Devoted to Drew. Loree Lough

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      CHAPTER SEVEN

      IT SHOULDN’T MATTER what Call-Me-Griff Gerrard thought of her. Jason had been gone more than three years; the things he’d said and done shouldn’t matter, either.

      Then why did they?

      The ten-minute drive between Deidre’s place and her own usually filled her with a sense of calm, especially once she’d turned onto Tongue Row, where centuries-old stone houses hugged the curb and the branches of ancient oaks canopied the road. Not so on this crisp March day.

      Shake it off, she scolded. You don’t have time—or the right—to feel sorry for yourself.

      The line of a favorite song filtered from the car’s speakers. “...your prison...is walkin’ through this world all alone....”

      Any other day Bianca would have turned up the volume and belted out the lyrics. This time, the words cut a little too close to the bone. But it wasn’t Jason’s fault that she’d always been a hopeless romantic.

      In the beginning, Jason was Atticus Finch, Sir Galahad and the woodsman who saved Peter from the wolf all rolled into one. She envisioned him as The One who’d turn her little-girl wishes into grown-woman realities: a loving husband, a cozy home, a child to fill its rooms with laughter. During their first few years together, it seemed he shared her dreams. Yes, he was a workaholic, and no, he hadn’t been particularly affectionate, but part of the dream was better than none of it. Sadly, Drew’s birth forced her to admit the ugly truth: autism hadn’t turned Jason into a cold, arrogant man; he’d always been that way.

      Bianca turned into her driveway and stared at the front of the house—the only home Drew had ever known. The wreath on the door and the mat on the porch said WELCOME. Friends, neighbors and family all praised her for making them feel so much at home that they sometimes lost track of time. When had she last felt that way herself?

      Long enough that she couldn’t remember.

      Once inside her home, she looked around at the rooms she’d redecorated in the hope of filling the gap left by his death. She hadn’t been able to control his feelings toward Drew, nor could she control the disease that had taken him from her, but this...this she could control.

      The first thing she noticed, walking into the now-sunny kitchen, was Drew’s colorful reminder taped to the refrigerator door: A DOG FOR DREW. He’d drawn accurate renditions of not one but seven dogs, one for every year he’d lived, “...so we’re not stuck lookin’ at just one kind.”

      Smiling, she pressed a palm to a curled corner of the yellow construction paper. Oh, how she loved the boy who was slowly emerging from the lonely shell of autism. If adding a furry, four-legged member to the family would help open the crack of what remained of that shell, she’d beg, borrow or grovel...even to the likes of Logan Murray.

      The weather had been glorious these past few days, so she opened the back door and took a deep breath of the sweet spring breeze, then grabbed a notepad and pen from the basket beside the phone and sat at the table. TALKING POINTS, she printed across the top of the pad’s first page, and wrote one through ten in the left margin. Her younger sister, Lily, a freelance writer for several local newspapers, had shared the method when Bianca complained about how difficult it was to dig for interview facts that went deeper than the limited information provided by guests’ press kits. With a bit of luck, the questions she’d written down for Logan would be answered by the man himself.

      She scrolled to his number in her cell phone, took a deep breath and hit the call button. His line rang five times before the now-familiar voice said, “You’ve reached Logan Murray. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you soon.”