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“I can show you after dinner.” Mabel points a little finger to Holt’s bowl. “Eat.”

Holt’s eyes drop to her full bowl before looking into his nearly empty one. He presses his lips together as though to contain his chuckle. Tucking in, I do the same.

We eat dinner the way we used to eat dinner when we were a full, complete, not broken family for the first time in over a year.

Because my husband’s brother and ex-lover is sitting in his seat.

We finish eating with my heart cracking open in my chest to leak its gooey center into the rest of me. Grief and happiness and beauty that cuts me raw. I lost my husband, but there’s no denying that this is one of those nights that make life worth living. My baby’s glow with happiness and a man I once loved—maybe still love—God, I don’t know…

Holt looks happy, too.

“You cooked; I’ll wash,” Holt says from behind me. He’s so close, I can feel the warmth of his body even though he’s not touching me. I can see our reflection in the window above the sink—see how much larger he is than me. He’s a tower next to me. And somehow, for some reason, feeling the bulk of him behind me like this feels incredibly intimate. As intimate as it might feel to lean back into the hard expanse of his chest.

If I fell, would he catch me with his hands on my hips?

Would his fingertips seek the skin under my shirt?

My breaths begin to race.

“I didn’t cook.” Gosh, I sound breathless. “The crockpot did all the work.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

Why does the sound of his rough voice spill through me like gravel? Harsh and gritty with just a touch of pain and oh, so good.

It shouldn’t be this good.

“Uncle Holt,” Mabel’s hand slides into his—into the hands I just imagined on my hips, sliding under my shirt. “You said you’d come see my tutus.”

“Sure did, princess.”

She tugs him from the kitchen, and it takes all the effort I have inside of me not to slump into a puddle of liquid woman against the sink.

21

THE IN-BETWEEN

MAY 2023 – PRESENT DAY

“She wasn’t kidding. She’s got every color.” Holt enters the kitchen. “Sorry it took so long. She served me tea and cake.”

“But of course.”

“Then I figured I was up there, so I stopped in and checked out Owen’s room.” He pauses to look down at his feet.

I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking. That Owen’s room was once his. Mabel took Tate’s room, so it looks nothing like it once looked. Now, the walls are a soft, delicate shade of pink. Andy painted a collage of pastel peonies on one wall.

Owen’s room is the same deep navy blue it had been when it was Holt’s. I’d never been able to paint over it, and Owen had never asked. There are soccer posters tacked where there were once hockey posters, but the room feels familiar in a way I’m sure Holt didn’t miss.

“And?” I pull the bottle of sparkling rosé from the fridge. “What did you think?”

“Reminds me of me.” There’s a rasp of emotion in his voice that calls my eyes to his.

Quietly, I ask, “Do you want a glass?”

“Would you happen to have beer?”

I pull my bottom lip into my mouth as I shake my head apologetically. “I haven’t bought beer since Tate.”