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She had to lay the guilt trip on me even more.
While I heard her words, the advice I’d given friends who’d lost loved ones before, that didn’t mean I could embrace every word. Or the reality of what she was saying. “What are you trying to tell me to do?”
“I’m not telling you to do anything, honey. I’m suggesting you find that girl inside I used to know.” She pressed the tip of her index finger against my chest. “You know the one I mean. The one who had no issue crawling out her second story window, sliding down a trellis in her PJs in the middle of a snowstorm to spend a little time with her boyfriend.”
“I never did that!” When she gave me a look, we both laughed. “Okay, so guilty as charged. But I was seventeen, not twenty-eight.”
“You’re right. You were. But the spirit that you had, the verve to live every moment brought electricity to everyone around you, me included. It’s been gone for far too long. Go out. Enjoy some time doing the things you used to love doing.”
I chewed on my bottom lip, thinking about my bestie’s call only a couple of hours before. “Fallon did ask if I wanted to go out on the town tonight.”
“Do it!” she said way too eagerly, squeezing my arm all over again. “Go drinking. Go dancing. Go do whatever. Find the real you and live.”
“What about Pops? He needs his medicine. And Aiden. It’s a school night. I can’t just leave them.”
“Bull-fucking-shit,” she huffed, wrinkling her nose after making the exclamation. My sister never cursed. Never. She was Miss Goody Two-Shoes while I had a sailor mouth, at least according to my daddy. “I’m off tonight. Let me do this for you. And you do this for you. Do you hear me?”
I studied her face, the warmth in her eyes and sighed, slowly glancing back at my dead husband’s gravesite. “Maybe I could go out for a drink or two, a game of darts.”
“That’s the spirit, girl. Live before it’s too late.”
Too late.
Maybe that’s what happened. I’d forgotten to enjoy every moment of living when I’d had the chance.
“And one more thing,” she said in quiet reverence, more than before.
“What?”
Almost timidly she pointed to my hand. “It’s time you took off your rings.”
I was ready to recoil in anger, a harsh comment sliding to the very tip of my tongue, but I knew somewhere in the back of my mind she was right.
“You’re not dishonoring Finn’s memory or your marriage, girl.”
There was something about the weight of having the rings on my hand that I’d hoped would bring comfort. Sadly, every time I took a shower or washed dishes or my hair, I was given a harsh reminder of the tragedy that had become my life. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask.”
As she climbed into the driver’s seat, I ushered Xena around to the other side, opening the door so she could jump into the back. “All I need is a sign, baby. Just something to let me know you’re there.”
I waited, counting down ten seconds, sadly resigned to know there was no sign that could mean anything to me.
Until the rain tapered off and out of the blue, the most beautiful rainbow appeared in the sky, the colors more intense than I’d ever seen in my entire life.
Finn was here. He’d heard me. He still loved me.
And he was giving his blessing to try to find a path into the future without him.
CHAPTER 4
Rylee
“I told you this was a good idea,” my bestie said. Fallon had been bugging me since my return from the high seas to come out with her.
“I’ve been busy,” I told her.
“No, you’ve been surviving. There’s a huge difference.”
