“I already told you everything last night,” Lindsey says, whacking her sister with a throw pillow on the tufted sofa in my living room. “And itwasn’ta date.”
Date or not, my daughter is practically glowing. For a moment, she’s sixteen again, telling me about her first kiss with Travis Bedford at the homecoming dance.
“You had coffee with a very gorgeous, very available man, for crying out loud,” Lucy argues from her spot next to her sister. “If that doesn’t screamromance, I don’t know what does.”
I listen and watch with amusement as I take a sip from my steaming cup of peppermint tea, the familiar sounds of my grandchildren shrieking with delight filtering in from the playroom next to us.
“He also got you flowers,” Ellie points out from the arm of the La-Z-Boy that Ben is sitting on.
Lindsey never tells me about the men she meets anymore—if she’s meeting any at all—so hearing about this is a treat. Shehad a serious boyfriend—Daniel—a few years prior, and from the outside looking in, their connection had seemed perfect. But about a year after Henry’s life ended, so did their relationship. To this day, Lindsey refuses to talk about their breakup, and she hasn’t brought anyone around since, always claiming she’s happy with her life as it is.
Henry and I may not have always been perfect parents, but we showed our children what it meant to have a loving relationship. We prioritized weekly date nights and weren’t afraid to be affectionate in front of the kids, much to their embarrassment. We were the loves of each other's lives, but we were also best friends. So, when Lucy met Willow and Ben met Ellie, they knew. They were able to recognize what true love looked like. I’ve always wished for the same to happen for Lindsey.
“A Christmas cactus,” Lindsey corrects her, but her flushed cheeks give her away. “He got me a cactus from the band kids’ fundraiser outside Bluebells.”
“Well, that was sweet,” I chime in.
“Must be nice,” Rose says from beside me. “The last time a man brought me flowers was about seven years ago.”
“Fred?” Lindsey grins, already anticipating the answer.
My sister nods. “Yep.”
“I don’t think I know this story,” Willow says, entering the room with two cups of coffee. She hands one to Lucy before taking a seat beside her on the couch. “Who’s Fred?”
Rose leans into me, giggling. “He showed up on my doorstep to pick me up for our date to the Red Lobster with a pall.”
“Wait, who’s Paul?” Willow asks, and we explode into raucous laughter.
“No, not Paul.” Rose snorts. “He brought meapall. You know, one of those floral sprays that go on a casket. He wanted to get me flowers, and this thing was marked down because afuneral got canceled. Turns out the person who was supposed to have died wasn’t actually dead.”
“No way.” Willow’s mouth falls open. “You’re making this up.”
“It would seem like it, but I promise you, that thing stayed on her kitchen table for a month,” I choke out.
“I can’t believe you kept it.” Ben shudders. “Gave me the heebie-jeebies.”
Rose shrugs. “Listen, I’m not exactly in a position to be turning away suitors over here. I was just happy to get some damn flowers, even if they were supposed to belong to a corpse.”
Lucy shakes her head. “See, Lindsey? Aunt Rose had a guy bring her funeral flowers and even she could see it for what it was. You have a handsome firefighter buying you a cactus, yet you still refuse to believe it was a date.”
I perk up. “A firefighter?”
Lindsey rolls her eyes. “There you go getting Mom worked up.”
“I’m not worked up,” I insist. “I haven’t been worked up since I got the flu and couldn’t go?—”
“See Celine Dion,” the kids and Rose say in unison.
“Your heart never did go on from that, did it?” Rose asks, and I pull a face at her.
“Anyway, I want to hear more about this firefighter,” I say.
“His name is Oliver,” Lucy answers for her sister. “He and his dog just moved to town a couple of months ago.”
“And he’sverygood-looking,” Ellie says.
A good-looking firefighter named Oliver.Well, this is certainly an exciting turn of events.
