Page 19 of From the Embers
“No. I get it. No explanation needed.” I gave Madison’s belly a tickle—anything to avoid Bree’s gaze.
She rested her hand on my forearm. “I appreciate the offer though.”
“Yeah. Of course.” I forced a smile. “Anytime.”
Bree extended her arms and Madison all but leapt to her, leaving me standing there empty-handed and wondering how I’d managed to both embarrass myself and shatter whatever progress we’d made toward comfortably coexisting.
“Hey, uh, I’m going to take Luna out and get her changed. Looks like she used that banana I gave her as a hair gel instead of breakfast.” I squeezed past Bree, careful not to touch her, and scooped Luna out of the activity saucer.
“Eason…” Bree trailed off, cleared her throat, and then smiled. She wasn’t as good at faking it as I was, so it was closer to a grimace. “Thanks again. For everything. Except the syrup.”
I jerked my chin and winked. “What syrup?”
Without giving her the time to respond, I pulled the back door open and slid through it, my baby girl babbling the entire way.
BREE
“You sure I can’t get you anything else?” Rob’s secretary, Jillian, asked, cleaning up the remnants of snack wrappers and juice boxes she’d magically produced from her Mary Poppins desk drawer. I guessed being a sixty-five-year-old grandmother to nine meant you learned a few tricks about being prepared.
I held the phone between my ear and my shoulder, offered her a tight smile, and lied, “No, I think we’re good. Thank you.”
Truthfully, I was drowning. Just setting foot in Rob’s office had been a herculean task. He should have been there. Sitting behind the huge mahogany desk, welcoming us in with a smile—or, if it had been me without the kids, a mischievous glint in his dark-brown eyes.
Without him, the massive corner office filled with bookshelves and a six-person sitting area was too empty. I’d told myself this was just a quick stop. I’d grab what I needed, take the rest home, and work on it at night when the kids went to sleep. Though actually locating the things I needed in his messy cabinets was something different altogether. For as clean and tidy as Rob had been in virtually every other facet of his life, his filing system made my eyes twitch.
Jillian had known where most of the contracts I needed were, the majority of those being digitized, but there were quite a few orders I couldn’t locate. So, rather than the quick stop I’d hoped for, we were on hour number two of me calling our vendors all around the world.
Jillian nodded, her orthopedic shoes squeaking against the wood floor as she backed out of the door. “Well, if you need anything, just give me a holler.”
“Will do,” I once again lied. Accepting help was still a foreign concept to me.
Rob had been an amazing husband, but he’d worked a lot. I couldn’t fault him for trying to take care of his family. The majority of the time, it was just me and the kids. That was my job. A job I’d picked. A job I’d dearly loved. A job I should have been able to do without relying on everyone around me. I understood the whole it takes a village concept, and when someone was in need, I was the first one to offer a helping hand. But being on the receiving end of that help was a slightly harder pill for me to swallow.
People meant well; I knew they did. But letting go of that kind of control did not give me comfort. Especially since it felt like every portion of my life lately was up in the air, flying around in a state of upheaval. I needed to grab on to anything I could and rein it in. Even if at that moment all the help I needed was something as simple as asking Eason or Jillian to watch the kids for a few minutes so I could actually get work done. I just couldn’t do it.
With the click of the door, Jillian disappeared, leaving me alone, the way I feared I would always be.
“Asher, stop!” I whisper-yelled as my son dragged a six-foot-long paperclip chain across the floor.
Madison squealed with delight as she crawled after it like a baby Olympian. Using my foot, I lifted it out of her reach before she had the chance to grab it—and no doubt put it into her mouth.
“Hey!” Asher objected—which I would like to note was not a whisper-yell. Half of Prism’s employees must have heard it.
“Mr. Winters?” A man’s voice finally came through the line.
I quickly switched the phone to my other ear, nearly dropping it in my frenzy. “Yes. I’m here. Well, I’m not Mr. Winters. But I am his wife.” I cut my gaze to Asher. He had already moved on to shredding the paper I’d given him to color on. Damn Eason and that syrup. Giving him my back as if it could shield him from the truth, I finished, “My husband passed away last month.” The slice through my heart was just as sharp as ever.
