“Oh, well, she said…” Aidan felt like he was wandering into murky territory.

“I meant before she was hit by the car,” Maggie said. “She’s still recovering.”

“Not so much from the accident but the coma,” Jill added. “Three years is a long time to be inactive.”

Aidan felt like someone had hit him. Hard.

They were quiet on the ride up the mountain in the chairlift. Aidan was reeling. No wonder they treated her like she was made of spun glass. Three years in a coma? Jesus.

Arriving at the top, they got off the lift and concentrated on skiing the challenging trail. Aidan and Jill reached the bottom a few minutes ahead of Maggie, who had waved them on when she got tired.

He knew he shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Tell me the rest, Jill.”

“Why didn’t she tell you?”

“I don’t know, but she will. When she’s ready. I need to know.”

Jill looked down at her ski and pushed a pile of snow aside. “She was raped by a psycho who threatened to kill one of us if she told anyone.”

“Oh no. No.”

“She lived with it for a long time, and then one day, she just couldn’t take it anymore. She let a car hit her right in front of us,” she said, her voice catching as if the memory was still a raw wound. “She thought if she was dead, he couldn’t hurt us.”

His throat tight with emotion and rage, Aidan put his arm around Jill, who seemed to need the comfort after reopening an old wound. “When did that happen?”

She leaned into him. “Almost four years ago. She’s been recovering from the coma since last April. The doctors had told us it was hopeless, so now they say she’s a genuine miracle.”

“Did they get the guy?”

She nodded. “He was already in prison for something else.”

“How does your dad fit into it?”

“They’re divorced.”

“I know, but why?”

“You should let her tell you,” she said, casting him a wary glance.

“Please, Jill,” he pleaded. “Tell me.”

With a deep sigh, she poked her ski pole into the snow before she looked up at him. “He met someone else when my mom was sick. By the time she woke up, his girlfriend was pregnant with twins. They got married in August, and the twins were born on the same day as their wedding.”

“He just left her?” he asked, enraged and horrified. “He left your mother for this other woman?”

“No, she left him. She didn’t want him to have to choose.”

Right in that very moment, standing at the foot of the mountain with his arm around her daughter, Aidan fell the rest of the way in love with Clare.