“I’m uncertain how to make myself any clearer, Nolan,” I called as he made his way to me. “However, I do know I had witnesses to your last visit, which was unwelcome, so now we may be bordering on harassment.”

He stopped at the foot of the steps and declared, “Rogan’s dying.”

“You told me that before.”

“Yes, and when I did, Rogan was dying. Now, they’re making him as comfortable as they can, waiting for him to die.”

It came out of nowhere.

I didn’t expect it.

Not after what I went through. Not after what Rogan had put me through. Not after what came next for me and for Tia.

But even so, it came.

Pain.

“He wants to see you, Clara,” Nolan declared.

I hadn’t noticed, my mind had shifted to what I was feeling, but when I refocused, I saw he was speaking to me, but he was looking behind me.

I sensed why even before Buck said, “Tell us where and I’ll get her there.”

“You should go today,” Nolan advised.

Today.

We should go today.

Oh God.

Rogan was dying.

Nolan moved up the steps, reaching into the breast pocket of his suit. I saw Buck’s arm come out and take the slip of paper Nolan offered him.

Nolan stepped immediately back as if being in close proximity to me might mean he’d catch something nasty. He then turned and walked down the steps.

But he turned back and looked up at me.

“He won’t tell you this, but you should know, the stealing began when he got his diagnosis and the prognosis was what’s happening right now.”

I didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“He had to make sure you were covered,” Nolan stated. “He had to know, when he was gone, you never had to worry about anything.”

My husband had to embezzle forty million dollars to make certain I never had anything to worry about?

“This isn’t on her,” Buck said, low and angry. “Quit fuckin’ with her head because it isn’t on her.”

“It’s partly on her, weak women who lean too much on men,” Nolan retorted.

Buck made a growly noise.

I jerked out of the vacuum I’d fallen into at the understanding the first man I’d ever loved was imminently dying and came back to the conversation.

“I have a master’s degree and worked at a world-renowned research library,” I reminded him.

“Which would not put you in a five-thousand-square-foot, six-million-dollar home in Arcadia,” Nolan shot back.

I studied him.

Closely.

What I saw was bitter.

Planted in him by someone else.

Now aimed at me.

“You know,” I said softly, “I don’t know what women you’ve had in your life, but they are not me.”

His face went hard.

Yes.

Bitter.

“I loved my husband,” I told him. “I did not need the house in Arcadia. And I survived a number of things since I was seven years old. Sure, none of that was as bad as what Rogan left me with after what he did, though some of it was close. Nevertheless, I would have survived with him gone. What would have been the struggle that would have stuck with me until the day I left this Earth, was watching the husband I loved die of cancer.”

“You say that, Clara, but you are even now not standing on your own two feet. You’re standing in nothing but another man’s shirt, which leaves little to the imagination of what you’ve been doing, and it isn’t even two o’clock in the afternoon. And you’re doing this at his home, not working the job, incidentally, that he gave you, but definitely living a life he allows you to lead.”

Another growly noise came from Buck, I felt him move, but I stepped in front of him, even as I didn’t take my eyes from Nolan.

I also spoke through this.

“I’m standing here because I have cute taste in shoes and good manners. You see what you want to see, whether that’s been sadly distorted by women who have used you in your life is not on me. Like what Rogan decided to do in his desperation at getting a hopeless diagnosis is not on me. What my husband should have done was come home and trusted in me. He did not do that. He underestimated me.”

“And whored around on her,” Buck added.

Yes, there was also that.

Nolan’s head ticked.

“Yeah, don’t got an excuse for that, do you?” Buck bit.

Buck was wrong.

He did.

“There are appetites a man has he doesn’t take to his wife. He takes them somewhere else. Especially when he only has a short time left to live.”

“Then he chose wrong again, asshole,” Buck declared. “’Cause the wife he had has her own appetites, and they’re the kind, a man gets them in his bed, he’ll never go wanting.”

Wow.

That was sweet.

I turned my head and looked up at Buck.

“Really?” I asked.

He looked down at me, and I had confirmation as to his tone and vibe.

He was far from happy.

Now at me.

“Are we goin’ over this again?” he asked.

“No,” I muttered.

“Good.” He did not mutter.

“I’ll take my leave,” Nolan said.

“Take it for the last time, man,” Buck warned.

Nolan lifted a hand and walked to his BMW.

I watched him do this.

Buck, I suspected, did not.

“Babe, you need to get dressed.”

Needless to say, the soda pop feeling was gone.

“Never easy,” I mumbled as Nolan closed himself into his car.

“Baby?” Buck called, his arm curling around my waist.

I looked up at him again.

“I guess that’s life, right?” I asked. “A woman who does not want a child gets pregnant with one, she gives it up. A woman who wants a family gets one, her husband leaves. She can’t cope, and even though that child has nobody, nobody, she takes her own life, leaving that child very alone and entirely defenseless.”

“Clara, darlin’,” Buck moved closer to me, sliding his hand up my jaw and into my hair, “you need to get in. Get dressed. It’s cold and you got somethin’ you gotta get outta the way.”

“And then,” I went on like he didn’t speak, “that child gets shunted from home to home. Careful, always, to do the right thing. Because maybe the people in one of the homes, they’d like her. Maybe, if she makes all the right moves, someone might want her.”

“Christ, baby,” he whispered.

I saw the pain in his eyes, so deep, it could be described as agony.

That, for me.

That, because he loved me.

I didn’t like that for him.

I didn’t want that for him.

But I couldn’t control it.

My first love was dying.

He was thirty-six years old and he was dying.

So I kept going.

“But they don’t. And she struggles through. Gets an education. Makes something of herself. Falls in love.”

“Please come inside with me, Toots,” he begged quietly.

“And it wouldn’t have mattered either way, Buck,” I carried on. “Either Rogan got the news he got, and he did what he did, which left me out there, alone, without resources and desperate. Or Rogan got that news and he came home and told me, and I’d have to prepare to watch the man I loved die. For me, there was no win. For me, it wasn’t ever going to be easy.”