“Have you tried meditation?”
I chuckled. “Good one.”
“It sounds like a crazy thing, but I’m serious. I meditate. When I started, I could only do it five or six minutes at a time. Now I can knock out an hour or more before bed. It helps.”
“Do you meditate before or after the cannabis oil?” I asked with a raise of my brows.
She grinned. “Depends on how hard the day has been.”
I laughed and shook my head, but then I sobered. “How do you do this?”
“How do I do what?”
“Be an Old Lady? How do you sit around waiting for news? How do you not go completely crazy wondering if your husband is going to come home alive?”
She paused as she played with the label on her beer. “You're really not going to like my answer, Linden. But I’m going to tell it to you straight anyway. I just do it. You become part of the community. You find your hobbies; you find your passions. You find your friends. You have children.” She smiled. And you just…deal with it.”
“You’re right. I don’t like your answer.”
She chuckled.
“My career means everything to me,” I said. “My career is my passion. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t do that anymore.”
Darcy took a sip of her beer. “There was never anything else you wanted to do?”
I shook my head. “Never thought I was going to have to entertain the idea that I’d have to do something else. I’m afraid it’ll make me bitter. If I can’t practice medicine, everything I’ve ever worked for is gone.”
“Only if you let it be that way.” She paused. “Do you like kids?”
“In theory. Why?”
She shrugged. “Just wondering if you were thinking about going down that path.”
“I haven’t given it much thought,” I admitted. “Are you glad you had kids?”
“Mostly.”
I snorted. “Mostly?”
“I’m not going to sit here and tell you I was destined to be a mom. They’re challenging at the best of times. But they light up my soul in a way nothing else does. I’m not saying you should have kids or that they need to be your reason for living. And I’m not saying they can replace what you’ve worked for. I’m just saying, when one door closes, sometimes another opens. Life is odd that way.”
“Thanks,” I said. I took a long drink of my beer. “I don’t even know if Boxer wants a family. His dad was a real jerk.”
“I think he’d make a great father,” she said with a smile.
I sighed. “Yeah, I think he’d make a great one, too.”
“Are you worried about having kids because of the biker thing?” she asked pointedly.
I shook my head.
“Really?”
“Really,” I insisted. “I’m worried about having kids because I’m afraid I’m going to be no good at it.”
“Oh, you’ll fail for sure,” she said.
“Hey!”