“You’ll thank me in the morning.”
I smiled while closing my eyes. “I already thank you constantly.”
“That’s true.”
I smiled lazily up at her. “You take very good care of us.”
Something vulnerable crossed her face, then disappeared so quickly I almost missed it.
“I like taking care of you,” she said.
I wanted to answer. Wanted to say something meaningful and devastatingly honest. Instead, I apparently fell asleep, because the next thing I knew, I jerked awake, disoriented and dry-mouthed, the room plunged into darkness.
For one confused second, I genuinely thought I’d dreamed the entire evening. The speakeasy. The dancing. Winnie in emerald green.
Then I noticed the water glass waiting beside the bed. The aspirin bottle. My shoes lined neatly in front of the dresser.
My memory returned in scattered flashes. Winnie laughing in low amber light. Her hand around mine. Talking about Jade. Talking about loss.
Embarrassment arrived immediately after.
“Oh God,” I muttered into the darkness.
Had I blacked out? Had I cried? Had I confessed feelings like a middle-aged disaster?
I pressed one hand over my eyes, trying desperately to reconstruct the night. Nothing felt fully missing though. Blurred, maybe, but present.
I remembered enough to know Winnie had stayed beside me while I talked about Jade. And somehow instead of making me feel guilty or hollow, it had comforted me.
I drank the water she’d left for me, then collapsed back against the pillows.
Sleep pulled at me quickly again. Somewhere between waking and dreaming, I saw Jade and Winnie together beneath bright spring sunlight in the garden. Jade laughing with dirt on herhands. Winnie seated beside her on a picnic blanket wearing black despite the heat. The children running wild around them.
The dream made my heart ache, but not entirely in a bad way anymore.
13
WINNIE
Monday felt wrong, the way missing a stair felt wrong. Just enough disruption to throw a person off balance.
I was buttoning the cuffs of a black blouse while rain dripped off the cottage roof, my tea cooling on the counter, and for perhaps the fiftieth time that morning, I caught myself thinking about the Lawrences.
Had Bianca finished the astronomy textbook I’d lent her before Easter weekend? Had Billie stopped insisting jellybeans counted as a breakfast carbohydrate? Did CJ remember to write down the eel-smuggling story before inspiration escaped him entirely?
It wasn’t just this morning that I had been thinking about. I’d spent the entire weekend thinking about them, which was terribly irritating.
Somehow a three-day holiday weekend had me wandering around my cottage, missing a family that wasn’t mine.
Sighing, I picked up my sunscreen.
The disruption in routine had unsettled me more than I’d thought. The day off for Good Friday had sounded lovely in theory. It would have given me time to myself, to garden and reorganize the apothecary shelves in my pantry and finally finish preserving the citrus peel I’d candied earlier in the month.
I’d done none of that. Instead, I’d spent most of the weekend thinking about Conrad drunk in the soft glow of the speakeasy. About the way he’d looked at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. About how startlingly good it had felt to be fussed over. To have a chair pulled out for me. A drink remembered. A hand offered automatically when I stepped down from the curb. These were all small and normal things. But they were also dangerous things.
I capped the sunscreen bottle and stared at my reflection in the window over the sink. “You are being ridiculous,” I informed myself.
Conrad Lawrence was a lonely widower who’d had slightly too much bourbon after several years of functioning exclusively as a father and corporate machine. It was natural that he’d become affectionate. Humans were creatures built for companionship. Warmth naturally sought warmth.
