our employees from seeking other jobs. It isn’t going to pay back my parents’ investment. They put their trust in me.”
Seth’s parents had invested a significant amount of the start-up money; Seth and Justine paid them monthly and she knew Mr. and Mrs. Gunderson relied on that income.
Justine didn’t have any solutions for him. She recognized that he was distressed about more than the financial implications of the fire, but she had no quick or ready answers. “What would you like me to do?” she asked. “Tell me and I’ll do it.”
He glared at her in a way she’d never seen before. “What I’d like,” he muttered, “is for you to stop acting as if this is a temporary inconvenience. The Lighthouse is gone. We’ve lost everything, and you’re acting like it’s no big deal.” Justine recoiled at the unfairness of his words. He made it sound as if she was some kind of Pollyanna who wasn’t fully aware of their situation. “Don’t you realize the last five years are in ashes?” he railed. “Five years of working sixteen-hour days and for what?”
“But we haven’t lost everything,” she countered, hoping to inject some reason into his tirade. She didn’t mean to be argumentative; she simply wanted him to see that although this was a dreadful time, they still had each other. They had their child and their house. Together they’d find the strength to start over—if only Seth could let go of this anger.
“You’re doing it again.” He shook his head in barely controlled frustration.
“You want me to be as angry as you are,” she said.
“Yes!” he shouted. “You should be angry. You should want answers just like I do. You should—”
“More than anything,” she cried, her own control snapping, “I want my husband back. I’m as sick as you are about everything that’s happened. We’ve lost our business, and to me that’s horrible, it’s tragic, but it isn’t the end of my world.”
Her husband stared at her, incredulous. “How can you say that?”
“Maybe you’re trying to lose your wife and son, too,” she yelled, and before she could change her mind, she slipped back inside the car, slamming the door. Seth didn’t try to stop her and that was fine with Justine. She needed to get away from him, too.
Without waiting for his reaction, she backed out of the driveway.
With no real destination, Justine drove into town, a few blocks from where Leif attended preschool classes. Her son would be in school for another two hours, and she had nothing urgent to do, no one to see, so she walked down to the marina.
Struggling to find meaning in the disaster that was battering her marriage, she sat down on a wooden bench in Waterfront Park and gazed out at the cove. The sky was even darker now, and the water crashed against the rocks near the shore. She needed to think. Everything would be all right when she got home, she told herself. Seth would be sorry for what he’d said, and she—
“Justine, is that you?”
She glanced up to see Warren Saget coming toward her. She offered him a weak smile. She didn’t welcome his company—didn’t want to see anyone right now, but especially Warren, who’d let it be known that he still had feelings for her. When she’d declined his proposal, he hadn’t taken it with good grace, and she tended to avoid him.
Without waiting for an invitation, he sat down beside her. “I was sorry to read about the fire.”
The Cedar Cove Chronicle had published a front-page spread about the arson, and everyone in town had been talking about it all week.
“It was…a shock,” she mumbled, suddenly cold.
“You’re going to rebuild, of course?”
She nodded. She couldn’t imagine Seth not wanting to rebuild. Within a few months, all of this would be behind them, she told herself again. Everything would be all right. There was simply no other option.
A chill raced up and down her arms as she remembered that this was exactly what she’d believed the day they’d buried Jordan. It was over, she’d thought then. All the relatives would go home and school would start and everything would go on the same as before. Only it hadn’t. How naive she’d been, a thirteen-year-old girl who’d trusted her parents to maintain the steady course of her life. They hadn’t; they couldn’t. Their own suffering had made them unable to cope with hers, destroying their marriage and tearing their family apart. Far from being over, the grief had barely begun.
“Warren,” she said, panic rising inside her all at once. She reached for his hand, gripping it hard. She was hyperventilating; she couldn’t get her breath. She heard herself gasping for air. The world began to spin.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and his voice seemed to come from a long way off. “Are you ill?”
“I…don’t know,” she said on a choked whisper, the panic settling in. Suddenly she felt an overwhelming need to find her mother.
“What should I do?” he asked, placing his arm protectively around her shoulders. “Should I take you to the clinic? Call for an Aid Car?”
She shook her head, feeling small and lost and childlike. “I…I want my mother.”
Warren didn’t hesitate. He leaped to his feet. “I’ll get her.”
“No.” She tried not to sob. She was an adult. She should be more capable of dealing with the events in her own life. Looking at Warren, she forced herself to take deep, even breaths. She forced her heart to stop racing.
“I think you’re having a panic attack,” Warren said, brushing damp hair from her temple. “My poor Justine. Where’s Seth?”
“H-home.” She couldn’t, wouldn’t tell him anything more.
“Should I phone him?”
“No! I—I’m fine now,” she said shakily.
Warren slipped his arm around her and held her head against