Linda Goodnight - The Last Bridge Home

Jilly frowned. What was momentous about that? Crystal was desperately ill with little time left. “Until her family comes for them?”

He released her hand and sat back. “There is no family, Jilly. No one. She doesn’t have a single person anywhere to turn to. No one except me—the long-lost husband who didn’t even know he was one.”

Zak’s meaning seeped in, slow and deadly as arsenic. He not only had a wife, but he was also about to become a father.

Zak watched the color drain from Jilly’s face. Her freckles popped out like rust stars against a porcelain sky. She had beautiful skin, a fact he noticed every time she blushed, which was often. She made a tiny noise of distress and Zak resisted the urge to toss his arm over her shoulders and give her a hug. He didn’t like seeing Jilly upset, especially when he was the cause.

“You sent her away,” she said, blue eyes sad and dismayed.

“What else could I do? I’m not their father. I don’t even know her.”

“But now that she’s gone, you’re having second thoughts.”

“Yes, of course I am!” What kind of man would he be if he didn’t? He dragged both hands down his face and blew from his lips like a horse. “She’s dying, Jilly. I feel like a piece of scum for refusing her anything. At the same time, I’m not the person for the job. I can’t be a father to three strange, grieving, needy children. I don’t want to be. I can’t be. The whole idea is nuts.” He was starting to get hysterical. Zak Cool, the pitcher with ice water in his veins and fire in his left arm, was teetering on the edge.

Jilly pushed Satchmo off her lap. “Go lay down.”

“I wish I could,” Zak said and when Jilly rolled blue eyes at him, he grinned a little at his joke. “Dogs are lucky. When something upsets them, they can go to sleep and forget about it.”

Jilly wasn’t amused. If anything, she’d gone even paler. A tiny, worried pulse beat in the hollow of her throat. “You’re not a dog. You can’t go to sleep and forget about it. So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I gave her some money. She was broke, exhausted, sick.” He scrubbed his face with both hands, not that it did a bit of good. “Man, I’m a jerk.”

Jilly pushed at Satchmo who tried to regain her lap. “Was she going back to her home?”

He hadn’t asked. He’d been so busy getting her out of his house, his driveway, his life that he hadn’t asked what she would do or where she would go. “She looked tired. I suggested she go to a motel.”

“Kitty’s place?”

“Yeah.” He’d soothed himself with the thought that Kitty Carter ran a clean, safe, reasonably priced motel. “Maybe I should call Kitty and ask her to keep an eye on them.”

“I don’t know, Zak. This doesn’t seem right to me.”

“Nothing is right today. I want a replay.”

“I’m sure Crystal does, too.”

“Thanks for kicking me in the teeth,” he said wryly. “I deserved that.”

“Maybe you should go over there and bring them back here.”

“Here? To my place? Are you nuts?”

“Regardless of the particulars, regardless of when or why you married her, she’s legally still your wife.”

“What if she’s lying?” he asked, desperate to be free of this problem.

“Wouldn’t that be easy to check?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe she’s only saying this because she remembers me as a soft touch.”

“Zak,” Jilly admonished softly.

“I don’t want to be married, Jilly. Not to anyone, but certainly not to a woman I don’t remember very well who is dying of cancer and wants to give me three kids.” He could hear how shallow and selfish he sounded, but this was his life she was talking about!

“That’s exactly the point. Crystal is dying. She needs you right now. Don’t you think it’s terribly, pathetically sad that she has no one else in the world to turn to but a man she’s not seen since college?”

Put that way, Crystal’s plight looked even worse than it was. And it was bad. “I told her I’d help her. In some way. We can ask at church. Maybe someone will take her in. Maybe someone will want the kids. Or I can hire a nurse to stay with her.”

Jilly put a hand on his arm. “I don’t know, Zak. Something about that seems wrong to me.”

“I can’t move her in here. I don’t even know her. I have a life, too. What are people going to think if I move a strange woman into my house?”

“What about the kids? Where do they go? What happens to them? They can’t care for a dying mother.”

He closed his eyes, blew out another breath. “There’s the kicker. They have no one to turn to and no place to go.”

Jilly bit her bottom lip and he could see the wheels turning inside her head. “Look, all of this has happened too fast. You’re reeling from shock. Maybe you need some time to think it over.”

“I don’t think Crystal has the luxury of time.”

“Oh, Zak.” She swallowed, pretty face tragic. Jilly was a woman with a heart as big and warm as the sun. She took in all kinds of strays and rejected animals, nursed them to health and found them homes when she could. But three children weren’t puppies she could fatten up and farm out. “She’s in a desperate situation.”

So was he. “I know.”

“Can you live with yourself if you don’t do something?”

He wished the answer was different but admitted, “I don’t know. Probably not. God help me.” And he meant that voiced prayer with every cell in his weak brain.

“She’s dying, Zak. She must be scared. For herself. For her kids.” She squeezed the back of his hand. “I can’t imagine how terrible her life must be right now.”

“You’re killing me.”

“I’m trying to put myself in her position. What would I do? What would I need? How hard would it be to ask a near stranger for charity? You can’t turn your back. Even if the marriage is on paper only, the two of you are connected. You made a vow to her, even if it was ten years ago. You have an obligation, under God and the law.”

Jilly was his best friend. She wouldn’t steer him wrong. She wanted the best for him and she wasn’t any happier about this than he was, but her head was clearer. His was as tangled as spaghetti. As a Christian, he wanted to do what was right. As a single man, he wanted to jump in his Titan 4x4 and hit the road.

“I can’t take on three kids. I won’t.”

“It’s a huge decision.”

“Exactly. Those kids need a family. They need someone who wants them and can give them the attention kids deserve. That is not me.”

Jilly patted his shoulder. “You’re a good guy.”

“No, I’m not. I’m struggling.”

“You’ll do the right thing.”

He turned his head to look at her. “Why weren’t you around ten years ago to say that?”

She smiled a funny smile. “I wish I had been.”

Zak figured he should do some serious knee time, but God hadn’t gotten him into this mess in the first place. If he’d been living right back in college, he might have been smarter. Or not. The fact remained, he hadn’t been.

“A motel room is no place for a sick woman and a pack of rug rats,” he conceded.

“She can’t stay there indefinitely, and if she has nowhere to go… You need to find out, Zak. Does she have anywhere else to go?”

“I’ll talk to her again.”

“And then what?”

He sighed, weary and confused, a load of responsibility bearing down with colossal weight. “I don’t know.”

As a Christian, his conscience said he had to help Crystal, even though their relationship ended years ago. If helping meant bringing her into his home where she could be at peace for her remaining days, maybe he could do that. But the arrangement was temporary. Only temporary.