Chapter 10
Ten
Iris
Gage shakes me awake. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. We’re home.”
I fell asleep on the way home from checking on Taylor and the kids one more time after the funeral home. Thank goodness Gage still has his wits about him, because mine are gone.
“Wow, I was out cold.”
“You fell asleep midsentence.”
“What was I saying?”
“Something about the next Wild Widows meeting.”
“I’m losing it.”
“You’re on overload, babe. Time for a good night’s sleep.”
“You’re right.”
“I usually am.”
“Jeez, I walked straight into that.”
He laughs as he meets me in front of the car and puts an arm on my back to send me toward the kitchen door. We remove our coats in the mudroom and hang them next to the empty hooks where the kids’ coats should be.
It’s weird to come home to a house with no children in it.
“I hate when the kids aren’t here,” Gage says, echoing my thoughts, as he so often does.
As much as I loved Mike—and I loved him very much—my relationship with Gage is deeper, forged on loss and grief and the understanding that only a fellow traveler could possibly have.
“I do, too. Even though they’d be asleep, we’d still feel their presence.”
“I’ll pick them up in the morning and get them back where they belong.”
I turn to him and put my hands on his chest. “Thank you for everything today—and last night. I appreciate you stepping up the way you did for my friend.”
He kisses my nose. “Whatever you need. And whatever Taylor needs going forward. We’ll make sure she gets all the support we can give her.”
“Do you think…”
“What?”
“I hate to even say it.”
His brows furrow. “What’s on your mind, honey?”
“Should we postpone the wedding?”
We’ve been counting down to Thanksgiving weekend, when we’re set to tie the knot that Saturday.
Next week, friends and family are coming from all over to celebrate with us.
I get a queasy feeling in my stomach when I think about wallowing in my second-chance happily ever after when Taylor has lost hers.
He looks slightly stricken by the idea. “Uh, well… I guess that would be up to you. If you don’t feel like you could go through with it…”
I feel terrible for having to even suggest postponing when we’ve been so excited about it. The kids can’t wait to marry their Daddy Gage. “Not because of you or us. You know that’s not it. I just wonder if it’d feel appropriate so close to Taylor’s loss.”
He wraps his arms around me. “Sit with it for a couple of days and see how it feels then. It’s still fresh, and emotions are running high.”
“That’s true.” I rest my head on his chest. “Thank you for always being the voice of reason.”
“Your voice is pretty reasonable, too, but like we always say, no big decisions right after a big loss, even if it’s someone else’s big loss.”
“Thank you for being you, for always knowing what we all need and trying to get it for us. We’re so lucky to have you.”
“I’m the lucky one. Let’s get you to bed before you fall asleep standing up.” He surprises me when he picks me up and carries me up the stairs.
I fan my face. “Sexy.”
“Haha, you’re too tired for sexy tonight.”
“How do you know? I took a nice nap in the car. I have a second wind.”
“Your tank is on empty, and we’ve got a long few days ahead of us. You need sleep more than you need me.”
“For the record, I need nothing more than I need you, even when you’re being mean to me.”
I love to make him laugh. It happens a lot more than it did when I first knew him, when he was still coping with the brutal loss of his wife and twin daughters. Every laugh I draw from him still feels like a victory, even after all this time.
I snuggle up to him in bed as he holds me close. “Sometimes it’s all too much.”
“Only sometimes?”
“A lot of the time.”
“Can I say something potentially controversial?” he asks.
“What’s that?”
“We don’t always have to be as heavily involved in the Wild Widows as we are now. No one would blame us if we took a step back to focus more on the future than on the past.”
“I’m not sure I could step away from the group.”
“I know you feel that way, but maybe you should give it some thought. Yes, we’re doing a lot of good for people who truly need us, but what’s the toll on us to be constantly immersed in the grief of others when we’ve worked so hard to survive our own losses?”
Raising myself on one elbow, I study his handsome face. “Do you want to step away?”
“Not particularly, but maybe we should. Is it healthy for us to be the first call for people suffering a tragic loss? Is it in our best interest to constantly be on the front lines of fresh tragedy?”
“I can’t imagine walking away from people who need us so badly.”
“It doesn’t always have to be us who does the rescuing. I just want you to keep that in mind.”
“You raise good points, but it makes me feel good to help others. Whenever I think it’s too much, I remember Wynter when we first met her and how far she’s come from that terribly unhappy place. She’s proof that we’re making a real difference for people who desperately need it.”
