Page 32 of Born to be Wilder

Marge grabbed her glass. “To Alice.”

Doris lifted hers. “To Alice.”

Alice lifted her glass and clinked it against ours.

We drank.

With a sigh, I exhaled the last of my anxiety. “Well, I think we can safely say I ended my time as captain with a bang. And now, I get to pass over the honor to the next widow.”

I reached into Doris’s bag and pulled out the Viking helmet. I turned it over in my hands once, then held it out across the table.

“Your turn, Captain,” I said to Doris.

Her face beamed. “Me? I’m the captain?”

I nodded, and she squealed as she took it with both hands.

She placed the helmet on her head. It slipped down over her eyebrows.

“Oh, Heavens,” she said. “It’s too big.”

“Oh, Heavens is right,” Marge said. “Let’s hope that’s not an omen.”

“Just no raccoons, Doris. Or bat shit.” Alice leveled her with a stare.

Doris straightened the hat with great seriousness. “I’m the captain now and I decide where we go next.”

“God help us all,” Marge groaned, signaling the waitress for another round.

I leaned back, watching my friends. The stress hadn’t disappeared, but for the first time since the diagnosis, it didn’t feel like it was drowning me. I was a Wilder Widow. And we were survivors.

I raised my glass. “To the Wilder Widows.”

“To the Wilder Widows!” they roared back.

DORIS

Chapter Seven

The sizzle of pancake batter hitting the buttered griddle was one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. It was the sound of being useful.

I hummed “Amazing Grace” under my breath, flipping a golden-brown disc with a practiced flick of my wrist. Nothing in this world settled me like having someone to cook for. Taking care of people was what I did best. It was the thing that made me feel most like myself.

The hardest days of my life had been after Harold had died, when for the first time ever, I’d had no one to care for. Rattling around that house with only myself to feed, which felt like no reason to live at all. Then came the widows to brighten up my life, and then Axel to dote on and the dude ranch every summer where I had dozens of hungry campers looking forward to whatever came out of my kitchen, and I got to feel useful again.

“Are those... pancakes I smell?” Sylvie emerged from the sleeping quarters first, tying her robe closed as she approached.

“They sure are, sweetie. Ready in a jiff!”

She slid into the booth, and I put a steaming cup of coffee in front of her.

“You’re a saint, Doris. You know that?”

Marge emerged next, rubbing her eyes. Her hair stood up on one side like a cockatoo’s crest. “What is this magical smell pulling me out of my sleep like a cartoon dog following one of those scent trails?”

I slipped a cup of coffee into her hands, and her eyes sparked to life. “Coffee and pancakes. I couldn’t find any bacon, and I was too scared to try to walk to the store alone in a strange town, so it’s just pancakes. Sorry.”

She took a sip of the coffee and exhaled a long ahhh. “The only thing you need to be sorry for is not living with me full time to make breakfast every morning. Roxie has many wonderful qualities. Cooking is not one of them.”