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“I didn’t need protecting. I needed him to trust that I was an adult who could handle the truth. Just like I could handle parenting my own children, once I started to emerge from my grief.”

The silence stretched between them, heavy with old hurts.

“This was a pattern with my dad,” she continued, her words barely above a whisper. “He didn’t tell me my mom was dying until a month before she was gone. I had no time to make my peace with it. He said he didn’t want to worry me. I think it’s because he still sees me as that eight-year-old girl in pigtails.”

Hannah’s chest tightened with recognition. Wasn’t that exactly what Wes had done? Shouldering his pain alone because he didn’t think she was strong enough to bear it with him?

“About six months after Josh died, I started to come back to myself and realized my father had taken over everything. He was raising my children. He was organizing their lives. He was organizing mine.”

“That must have been overwhelming,” Hannah said softly.

“He was undermining my relationship with my own children. Plus he had started talking negatively about their father, whom they adored.”

Morgan’s voice grew stronger with remembered anger. “He was furious when I started applying for jobs to go back to work as a school librarian. When he found out I had applied for the position in Shelter Springs, it was ugly. He said horrible things about my incompetence as a mother, hitting all of my weak points.”

She drew a shaky breath. “You know what made it worse? He wasn’t necessarily wrong.”

Hannah understood. In her experience, the most painful fights were those when the other person’s accusations held a grain of truth.

“I had been incompetent. I hadn’t been caring for my children the way they needed because I was so lost in my own grief. I told him we needed to make this move to Idaho so I could reestablish my relationship with my children on my own terms. He was hurt and angry and lashed out, and we both said horrible things.”

Tears slipped down Morgan’s cheeks now, and she didn’t bother to wipe them away.

“He told me if I took the job in Idaho, he would never forgive me. I packed up the kids that night and we moved here. I didn’t even have the job yet, but I figured I would find something else if I didn’t get it.”

Hannah remembered how devastated and fragile Morgan had seemed when she had first arrived in Shelter Springs and moved into her rental a few streets over.

She had met Morgan and the children shortly after they moved to town at one of the town parks, when she had been babysitting Lydia for Holly for a few days while her sister flew to San Diego to spend some time with Ryan.

Morgan had been sitting alone on a bench while her children played, looking lost and overwhelmed by everything around her. Hannah had struck up a casual conversation, and something about Morgan’s quiet courage beneath her obvious pain had drawn her in immediately. Within minutes, they were talking like old friends.

Over the months, she had watched the other woman slowly lose that lost, frightened look in her eyes—until her cancer diagnosis had knocked her down again.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think since I started treatment,” Morgan said. “I know my relationship with my dad after Josh died wasn’t healthy, and I was as responsible for that as he was. Dad stepped in to fill the void I had created in the midst of my grief. All he did was care for my children. Why was I so angry about that?”

“Because you’re their mother,” Hannah said gently. “And you needed the chance to be that again.”

Morgan nodded. “Yes. You’re right. More than that, they needed me to step up and take care of them. If we had stayed with my dad, it would have been too easy to let him continue doing everything for us.”

She paused. “I was actually thinking about reaching out to him, maybe laying down some ground rules so we could work on reestablishing our relationship. Then I got sick. After that, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“Why?” Hannah frowned, trying to make sense of Morgan’s response. “You and the children need all the support you can find right now.”

“Yes. I know that.” Morgan’s voice grew quiet. “But I suppose some part of me was afraid to tell him. He and my mother had kept her diagnosis from me to ‘protect’ me, and I guess I wanted to do the same thing.”

“Were you protecting him or were you protecting yourself?”

Morgan met her gaze, and Hannah could see the wheels turning in her friend’s mind as the truth settled between them. “A little of both, maybe. I was terrified that if I let him back into our lives, it would be too easy to slip back into being his little girl again.”

“There’s no shame in leaning on someone else for a while,” Hannah said gently. “You’re leaning on me right now, and on this whole community. It’s hard to accept help sometimes.”

The words stirred something uncomfortable in Hannah’s chest. Wasn’t this exactly what had happened between her and Wes? He hadn’t let her in to help him grieve for his father or shoulder the responsibility for his mother. She felt an unexpected sympathy for Ed, understanding his desperate need to care for the people he loved.

“So what do you want me to do?” she asked, bringing the conversation back to the present. “Your father is here. He wants to connect with the children, but I told him you had to make that decision. I couldn’t make it for you.”

Morgan’s expression grew tormented. “I don’t know. Once again, I’m in a vulnerable position. I’m not sure I can think clearly, especially when some part of me is still that scared little girl who just wants her hero to fight the monsters in her closet.”

Hannah heard the longing in her friend’s voice, and it made her heart ache. Morgan was already going through so much. But Hannah couldn’t help thinking that Morgan could only benefit from having more people on her team. And the children needed the stability of a loving grandfather, whom they obviously adored.