Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Sweetie. Your sister did a load of laundry and accidentally put a red sock in with your favorite white blouse . . .
Maybe this was it. Maybe her mom was finally going to have a breakdown and tell her that she just didn’t know how to go on anymore without her partner. Kate was ready for it. She’d been living with her mom for the past two and a half weeks and had read every book on grief there was.
“What’s up?” Kate asked with a forced smile, setting the DVD cases on the end table next to her mother’s tea before sitting on the ugly mustard-colored ottoman.
Her mom reached out and tucked a strand of Kate’s hair behind her ear, her smile a little small. “I’ve been so grateful for you these past few weeks. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
Kate reached up and squeezed her mom’s hand, her eyes watering a little. The day of her dad’s death, Kate had come up to be with her mom and sister and hadn’t left. Mostly because she hadn’t wanted her mom to be alone in the house she’d shared with Kate’s father for the majority of her life. But the truth was Kate had needed to be here for her own sake as well.
She’d known, of course, that her parents wouldn’t live forever. That eventually she’d have to say goodbye. She just thought she had so much more time. That her dad would be there to walk her down the aisle someday. To meet Kate’s children.
To be there when she needed him.
Kate blinked rapidly to keep the tears from falling. The nights were for crying. The days were for being strong for her mom.
She forced a smile. “I’m here as long as you need me. The guys found someone to cover for me at work, and Lara and Sabrina cleaned out the fridge in my apartment so I don’t go home to spoiled milk and moldy cheese.”
Eileen smiled. “You have good friends.”
Kate nodded in agreement. They hadn’t come to the funeral, because there hadn’t been a funeral. For as long as Kate could remember, Archie Henley had good-naturedly griped about funerals, saying they were depressing as heck. And he didn’t buy into what he called “that celebration-of-life nonsense.”
Celebrate me when I’m alive. Let me have a long-overdue nap when I’m gone.
The Henleys had honored Archie’s wishes. No funeral. And Kate was secretly glad for it. She was aware and appreciative of the love and support she knew was just a text or phone call away, but she needed space and time. From work. From New York.
Even from whatever was happening with her and Kennedy, because Kate wasn’t sure she could survive two emotional roller coasters.
The details of the day her dad died were a blur, but Kate remembered breaking down in Kennedy’s arms. Remembered him packing a bag while she lay curled on her couch. She remembered him hiring a town car to drive her to her parents’—to her mother’s—holding her hand all the way. By the time they’d arrived, her mom and sister were home from the hospital, and friends and extended family had already heard the news, stopping by with the intention of helping but clueless as to how to do so as they wrestled with their own grief.
Kennedy had taken Kate up to her parents’ bedroom, where her mom sat unmoving and uncomprehending on the bed, Kate’s sister looking as shell-shocked as Kate had felt. Hours later—Kate had no idea how many—she’d gone back downstairs. Kennedy was gone, as was, thankfully, everyone else.
Days later, Kate’s aunt had told her that a “serious man in a blue suit” had kindly but firmly ushered out everyone in the house with instructions to come back in a day or two. Somehow, Kennedy had known what Kate and her family needed, which was solitude and time, and he’d made it happen. If she had to guess, she’d bet that it had also been him who’d taken charge at Wolfe, finding a temporary replacement for her, as well as getting in touch with Lara and Sabrina to make sure her mail was collected and her plants watered.
She kept meaning to thank him. To thank all of them, but her mom needed her more. Her place was here in Jersey, close to her father’s memory.
“Kate, I think you need to go home.”
Kate blinked and stared at her mom, who seemed to have aged a hundred years in the past few weeks, and yet . . .
Kate looked closer, looking beyond the grief, the slightly red-rimmed eyes, and saw something else she couldn’t quite identify.
“I am home,” Kate said.
Her mom smiled and took Kate’s hand in hers. “Of course you will always have a home here—my door will always be open.”
My door. Not our door. This was her mother’s house now, not her father’s.