Page 51 of Out Of A Fix

Griff smiled at him. “I didn’t know you liked tomatoes.”

“I do,” he assured his son.

“Okay, then,” he said and left us.

Luke returned his attention to his daughter. “Okay, baby, hit me.”

She cleared her throat. “We’re normalizing talking about Mom.”

Fortunately, he had swallowed a blueberry. A piece of cantaloupe might have required me to get up and give him the Heimlich. As it was, he still nearly choked to death. Darwin quickly brought him a large glass of water, and one for me as well, and once the man could breathe again, we all waited on him.

“I’m sorry, love,” he rasped, his eyes watering, this time not in grief or regret, but having narrowly escaped death. “What did you say?”

She giggled. “I like your voice like this.”

He coughed again and took several sips of water.

“I just wanted you to know that once Mom left, we all basically treated her like she died, and that’s really terrible.”

It was so interesting to hear words I used filter into their vocabulary. I said terrible a lot, and now, so did the kids.

Luke nodded to his daughter because it was true. He’d been treating his wife like she died and so had the kids.

“We’ve all been super worried about talking about her, and one of the reasons is because we didn’t want to make each other sad.”

“That makes sense.”

“But we’ve talked, and we’re all fine bringing her up. And yeah, I get sad, so do Griff and Dar, but that’s okay.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed.

“But we all hope you won’t be sad.”

“Oh no, sweetheart, I won’t be. I’m not sad now and won’t be in the future. I was mostly angry, but you’re right, you should talk about your mom.”

“And you’ll be okay?” she asked him, leaning forward like an interrogator.

“I will be okay. I swear,” he asserted. “And honestly, I’ve been finished being upset at what she did for a while now. I’m sorry I didn’t share that with all of you, because having to guess how another person feels is the worst.”

“Do you promise it’s okay?” Darwin asked as he put a glass of milk in front of his sister, and then her plate, which had a lot of fruit, some bacon, and scrambled eggs.

“Thank you,” she said to her brother, and then leaned sideways and called over to her older one, “Thank you for the strawberries, Griff, and for the powdered sugar on the side.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, bringing a plate over for Darwin that was similar to mine without the tomatoes, only fruit for him, and no strawberries in his mix, and a small plate of tomatoes for his father.

“Thank you,” Luke said to Griff, then looked at his younger son. “Honestly, I miss her mostly for you guys, but you have to know that even if she were here, we wouldn’t still be living together.”

“Because she cheated with Mr. Conti?” Darwin asked.

Luke glanced at me.

“I can go to the other room,” I rushed out.

“No, don’t. I just didn’t realize you’d talked to the kids about this.”

“Why would he talk to us about your and Mom’s relationship?” Griff asked, taking a seat next to Darwin, glaring at his father. “What would have been the point of that?”

There was no missing that we were all on one side of the table, and Luke was on the other. And I wished that one of them had made the choice to sit with him, but I couldn’t make them.