Roni is on the sofa, breastfeeding Dylan with a receiving blanket tossed over them. Derek is next to her, checking his phone. The two of them look sleepy and satisfied.
I’m so thrilled that they’ve found each other and committed to a future together, but I’ll confess to being a tiny bit jealous, too. I’m a year and a half ahead of Roni in my widow journey and no closer to figuring out what’s next than I was on the day of Mike’s plane crash. Since then, my life has been more about survival than planning. I have three grieving kids to care for, a home to manage and a thousand decisions to make every day on my own.
Who the hell has the time to make plans?
Granted, I know how fortunate I am to not have to work on top of everything else. Mike had excellent life insurance that will carry us through until my youngest is in school all day. At that point, I’ll have to get a job and start saving for college.
It’s daunting. All of it. But I don’t need to think about that stuff today or tomorrow, and so I push it all to the back of my mind to focus on my friends and myself and this badly needed break from my usual routine.
“Where’s everyone else?”
“They went for a beach walk,” Joy said. “Too damned cold for me.”
“Me, too.” I join Roni and Derek on the sofa and toss a throw blanket over my lap. “I’ll burp him if you want to stretch.”
“Are you sure?” Roni asks.
“I’d love to. I miss the baby stage. It’s all fun and games until they start talking back.”
Roni hands Dylan over to me, along with the receiving blanket that I put over my shoulder. “My son will never talk back to me, will you, sweet boy?”
“Haha, you wish,” I tell her as she gets up to stretch her arms over her head. “He’ll be sassing you long before you’re ready for that.”
Adrian stokes the fire in the woodstove and then goes outside to get more wood.
“How does he seem to be doing?” I ask the others.
“He’s okay,” Kinsley said. “The baby is with his sister this weekend, and she’s been a big help since his mother-in-law died. But she works full time and has kids of her own, so he’s still looking for someone to help him when he’s working.”
“I told him I’d do it,” Wynter says when she plops down in front of the fire. She’s the youngest of the Wild Widows, having lost her young husband to bone cancer.
“What did he say?” Joy asks.
“I don’t think he took me seriously.”
“Did you mean it seriously?” I ask her.
“I did, or I wouldn’t have offered.”
Wynter’s testy retort doesn’t bother me. We’ve learned she’s mostly all bark and no bite and is pissed off at the shitty hand she’s been dealt. And who can blame her? I can’t for the life of me imagine coping with what she has at such a young age. It was rough enough at thirty-three when I had some maturity under my belt.
Nothing can prepare you for this journey, though. That’s something we’ve all learned the hard way.
Adrian comes back in with the wood and stacks it on the hearth. He’s tall, Black, muscular and handsome as hell. His wife’s death in childbirth followed by his mother-in-law’s sudden passing has been devastating, but he seems to be bouncing back somewhat. We were relieved when he decided to come this weekend and that he was able to leave the baby with his sister, so he gets a break that he desperately needs.
I’m dying for another minute alone with Roni, who’s become my closest friend in the group, to tell her about what happened with Gage.
“Did you get some sleep?” Roni asks when she sits next to me on the sofa.
With my free hand, I move my coffee away from Roni, who doesn’t like the smell of it.
“I did. How about you?”
Roni’s cute face flushes with color. “Some.”
“I’m going to check on Maeve,” Derek says as he puts his phone to his ear and heads for the deck.
“Was it something I said?”