Page 72 of When Love Takes Root

“He taught me not to fear what I didn’t understand. He told me fear makes a man careless in one direction, and pride makes him careless in the other. Either way, somebody can get hurt.”

Celeste nodded slowly, and her eyes shined with recognition. I kept going because she hadn’t made me regret starting.

“He taught me to respect power. Not just electricity. Any power. Words. Anger. Money. A man’s presence in a house. All of it can either protect or damage, depending on how it’s handled.”

Her fingers stilled on the table. When she looked back at me, the woman across from me wasn’t only the salon owner, the mother, or the widow everybody handled carefully. She was Celeste, sitting in a corner booth with a margarita sweating beside her hand, letting me near a place most people probably talked around.

“What happened to him?”

“My father?”

She nodded. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“I want to. My father passed suddenly. Heart attack. One day, he was here, fussing about Zeke drinking too much sweet tea and telling Mama he was going to fix the loose step on her back porch. Next day, the house sounded different.”

Celeste’s lips parted, but she didn’t interrupt. She placed her hand flat on the table, palm down, anchoring herself, or maybe anchoring the moment. I didn’t know which. I only knew she hadn’t looked away.

“It’s not the same as losing a husband. I won’t insult you by pretending it is. But sudden loss has a sound. Folks think the loudest part is the crying. Sometimes, it’s not. Sometimes, it’s the door that doesn’t open at the usual time. The chair nobody moves. The question you almost ask before you remember the person who knew the answer ain’t there.”

Celeste closed her eyes for one second. When she opened them, they were wet.

“That part,” she whispered.

I nodded.

Her voice stayed low. “People always talk about the funeral, the hospital, the moment. They don’t talk about after. The toothbrush. The shoes. The mail still coming with his name on it. The kids asking normal questions and not knowing they just split you open.”

I didn’t move. I barely breathed because there it was. Her grief, not dressed for church, not cleaned up for people who needed her strong, not softened for comfort. It came across the table, honest and unprotected, and all I wanted was to handle it with clean hands.

“I know I can’t understand all of it, but I can respect it. I can listen to it. I can make room for it without needing it to hurry up and get easier for me.”

Celeste looked at me then, really looked, and the whole restaurant seemed to lower its voice.

“That matters,” she whispered.

“It should.”

Her eyes held mine, wet but steady. “It doesn’t always.”

“I know.”

She didn’t answer right away. Something deeper than attraction had pulled up a chair between us, and I knew enough to sit still before I disturbed it.

I rested my forearms on the table. “I admire you, Celeste. Not because you’re strong. I know people throw that word at grieving women until it turns into another chore. I admire how you keep choosing love with what you still have.”

Her lashes lowered. A tear gathered, but she caught it with the side of her finger before it fell.

“Some days, I don’t feel like I’m choosing anything. Some days, I’m just making it to bedtime.”

“That counts.”

She gave me a small, broken smile. “You really believe that?”

“With everything in me.”

She took that in without rushing past it. Her hand stayed near her glass, but she didn’t reach for it. Her lashes lowered once, then lifted. Her mouth pressed together like she had a dozen feelings behind it and enough discipline not to let all of them come out in the middle of a restaurant. Across the table, her grief, her caution, and her curiosity sat right there with us, close enough for me to understand that whatever I said next needed weight, not decoration.

Celeste wasn’t just hearing me. She was measuring me. Carefully. She was deciding whether I wanted access to her peace or responsibility for protecting it. I respected the hell out of that.