“You shouldn’t. Not today.” Hazel had no idea when a good day would be, but not then, when everything was so raw.
“Today is the best day for it. I’m already crying, so I spent the entire day watching. I had forgotten about so much.” She drew up her knees, rested her chin on them.
“Like what?”
“You being there. I always remember Hanna there, but you were there too, in the background. I wish you were in the front.”
“That’s not me. I am background.”
“I saw Jamie in some of the videos, the later ones. He really liked Hanna. I didn’t remember that. I always felt it was a short little relationship. Something that happened suddenly and wouldn’t last.” She sniffed and wiped away her tears. “That Henry and I were so much better of a couple.”
“They had been together for most of the summer,” Hazel remembered. He had come to get her for dates for months. Hazel didn’t go anywhere, she remembered.
“I thought it started that fall. But the movies tell the real story. I wish I could talk to her about him, ask her what she felt for him. Did she tell you?”
“No, but we weren’t close then,” Hazel said, knowing that Natalie already knew that.
“Nor were we,” Natalie admitted, and Hazel knew she meant her and Hanna.
“I don’t think about him. Ever.” He was the third that died that day. In her place, she always felt. But she never thought about him as a person to be missed. A person who was missed.
“Me neither. At least Kit does.” Natalie sniffed again. “At least someone does.”
CHAPTER28
“Welcome, Kit,”Ruston said to Thomas’s lady love. Thomas had just spent two days arranging for this covert meal, so he could see her during the four-day Thanksgiving break she was spending with her parents. Convenient that they were in the same town as his best friend.
Since the couple had been together for a short time, and Kit was in no way telling her parents about the relationship, everything was on the down-low. There were even cover stories for the couple as to where they were supposed to be. One was to be out with her sister and one … Well, it didn’t matter, he wasn’t hiding anything.
“Thank you for inviting me. I only brought the little two. I thought John Henry would like to have a friend. You invited the right person to have a playmate for him.” Kit took the toddler from Thomas’s arms and took off his little jacket.
Kit had five boys, three from her first marriage, who were around ten, and two from her second, who were John Henry’s age and younger. When Thomas had first come up with this night, Ruston wasn’t sure he was ready for five kids and two more adults in his house.
At the first sign she was there, Thomas had rushed out to meet her at the car to help with her two younger kids. Just that alone made Ruston know his friend was completely smitten with this woman. Thomas had been completely against the idea of stepkids his entire life. But not anymore, it seemed. Not with this woman.
Now Ruston knew his buddy was in love for sure, and that was even before Ruston saw that his friend was unable to take his eyes off the woman. Not that she wasn’t doing her share of quick glances at Thomas either, which meant this might turn into something that lasted forever for his friend.
“That’s not why you were invited, Kit. It was all Thomas’s doing,” Hazel said from the kitchen doorway, not quite part of the group. She was acting distant from the woman who was also thinking about the accident. Their only connection being the biggest tragedy of their lives.
“It did have the stink of him on it.” Kit laughed, her eyes not leaving Thomas’s, who just rolled hearsays at her joke.
“I have no stink.” Thomas helped her remove her jacket.
Ruston didn’t miss the small ways he touched her as he did it.
“Hi, Hazel,” Kit said as she put Josiah down. Though the boys had seen each other at church, they were still virtual strangers. But they were keeping the other in eyesight.
“Hi, Kit,” Hazel replied, not moving from her spot, still away from the group, not joining.
Ruston had removed James from his seat and held on to him. His eye caught Hazel’s, and he wondered if she was thinking about the kids they would have as well. Or were her thoughts trapped in the past with Kit there? The future too hard to think about when the past was so present.
“I can take James,” Thomas said, reaching for the baby. Ruston watched Hazel’s eyes go to the baby wearily. She must not have known the baby’s name was James… after Jamie.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” Kit asked. She seemed happy to be not holding a baby.
“No, it’s ready if you guys are.” Hazel took a step back. Ruston wondered if it made Kit feel slightly unwelcome.
After getting everyone situated, and the kids’ plates filled, conversation flowed around general topics of local sports, Thomas and Kit’s school, the kids, and the church. Mostly, the women did not participate. The women each attended to their respective children and ignored the other. Like the grown adults they were.