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“Maybe that’s why I’m not planting any. I’m strapped for time as it is.”

Mom gives me the look. I look away.

“I want flowers, Mommy,” Mabel mumbles from behind her blanket. “Rainbow ones.”

“Maybe we’ll go to the greenhouse.”

“Today?” She pokes her face from the warmth of her blanket, hope in her eyes.

“Oh, I don’t know about today.”

I see the shuttering of her hope and hate myself for it. I glance back at the empty pots. There are so many of them. The task feels so big now, knowing it’s yet another task I have to do alone.

I miss Tate.

Not for the first time, I wonder how the ice broke. He’d been ice fishing on that lake every year we’d been together, and the years before as well. It was in the thick of winter, when the ice was said to be strong and stable…

And yet he fell through. God took him when I needed him and I just—now I just don’t know anything anymore.

My eyes sting. Mom must see it because she reaches out to touch my knee.

I clutch my cardigan tighter around myself.

“So, are you ready for the big barbecue next weekend, kiddo?”

I don’t think Dad will ever stop calling me kiddo. I adore it, even though I’m very much not a kid. “Not yet, but I will be.”

“Do you need me to pick anything up?”

“I’ve got it, Dad, thanks.”

“You let me know if that changes.”

“I will.”

“It’s going to be a busy few weeks.” Mom sits back in her chair, holding her coffee close. “The barbecue next weekend and the week after that is the end of another school year.”

I groan. “I know. They keep flying by faster and faster every year.”

“They never do slow down.” Dad drops a hand to Mabel’s back, rubbing. There’s a melancholy look on his face and I just know he’s thrown back to when I was little.

I bet he never thought that I’d be where I am now. A widow at thirty-one with two kids, struggling to right my upturned life.

The front door cracks and Owen lumbers out with Duke in tow. Duke took to sleeping with Owen when he realized my son likes to snooze in. Just like Mabel, his hair is a thing of the wild. Only, where she’s utterly adorable, my growing boy is showing traces of the handsome man he’ll be one day. There’s something about this messy sleep hair that throws me back to his younger years while also giving me a window to glimpse through into the man he’ll one day be.

The knots around my heart cinch a little tighter.

I wish he was little again so I could pull him into my lap and snuggle him close.

“Hey Memaw, Pepaw.” He lumbers to Mabel, ruffling her hair. “Mabel.”

Mabel giggles.

“And where’s my good morning?” I demand.

Owen turns to me with a grin. He lumbers to me, bends down and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Morning, Mom.”

I love my son so much. He’s going to be the best man one day. He already is.