“Maggie,” he said when he saw her.
“Tom.”
His eyes flicked to Hank.
“Who is this?”
“A friend.”
Tom’s mouth tightened at the word.
“You’re making friends now?”
“Yes.”
Hank looked delighted.
Tom turned back to Maggie.
“I came to bring you home.”
“No.”
He blinked.
“You haven’t heard what I have to say.”
“I have heard you for thirty-five years.”
His face reddened.
“You’re behaving like a teenager.”
Maggie looked at the snowbanks.
The gray sky.
The office window where Ruth was absolutely watching.
“I am behaving like a woman with property in her own name.”
Tom stepped closer.
Hank did not move.
He didn’t need to.
He simply became more visible.
Tom noticed.
Good.
“Maggie,” he said, lowering his voice. “This has gone too far. The kids are upset. The house is a mess. People are asking questions.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The order of your concerns.”
His jaw tightened.
“I said the kids are upset.”
“You said the kids, then the house, then people. Still no apology.”
“I apologized.”
“When?”
“I sent flowers.”
Maggie laughed.
Not happily.
The sound surprised even her.
“Tom, flowers are what guilty men send when they want forgiveness delivered without conversation.”
He looked wounded.
She did not care.
Then he tried the old softness.
He reached for her hand.
She stepped back.
He froze.
For thirty-five years, he had been allowed to touch her when words failed him. A hand at her elbow. Fingers over hers. A palm at her back steering her away from public discomfort.
Not now.
“Don’t,” she said.
He lowered his hand.
A small defeat.
A necessary one.
“I miss you,” he said.
Maggie looked at him carefully.
“I believe you miss being cared for.”
His face changed.
That was the first time she saw fear in him.
Not fear that she was unstable.
Fear that she was right.
He left Alaska two days later without seeing the land.
Ruth sent Maggie a text after his plane departed.
Storm passed. No damage.
Maggie saved it.
Part 7
The divorce filing happened in spring.
Maggie had not been certain until Tom came to Alaska. Before that, some soft, trained corner of her still wondered if separation might be enough. Time. Distance. Counseling. Maybe a late-life rearrangement of the marriage.
Then he crossed thousands of miles to retrieve her instead of understand her.
That clarified things.
