It had been a month since Winnie and I went on our first official date and slept together. Life had been pretty damn incredible ever since. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t still exhausting.
By the end of the work week, I was running entirely on caffeine and whatever remained of my ability to answer emails without openly weeping.
The week had been a relentless barrage of quarterly reports, board meetings, and budget reviews. Three separate emergencies apparently could not survive without my immediate involvement. I’d begun fantasizing about throwing my phone into a lake and pretending I lived in a cabin somewhere without internet access. Preferably, Winnie’s remote cottage.
The traffic home crawled. Normally that would’ve annoyed me. Instead, I found myself smiling as I sat at a red light.
A year ago, I would’ve dreaded going home. Every day had felt like another test I wasn’t sure I was passing. Each failure was another reminder that I was raising three grieving childrenwhile trying to hold together a household that was on the brink of collapsing.
There had always been something waiting—another problem, another worry. And each reminded me of everything we’d lost.
I had spent a long time carrying the feeling that if I stopped moving for even a moment, the entire thing might fall apart. Somewhere along the way, that feeling had disappeared. Life was still life. The kids still argued. The house still broke down. Bills still arrived. Work still occasionally made me question my career choices. But the weight wasn’t there anymore, wasn’t crushing me anymore.
My home now felt like the place where I got to rest instead of the place where another shift started.
I turned into the driveway and smiled immediately. The new garden was visible before the house came into view. What had begun as a handful of planters after our trip to the botanical gardens had somehow expanded into a full family project and had spilled into the front yard.
A combination of starter seeds and mature plants from a fancy nursery in town, along with Winnie’s and the kids’ unrelenting devotion to their plants, had yielded an unbelievable array of vegetation. Raised beds lined one side of the property. Flowers exploded with color along the stone pathways. Tomatoes were growing. Strawberries were thriving. Several herbs had taken over an entire section despite repeated attempts to keep them organized, especially the mint.
Winnie claimed gardening was educational. I suspected she simply enjoyed watching the children become emotionally attached to vegetables. She’d convinced them to eat mostvarieties of vegetables over the summer simply because they’d grown them from seeds.
I parked and climbed out of the car. The front door flew open before I reached the porch.
“Daddy!” Billie barreled into me. I barely had enough warning to catch her.
“Oof.”
She wrapped herself around my middle. “It’s officially summer!”
“I had gathered that from this humidity.”
“No, but it’sreallysummer break now.”
Behind her, CJ and Bianca burst through the doorway.
Even Bianca looked excited. “Dad, I got my final grades. They were excellent. All As!”
“I know.”
“You haven’t even seen them yet.”
I grinned. “I don’t need to, I know you.”
CJ had already started talking. “We should make a summer bucket list.”
“What kind of bucket list?”
“Asummerbucket list,” he repeated.
“Very informative.”
He wasn’t deterred. “I’ve been researching.”
That statement never led anywhere reasonable. “I have concerns,” I admitted.
“We need goals. Fun goals. And if we have them written down, we’re statistically more likely to accomplish them.”
Bianca folded her arms. “I suggested a spreadsheet.”
