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.
“You know,” I admitted, “for a long time after Jade died, I thought surviving was the best we were ever going to do.”
Winnie stayed quiet, letting me continue.
“I kept everybody fed. Kept schedules moving. Made sure homework got done eventually. But it always felt…” I searched for the right word. “Thin.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. You were grieving, too.”
“I know. But they’re kids.” I rubbed tiredness from my face. “I think I kept convincing myself I was sacrificing for them by working so much. Providing stability. Security. Whatever corporate excuse I needed that week.”
I looked toward the dark hallway upstairs. “I think part of me believed if I stopped moving for too long, the grief would catch me.”
Winnie’s fingers tightened slightly around her mug. “I understand that.”
The way she said it made me look at her differently. There were moments with Winnie where I could feel the edges of something vast beneath the surface. Experienced in a way that didn’t match other parts of her. Sometimes, she spoke about loneliness or grief with this strange intimacy that made it sound less theoretical and more lived-in.
“What about you?”
Her eyes flicked up. “What about me?”
“You always listen to everybody else.” I shrugged slightly. “I don’t think you talk about yourself very much.”
A faint smile touched her mouth. “That’s because I’m mysterious.”
I waited.
Eventually she sighed softly into her tea. “I spent a long time alone.”
The honesty of it settled between us.
“By choice?” I asked.
“Partially.”
“And the other part?”
She looked out the window. “Sometimes life makes your choices smaller than you’d like.”
