Maxwells Smile

hole in her hopes, Rachel stepped back onto the driveway. She cast a glance to the car, where, fortunately, Maxwell’s attention was on his book.
    “Just can’t right now,” he said curtly. “Maybe some other time.”
    “Right. Don’t worry about it. Your house was on the way, and I thought I’d stop in. See you.” She turned and abruptly walked back to the car.
    Sam did not call after her, which made her wonder if he was angry with her for something. Probably she should have called him instead of just stopping by. Hell, she was out of practice when it came to being friends with the opposite sex.
    Friends? They’d both agreed yesterday in the coffee shop to a weekend movie date. She’d thought he’d been happy to move a little faster, and she had been open to the possibility of a romance.
    Arriving at the driver’s side door, she glanced back at the garage. Her heart performed a funny lurching flip. She’d read Sam’s intentions incorrectly. How foolish of her. Yet how apt for her record with men.
    Maxwell’s face appeared below the car’s sunroof. He pressed his nose to the sunroof glass, and her thoughts switched from the angry guy in the garage to the silly kid in the car. Very un-Maxwell-like. Her son had definitely found a different, more relaxed side of his personality since he’d met Sam.
    It was a good thing she hadn’t taken him into the garage with her and allowed him to witness Sam’s bad mood.
    Sliding inside the car and buckling up, she shifted into gear.
    “Is Sam going to have dinner with us?”
    “He’s busy,” she said.
    Maxwell’s smile dropped. As she drove away, her son twisted his head to track Sam’s house. She shouldn’t let him get his hopes up. Sam was the first man they’d had in their lives for longer than a few days. It was natural for Maxwell to get attached to him.
    “You know Sam is just a friend, right, Maxwell?”
    “Of course.” He’d opened the book, yet his eyes remained focused on the mirror. “Do you know that, Mom?”
    Rachel rolled to a stop at a red light. She met her son’s gaze in the rearview mirror and nodded, because it was too hard to say she did.
    * * *
    Sam jumped into the rust bucket, buckled up and peeled out of the driveway, but Rachel’s cheeky red Volkswagen was already out of sight. He glanced in the rearview mirror and swiped some dust from his cheek. So he was a little slow on the draw. He’d been out of sorts when she’d unexpectedly appeared in the garage, backlit by sunlight so that she glowed like some kind of freakin’ angel.
    And he’d been stupidly rude to her because his thoughts had been elsewhere, in a darker place than Rachel’s smile should ever know.
    Now he pulled into the hospital parking lot and ran inside, straight to the children’s ward, where he knew he would find Maxwell. He skidded to a stop in the open doorway to the waiting room. Both Rachel and Maxwell looked up from the book Maxwell had been reading to her. The boy’s face lit up.
    Rachel tilted her head in question, her mouth tight. Sam’s heart flopped and landed hard in his chest. She had every right to give him that look. But how to explain he’d been in another time and place when she’d called to him in the garage? A year ago, to be exact. And in this very hospital.
    “Uh, sorry.” He walked inside, but remained close to the door, his fingertips tracing the varnished wood. “You caught me at a bad time. I shouldn’t have been so abrupt with you.”
    Rachel looked at Maxwell, then up to the receptionist, who made a show of scanning an upside-down chart. “Maybe we should wait and talk outside, after Maxwell’s appointment?”
    “No, I want Maxwell to hear this. I was rude to your mother when you two stopped by my house earlier, and I want to ask your forgiveness.”
    Maxwell crossed his arms defiantly.
    “You see…” Sam paced, not sure how to explain this, Keeping it all bottled up seemed safest, and yet, suddenly, the words spilled out. “I found a box of my brother’s stuff in the garage and was looking through it. My mind was a thousand miles away and my heart was…”
    He swallowed. Memories cut him like knives. He would not reveal that he’d been crying, and couldn’t bring himself to look at Rachel now.
    Why had he thought it wise to reveal himself, as if it were as simple as stripping the siding from a house to expose the bare framework?
    “Oh, Sam, you’ve never mentioned your brother. Is he…?”
    “He died