Chapter 6
The dinner table was alive with conversation and the warm aroma of Evelyn’s pot roast. Charlotte had arrived home to find her mother already in the kitchen, her apron tied around her waist and moving with the grace that had always characterized her homemaking.
Sophia had emerged from her room looking refreshed, the dark circles under her eyes less pronounced after her day of rest. Even Liam, normally quiet during the weeknight meal, was engaged in an animated discussion about his golf game with a neighbor.
“I’m really sorry about scaring you, Mom,” Sophia said. “I should have texted you when Grandma called me in. I just…crashed after she left. Didn’t even hear my phone.”
“It’s okay,” Charlotte replied. “I overreacted. After that alert this morning and then the call from school, my mind went straight to the worst-case scenario.”
“The alert?” Liam looked up from cutting his meat. “That weather thing? My phone’s been going off all day, but I turned the sound off after the third one. Nothing but blue sky out there.”
“It’s still active. Though you’re right, there’s not a cloud to be seen.”
“Probably another false alarm,” Evelyn said. “They’ve been happening so often lately.”
“Still,” Sophia said. “It was kind of creepy. Getting that alert and then having everything seem so…normal. Like in those movies where the characters get a warning, but nobody believes them until it’s too late.”
“I’m just glad you’re feeling better. That chemistry test was really getting to you, huh?”
“It’s not even the test itself. It’s everything piling up. AP classes, college applications, and that volunteering thing at the hospital… Sometimes it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day, you know?”
“I do know,” Charlotte said.
She’d watched her daughter pushing herself harder and harder over the past year, throwing herself into schoolwork and activities with an intensity that sometimes worried her.
“It’s okay to take a break sometimes. Even the best students need mental health days.”
“That’s what I told her,” Evelyn said. “Though perhaps next time, we could coordinate so your mother doesn’t think you’ve been kidnapped.”
The table erupted in laughter, and the tension broke.
Even Sophia joined in, her earlier embarrassment fading as the conversation moved to lighter topics.
They talked about a funny story from Liam’s golf game, a new recipe Evelyn planned to try, and the movie Sophia and her friends planned to see that weekend.
As the meal progressed, Charlotte found herself relaxing, the strange disquiet of the afternoon receding in the face of her family’s normalcy.
It was what she had fought to preserve after Jacob’s death.
The moments of connection, of life continuing in its messy, wonderful way.
It wasn’t the same without him, and it never would be, but it was still worth having.
“You know,” she said. “I was thinking maybe we could get away for a few days. Go up to the cabin in Colorado.”
Sophia’s face lit up. “Really? I haven’t been there since…” She stopped, the sentence unfinished, but they all heard the missing words since before Dad died.
“That would be wonderful,” Evelyn said. “I’ve been missing those mountains, and the air up there is so clear this time of year.”
“We could leave on Wednesday,” Charlotte continued, warming to the idea. “Come back Sunday night. That would give us almost five full days.”
The planning continued through dessert, which was Evelyn’s apple crisp, still warm from the oven.
Each of them added details and ideas to the growing vision of their getaway.
They’d hike the trail to Emerald Lake. They’d have dinner at that little restaurant in town that did the amazing pumpkin pie.
They’d drive up to the continental divide and watch the sunset over the peaks.
Charlotte watched her family’s faces as they talked, noticing the way Sophia’s eyes shone when she described the view from their favorite hiking spot, the relaxed set of Liam’s shoulders as he debated the merits of various routes to the cabin, and the soft smile that played at the corners of Evelyn’s mouth as she listened.
It was what she had been working toward for the past difficult year.
She wanted more than survival. She wanted moments like that, when the weight of grief lifted just enough to let joy back in.
It had been so long since she’d felt that way.
She felt present in her own life, connected to the people around her, and capable of imagining a future that wasn’t just an endless extension of the painful present.
The feeling was unfamiliar, almost startling in its intensity.
For a moment, she was afraid to acknowledge it.
As the conversation flowed around her, Sophia and Evelyn debated the merits of various board games to bring along, and Liam interjected with dry comments that made them both laugh.
Charlotte allowed herself to embrace it.
It was happiness. Not the frantic, performative kind she sometimes manufactured for Sophia’s benefit, but the real thing, complicated and imperfect.
She looked around the table at the faces of the people she loved most in the world, and for the first time since Jacob’s death, she smiled without having to remind herself how.