Always on My Mind Read Online Free PDF Page B

Jack, do you know what that means?”
    That he’d gone over the deep edge? He put a hand to his head. Was the world spinning? He felt a little dizzy.
    “Listen,” Leah said. “Forget my shoes. About the other thing. About…us.” She swallowed. “Your mom was worried about you.” Her eyes were desperately trying to communicate something to him.
    Probably that she was crazy.
    Which he already knew.
    Jack turned to his mom. “Mom, we’ve talked about this. I don’t want you wasting your energy worrying about me. You need to be focusing on yourself right now.”
    Oh, Christ. Suddenly this was all making sense, the chain of events that had led to Leah’s proclamation that they were a “thing.”
    Not that it mattered, because this wasn’t going to happen. They were not going to lie to his mom.
    “It haunts me at night, Jack,” Dee said.
    Ah, damn. He loved his mom, more than anything. But if she gave the “I’ve had a good life and all I want is for you to meet a great girl so I can die happy” speech he was going to burst a blood vessel. “Mom—”
    “It’s all my fault, Jack. Don’t you see? After your dad died—”
    “No,” he said firmly. “ Nothing about that was your fault.”
    It really hadn’t been anyone’s fault, which of course had made it all the harder to accept. Jack knew he wouldn’t have made it through that time without Ben or Leah—something he’d never told her but should have.
    Which meant that he couldn’t kill her for this latest stunt.
    “I never showed you it was okay to move on from grief,” Dee said. “That’s why you never have any meaningful relationships with women.”
    Jack opened his mouth to say he didn’t have the lifestyle for that right now anyway, just as the power blinked out and then back on. Then something sizzled, and this time, when the lights flickered and went out, they stayed out.
    “Crap!” Leah said. “My soufflé.” And she vanished into the kitchen.
    “You okay?” Jack asked his mom.
    “I’m great, actually.”
    She was still smiling. Jesus . “Wait here,” he said and followed Leah into the kitchen.
    She stood in front of one of the ovens, staring gloomily into the small window.
    “Don’t start with me,” she said. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to make a great soufflé? And now it’s all going to be ruined. Dammit! I knew better. The power’s been going on and off for days. Mr. Lyons looked at it and replaced the fuses. They should’ve lasted longer than this.”
    Jack frowned. “This has been going on for days?”
    “Weeks, actually. Maybe longer. At first, I thought maybe Grandma had forgotten to pay the bill, but I made sure it got paid on time this past month.”
    Jack strode out the kitchen door to the back alley, moving along the wall to the electrical panel. Just as he opened it, the flower shop’s back door opened too, and out came a harried-looking Ali.
    “Jack,” she said in surprise, a pair of clippers in one hand, a rose in the other. “Did you turn off the power?”
    “No.” He looked inside the electrical panel and swore. The wiring was a mess, crisscrossed and frayed. The building was so old that they still had fuses behind the wiring, and he could see two right off the bat that were blown.
    The entire downtown commercial row of Lucky Harbor was quaint and historical, but not necessarily practical, since most of the buildings were a hundred-plus years old. This building, one of the oldest, was in serious need of a big renovation, but the historical society—currently run by Max Fitzgerald—had a pretty restrictive rein on the county building department and the permits, all in the name of protecting history.
    But what they were really doing was unintentionally preserving Jack’s—and all the other firefighters’—jobs because this was a disaster waiting to happen.
    Leah had followed him out. She stuck her hand into her pocket and came out with a palm full of fuses.
    “Look at you with all