Unwrap My Heart

Capítulo 2

WILLY

By the end of the meal, I found myself relaxing and I even enjoyed listening to the chitchat at the table between the women and the boy. I still wasn’t sure what Ruelle’s story was, but the honest affection between her and my mother was obvious.

I figured she was pushing thirty, which meant she was only a couple of years younger than me, though most of the time I felt older than thirty-two. Her bangs tended to obscure her blue eyes and the hair at the end of her ponytail was a paler blond than the rest of it. Her polo shirt had the logo of the local convenience store. The jeans she wore emphasized her slim yet curvy figure and, though her fingernails were short and bare, they were perfectly shaped and filed.

When Ruelle caught me staring at her and gave me a questioning look, I turned my attention back to twirling spaghetti onto my fork. I much preferred listening to conversations to being part of them.

I hadn’t missed that flash of sympathy in her eyes when she first arrived and realized who I was. The guy whose pregnant wife was killed by a drunk driver just two weeks before Christmas some seven years ago, poor guy.

As if losing my wife and unborn child would have been so much less tragic in March.

For months after the funeral, that look and the murmurs of “poor guy” had followed me everywhere, until I’d thrown my stuff in my truck and headed to places where nobody knew he was that guy.

Virginia. Alabama. A rough spot in Daytona Beach, where I learned I couldn’t drink and party the pain away.

Texas. Missouri. Where I worked odd jobs in diners and garages and for landscapers to earn just enough money to keep me going.

Then somehow I landed in California. It would never feel like home, but at least it looked like home, and I was starting to admit to myself I missed New Hampshire.

Then my sister called me at six-thirty one morning to tell me our father had gotten out of bed and just collapsed onto the braided throw rug. I had just been home to visit the family for Easter and I’d always be grateful I’d so recently sat on the porch with my dad to share a six-pack and some stories.

The trip home for the funeral had been brutal, though. The grief of my mother and sister only heightened my own, and the sympathy from friends had been nothing short of suffocating. It had dredged up the pain of losing Delores and our baby, mixed it up with the pain of losing my dad, and sent me back to California.

It was only when I’d come back in the fall to be there when they placed the headstone that my mother’s loss had punched through my walls and I’d realized she was alone and winter was coming.

Sure, she could hire somebody to plow her driveway and rake the snow from the roof, but would she? She’d never liked driving in the snow all that much, letting her husband run her around to do errands in the winter, so a stretch of storms could leave her with no groceries. Her tears when I left had been the last straw.

It didn’t seem she had been alone, though. My mother practically lit up when Nathaniel was in the room and taking care of the boy not only gave her something to do, but something to look forward to each day.

If Ruelle and her son made my mother happy, that was enough for me.

“Will, you’re being awfully quiet,” my mother said, and all eyes turned to me.

“You taught me not to talk with my mouth full, Ma. So you can’t serve me the best spaghetti in three counties and then expect me to have a conversation.”

They all laughed, but it was Ruelle’s laughter that caught my attention. It was light, almost musical, and I liked it. Her gaze met mine, full of warmth, and I felt the first stirring of physical attraction.