18. Conrad #3
It didn’t feel odd to talk to Winnie about Jade.
I didn’t feel like I had to choose between them, divide my emotions.
Winnie never made me feel guilty for loving my wife.
She listened to stories about Jade with real warmth.
But sometimes, when I caught her expression, there was something else there too.
Something that made me think it hurt her a little to hear me talk about loving another woman.
We ended the day at the cemetery. Winnie had stayed behind to give us privacy, but I eventually called her over.
In a way, I wanted to introduce her to Jade, as morbid as that might sound.
It had been a beautiful day that captured the essence of Jade, which was really all I could ask for, and Winnie had been part of it.
By the time we got home, the kids were running on exhausted energy like overtired toddlers. Billie had reached the phase where she couldn’t stop talking. CJ had reached the phase where he narrated everyone else’s emotional states like a nature documentary.
And Bianca had entered full denial. “I’m not tired,” she informed us while walking directly into the coat rack.
Winnie caught the rack before it tipped over.
I shut the front door, trying not to laugh while Billie dramatically collapsed face-first onto the foyer rug. “I can’t walk anymore.”
“You sprinted after a squirrel fifteen minutes ago,” I pointed out.
“That was before my tragic decline.”
Winnie stepped carefully around Billie’s body and removed her sunhat with a soft sigh.
The evening air had finally cooled enough that she looked more comfortable than she had all day. Her hair had loosened from its neat arrangement hours ago, strands curling around her face from the wind and humidity.
She looked beautiful.
“All right,” I announced. “Nobody go upstairs yet.”
Three suspicious faces turned toward me.
CJ narrowed his eyes dramatically. “He and Winnie have been communicating telepathically all day.”
“We absolutely have not,” I said.
Winnie avoided looking directly at me. It didn’t help my case.
Bianca crossed her arms. “There’s clearly another surprise.”
“There may be.”
“Conrad,” Winnie murmured under her breath.
She was smiling. Soft enough that my brain short-circuited momentarily.
God help me.
“You guys are correct. There’s one final surprise in the backyard,” I told the kids.
The second I opened the back door, Billie’s breath stuttered out of her in a mixture of a gasp and a squeal.
Lanterns hung beneath the pavilion in golden clusters, swaying gently in the early evening breeze.
Strings of tiny lights curved through the garden beds while fireflies blinked lazily beyond the fence line.
The projector screen I’d spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to hang correctly stretched across one side of the pavilion, and blankets covered nearly every available surface beneath it.
The kids exploded past us.
“Oh my god!”
“Is this a movie night?”
“Pillows! Dad, this is awesome!”
“I helped,” Winnie said softly.
Three heads whipped around toward her immediately.
“You did?” Billie yelled.
Winnie nodded once. That was all the confirmation needed before Billie launched herself directly at her. Winnie caught her automatically with a startled laugh.
CJ spun in a slow circle beneath the lanterns. “This is magical.”
Bianca walked toward the projector setup with visible awe. “You rented equipment?”
“I rented many things,” I admitted.
“And snacks,” Winnie added. “We have a wide variety of snacks.”
Chaos erupted. I’d paid our housekeeper to make a special house call on a Sunday to cover the picnic table beneath the pavilion in everything Jade used to love during movie nights.
Popcorn. Chocolate-covered strawberries.
Fancy cheese she insisted made her “cultured.” Gummy worms. Mini sandwiches.
Lemon bars. The terrible jalape?o chips she adored despite claiming every single time that they “weren’t even spicy. ”
“Mom would’ve loved this,” CJ said, his voice thick with emotion.
That nearly wrecked me. Instead, I cleared my throat and focused on setting up the projector while the kids raided the snacks with zero restraint.
Winnie moved beside me as I fiddled with cables. “You pulled it off. Everything’s perfect.”
“We pulled it off,” I corrected.
Winnie nudged my shoulder slightly. “You know what I mean.”
I shrugged a little. “I wanted today to feel…” I hesitated.
“Alive,” Winnie finished gently.
“Yeah.”
As the kids argued about gummy worms, Winnie and I stood under the lantern light, our eyes locked on each other.
The evening settled around us softly with crickets, fireflies, and the scent of flowers from the nearby garden beds. It was so peaceful. Exactly what we needed.
“CJ’s eating snacks too fast!” Billie shrieked.
And the moment shattered beautifully.
We settled onto blankets as the night darkened overhead. The first home video flickered onto the projector screen. Jade, laughing as she and the kids decorated Christmas cookies years earlier.
