“No, but you always seem to be around when someone wins.”
“So it’s my fault?”
Sara sank her teeth into her bottom lip, realizing what she’d said. If Max figured out that he played some role in her clumsiness, he’d wonder why. It was a question she didn’t want him asking. Not now that she’d finally found the strength to let go of her dream instead of sitting around waiting for it to come true while life passed her by. The decision made her sick to her stomach, but empowerment was so liberating—it was as if she’d taken her first deep breath after a lifetime of struggling for oxygen. “No, Max, it’s not your fault. I just want it to stop. I can’t live like this anymore.”
“Aw, Sara.”
She almost stepped into Max’s outstretched arms, one last brotherly hug that she could fantasize meant something else entirely. Instead she stepped around him and headed for her front door. “Just go away, Max.”
“But—”
“Please, just leave me alone.”
She slipped inside and closed the door behind her, then leaned back against it as tears started to stream down her face.
Jack Daniel’s was a whiz at courage, but he wasn’t very good at deadening the pain.
MAX SCOOPED UP one last bucket of grain and dumped it into the trough for the milk cows, then opened the fifty-gallon drum of cracked corn to fill the chickens’ feed pan. Joey usually did both chores, but he and Jason Hartfield had been trading off sleepovers just about every Saturday night, and this weekend was Joey’s turn to stay over there.
He missed Joey, but he knew his son would be back in the morning. Sara wouldn’t.
Oh, she was still living at the ranch, but she hadn’t said more than hello and goodbye since that last unfortunate incident Halloween week. It was almost Thanksgiving. Max was beginning to wonder who was going to cook the turkey. Okay, he allowed, that sounded a little self-serving, but that was what friends did, they took care of each other, compensated for one another’s shortcomings. Sara helped him muddle through the domestic side of life and he did stuff like shovel her walk in the winter, change the oil in her car, chop wood…
The sound of an ax thwacking home drifted to him, and Max realized it had been going on for some time while he’d been moping, a kind of somber background music for his self-pity. It puzzled him for a second. None of his neighbors lived close enough for it to be coming from another ranch, and while they all got along pretty well, none of them liked him enough to just drop by and chop a stack of wood—which meant it had to be Sara. She’d finally emerged from her house.
With an ax in her hand.
He dropped the pan of chicken feed. Cracked corn poured into his boots and scattered over the floor. Max ignored the mess and the discomfort, racing out of the barn and across the yard, plowing through knee-deep drifts of snow. He skidded around the corner of her cottage on one foot, arms flung out for balance, his mouth opened on a shout that would have worked a lot better if he’d had any breath left in his body.
He gulped in a huge, painfully cold lungful of air and yelled “Sara!” just as she lifted the ax.
With a shriek she froze on the upstroke and kept going, the heavy ax dragging her over to sprawl flat on her back. The powdery snow puffed up around her, then drifted back down like her own miniblizzard, dusting her in white, face and all. Max pinned his lips between his teeth and slogged over to help her to her feet.
Sara ignored his hand. Her cutting glare might even have made him feel a little bit chastened if she hadn’t spent the next couple of minutes floundering around in her puffy green coat like a turned-over turtle. She finally managed to roll onto her side, then crawl to her feet, leaving behind a snow angel that looked more like a Lizzie Borden silhouette, complete with murder weapon.
Max’s amusement completely evaporated when she bent, picked up the ax and tried to walk around him. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, stepping between her and the woodpile.
“Chopping wood,” she said in her best third-grade teacher’s voice, reasonable and patient. “I use it to heat my house, remember?”
“How could I forget when I always chop it for you?”
“Well, now you won’t have to.” She lifted the ax and took a step forward.
He crossed his arms and held his ground. “You’re not chopping wood, Sara. That’s my job.”
“Not anymore.” But she dropped the ax head to rest on the ground. Safely. “Weren’t you listening three weeks ago?”
“Well, yeah, but…you were drunk.”
Sara’s breath puffed out in a cloud of white. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t know what I was saying. Or that I don’t remember what you said.”
“I really didn’t mean to imply you couldn’t take care of yourself, but…” You’re Sara, he finished to himself, Clumsy, artless, scattered-as-a-handful-of-packing-popcorn-in-a-windstorm Sara. His best friend in the whole world. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“You didn’t offend me, Max. I’m used to people thinking of me as hopeless. What bothers me more is that you didn’t really hear what I said.”
That was exactly what his ex-wife had always accused him of, but Max shook off the thought almost as soon as it reared its ugly head. Sara and Julia were nothing alike.
“Of course I remember what you said.” He shut one eye and tried to remember. “You said, ‘I can’t live like this anymore.’ But like I said, Sara, I thought you were—” He got a good look at her face and swallowed the word “drunk,” and, just to be safe, decided against mentioning her unfortunate tendency to leave chaos in her path every once in a while—which was the other reason he’d decided that statement had nothing to do with him. Now he had the sneaking suspicion she’d aimed that dart much closer to home—and he was wearing the bull’s-eye. “What did I do wrong?”
The way she nibbled on her lower lip and looked away confirmed it.
“Just tell me and I’ll take it back or apologize for it or fix it or…” He spread his hands. “I’ll do whatever I can to get things back to normal, Sara. I miss you.” More than he’d ever believed possible, enough to drag that confession from him, which was really saying something for a man who considered “hi” an emotional outburst.
Baring his heart, however, only seemed to have saddened her more. “It’s not you, Max.”
“Then it’s the accidents?”
Sara lifted her shoulders and let them droop in a dejected shrug. “I’m not too pleased with making a fool of myself every few weeks, but the accidents are just the symptom of a bigger problem.”
“So what’s the bigger problem?”
“It’s me.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Don’t yell at me.”
“Don’t—” Max shoved his cold-reddened hands back through his hair, pacing away then back. “You want me to listen to you, but you’re not saying anything. You’ve been sulking for weeks and when I ask you why—”
“I haven’t been sulking!”
“Really? I used to talk to you every day, but I’ve barely seen you since Halloween. You’re hardly ever home before dark, and even when you are here you only come out of your house to get in your car and leave again. If that’s not sulking, then what is it?”
“I’ve been busy,” she muttered.
“Everyone’s