The Miles Between Us by Laurie Breton Read Free Book Online Page A

kids. But as a boy, he’d never given a thought to that kind of thing. He’d been too busy living. As far as he was concerned, he’d had an idyllic childhood. That was what he wanted for his own kids.
    He’d missed the boat with Paige. Those lost years were something he could never get back, and he would spend the rest of his life regretting them. But Emmy symbolized love and hope and a bright, shiny future. Even starting as late as they had, in their mid-thirties, he and Casey had talked endlessly about what they expected from their life together. They’d spent her entire pregnancy making plans for the family they intended to raise. They’d agreed to eschew boundaries, to let biology determine how many children they would have. They hadn’t expected that bright and shiny future to be tarnished by loss after loss.
    His parents were waiting downstairs . “All right,” his mother said briskly, “why are you here and why isn’t Casey with you?”
    “Casey’s in the hospital ,” he said. “She had another miscarriage.”
    “Godd amn it,” his father said.
    “Oh, Robbie,” his mother said . “I’m so sorry. But Casey’s all right?”
    He sat down in a chair and stretched out his legs. “She is now. It was touch and go for a while. Too damn close. I was in New York, working. If Trish hadn’t found her…” He ran a hand over his face, scrubbed back his hair, let out a sigh. “I was so damn scared.”
    “ Of course you were! But why aren’t you there with her?”
    “It was her idea for me to come here . She knows how much I hate being in that house alone, and the hospital’s holding her until Sunday. She did a few mental calculations and decided I needed the two of you right now more than she needed me.” Beneath the table, he worked off his sneakers and wiggled his toes. “And of course, she was right.”
    “Of course . When has she ever not been right?” His mother poured hot water over a tea bag and set the teacup in front of him.
    “Thanks,” he said, and took a sip of hot, bracing tea . He closed his eyes and leaned back his head, grateful for home, for his parents, for the simple comfort of a cup of hot tea at the end of a very long, very bad day. “Listen, Ma,” he said, opening his eyes and turning his head in her direction. “Do you still have Great-Grandma Sullivan’s ring?”
    “Of course . I promised it to you three years ago. I’ve just been waiting for you to ask.”
    “Our anniversary’s coming up soon. I’ve been waiting for the right time to give it to her.” He took a sip of tea. “I think now’s the right time.”
    “ Oh, so you think, do you? I was starting to wonder if you were planning to wait until your fiftieth. Sometimes men can be so stupid.” And she got up from the table and bustled out of the room.
    He narrowed his eyes, set down his cup . Fighting back a smile, he said, “Tell me something, Dad. The way she bullies all of us, how have you managed to put up with her all these years?”
    “I don’t know,” his father said . “Maybe for the same reason Casey puts up with you?”
    “Ouch.”
    “You might have taken your looks from me,” Patrick MacKenzie said, “but in every other way, you’re the spitting image of your mother. Stubborn, willful, outspoken. A little too impulsive, a little too rash.” Patrick lifted his own teacup and saluted him with it. “But in spite of all those sins, my son, you and your mother are redeemed by virtue of the fact that you both have a heart as big as all outdoors, and you both wear it proudly on your sleeve.”
    Rob lifted his teacup, touched it to the one Patrick still held high. “Amen,” he said.
     
     

 
    Casey
     
    They stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way home from the hospital. Rob cautiously handed her a cup of decaf, then took his own cup from the girl at the drive-thru window, mumbled his thanks, and set it in his cup holder. Without speaking, he pulled away from the window, circled the