Bianca inhaled sharply.
Onscreen, Jade held toddler Billie under one arm while arguing with CJ about frosting distribution.
“I saw you take extra sprinkles,” Jade accused.
“Prove it,” tiny CJ yelled back.
Winnie let out a soft laugh beside me.
The videos rolled on—birthday parties, beach trips, dance recitals, even one of Jade gardening with dirt smeared on her forehead.
“She killed those hydrangeas in under a month,” I said.
“She probably overwatered them,” CJ replied automatically.
“She loved them too hard,” Bianca corrected.
Billie pointed dramatically at the screen. “Mom fell in mud.”
The laughter came easier as the night deepened. At some point, music replaced the videos. One of Jade’s old playlists drifted softly through the backyard while the kids slowly wilted from exhaustion.
CJ lay on his stomach, writing in his notebook between handfuls of popcorn.
Bianca leaned against one of the pavilion posts, pretending she wasn’t falling asleep every thirty seconds.
Billie had somehow accumulated four blankets and half a lemon bar.
Winnie sat cross-legged in the center of everything with Billie draped across her lap like a cat. Winnie fit so naturally with Billie curled instinctively against her.
It was like she’d always belonged, like my kids had been waiting for her.
At one point CJ looked up from his notebook. “Hey Mom,” he said softly toward the screen where another old video paused on Jade laughing. “I’m becoming an author now.”
Winnie’s eyes flicked toward him.
He smiled a little shyly. “I think I’m actually good at it.”
“You are,” Bianca said without hesitation.
CJ blinked at her, his face suspiciously emotional. To protect himself, naturally, he immediately ruined the moment. “My future biographers will note this support.”
Billie lifted her head weakly from Winnie’s lap. “Momma, I’m becoming a lizard scientist.”
“Herpetologist,” Bianca corrected automatically.
Billie narrowed her eyes. “You just made that word up.”
“It’s literally real.”
Billie rolled her eyes. “I reject it.”
“You can still study lizards without sounding like a supervillain,” Winnie said.
Billie relaxed instantly. “Excellent.”
Eventually Bianca lost her battle with consciousness entirely.
Her head tipped sideways against my shoulder.
A few minutes later, CJ’s pen dropped from his hand, and he dropped his head onto his notebook.
And Billie fully starfished herself across Winnie without warning, one sticky hand still clutching a gummy worm.
Winnie looked down at her with a hopelessly tender expression.
This was the happiest Mother’s Day we’d had since Jade died. We didn’t miss her any less. And our grief certainly hadn’t disappeared. It was, however, the first Mother’s Day that the day hadn’t revolved entirely around surviving the pain.
There had been laughter, joy, love, and life today. And Winnie had made that possible. Loving her was becoming unavoidable.
A truly terrifying thought crept into my brain.
If we lost Winnie now, it would destroy us.
By the time the kids were finally in bed, the house had fallen into that strange kind of silence that only comes after a very full day.
I’d brought the projector inside. Blankets remained half-folded over the backs of chairs. Someone had left gummy worms on the coffee table. The lanterns still swayed softly beneath the pavilion outside the kitchen windows while the last of the fireflies drifted through the garden.
I found Winnie in the kitchen, steeping tea.
She’d removed her sunglasses from her head at some point, leaving them folded neatly beside the kettle. Without them, her face looked softer somehow. More open. Her red hair spilled over one shoulder, slightly mussed from Billie climbing all over her for most of the evening.
She glanced up when I entered. “All asleep?”
“Yep. They’re completely out.”
“Billie informed me she was entering hibernation.” Winnie poured tea into two mugs before sliding one toward me. Steam curled upward carrying the scent of chamomile and something floral I couldn’t place.
“You always travel with tea,” I observed.
“I also travel with emergency peppermints, spare hairpins, bandages, tiny scissors, and approximately seventeen items that would alarm airport security.”
Laughing, I leaned against the counter across from her.
Winnie wrapped both hands around her mug. “You did very well today.”
I snorted softly. “That sounds like feedback from a performance review.”
“It is. Your quarterly parenting assessment has improved dramatically.”
“Excellent. Have I earned a pizza party?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
I smiled into my tea. “Seriously though… thank you.”
Her eyes lifted to mine immediately.
“For today,” I said. “For all of it.”
“You don’t have to thank me for loving them.” The words left her mouth naturally.
“You do love them,” I said softly.
Winnie looked down at her tea for a moment before answering. “Yes.”
I set my mug down slowly.