“There’s no doubt at all about that, but have you noticed that on Instagram, I write more about parenting my new partner’s kids these days than I do about losing mine?”
“I have noticed that, and I love your posts about being Daddy Gage.”
“My point is that life—and grief—moves on. It evolves and changes, and we change right along with it. I’m more focused these days on what I’ve gained rather than what I’ve lost, even if I think of Nat and the girls every day and remember something fun or funny or sweet about each of them.
But those memories are finite now. The ones I’m making with you and the kids…
Those are infinite. At least I hope they are. ”
I return my head to his chest as I consider what he said and how right he is—as usual.
“What’re you thinking?” he asks after a long silence.
“My work with widows is a big part of who I am in the ‘after.’ I’m not sure what my life would look like without it.”
“I’m not saying you have to quit it entirely or that you should quit it at all.
I just want you to be aware that I see the toll it takes on you sometimes.
You internalize the pain of so many others, and you carry it with you.
I worry that might not be healthy for you long term, but only you can know if that’s the case. ”
“You’ve given me something to think about.”
“I don’t mean to add to the load you’re already carrying for Taylor, and nothing about this has to be decided any time soon.”
“I know, but you make good points, and you didn’t even mention that our house is ground zero for the Wild Widows.”
“That, too.”
“They’ve become family.”
“And they always will be, no matter what.”
I’m so tired, I can barely keep my eyes open, but as I drop into exhausted sleep, I can’t deny that Gage has raised a very valid concern.
Adrian
I wake up at three in the morning to an empty bed. After I use the bathroom, I go looking for Wynter, checking first in Willow’s room, expecting to find her doing a middle-of-the-night feeding. But she’s not there, so I go downstairs, following a light on in the kitchen.
Wynter is on her knees, scrubbing the inside of the refrigerator, which has been completely emptied of its contents.
“Sweetheart, what’re you doing?”
“Cleaning this disgusting mess of a fridge. If the Board of Health inspected us, they’d shut us down. Those tacos you brought home a week ago are still in there. Gross. Why am I the only one who ever cleans out the fridge?”
“I’ll tell Xavier he needs to do a better job of that from now on.”
“I’m not joking! It’s gross.”
“Does it need to be addressed at three o’clock in the morning?”
“I was awake, so I figured, why not get it done?”
“Can I help?”
“No, you’re the problem.”
I’d laugh, but she’s not in a joking mood. “I apologize for my habit of abandoning leftovers and promise to do better in the future.”
She looks up at me, glaring. “Are you patronizing me?”
“Would I do that?”
I lower myself to the floor, so she doesn’t have to look up at me.
“Yes, I believe you would.”
“Let me help you finish this so you can come back to bed.”
“I can’t sleep, so there’s no point to being in bed.”
“There’s other stuff that can be done there.”
“I’m not in the mood for that.”
“Since when? You’re always in the mood for that.”
“Right now, I’m not.” She doubles down on the scrubbing. “We need to be better about cleaning this thing before one of us dies from food poisoning.”
“It’s not that bad.”
She glares at me again, this time with tears in her eyes. “It is that bad!”
When I slide close enough to put my arm around her, she goes stiff.
“What’s really going on here, love?”
“I told you. The fridge is gross. It needed to be cleaned. I can’t imagine having your sister over and her looking for something in there.”
“She wouldn’t care.”
“Yes, she would. She’d never eat here again.”
“Wynter… Talk to me.”
“Nothing to say.”
“When do you have nothing to say?”
“Right now, I have nothing to say.”
“Is it because of what happened to Taylor?”
“I hardly know her.”
“You know her, and you knew Will, too. It’s devastating. I keep thinking about their kids and the new baby, who’ll have a parent missing his whole life, like Xavier and Willow.”
“It’s not fucking fair. She already lost one husband, and the kids have now lost two fathers.”
“You’re right. It’s not fair.”
All at once, she seems to lose the head of steam that was powering her through the fridge cleaning.
“Let me help you put this back together. It’s clean enough to do surgery in there.”
That gets a small snort of laughter from her.
I get up, help her up and work with her to return the shelves and drawers to their places and replace the items that’re going back in. A huge pile of containers sits on the counter by the sink. “I’ll deal with that in the morning.”
“Yes, you will, because it’s all your crap.”