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I’m not sure how to feel now, because it didn’t hurt the way I thought it would. I’m not sure what that says.

I don’t want to replace Tate with Holt.

“Looks good, Mom,” Owen says around a mouthful of pizza. “Dad would have loved this.”

I stiffen and hope it’s not too obvious.

“Yeah, he always loved the flowers.” My nose stings as I recall Tate watering them every morning before he left for work. “Even though he pretended not to.”

“I don’t mean just the flowers.” Owen cracks the top of his pop and takes a swig. “I mean Uncle Holt.”

Now, I know my stiffening is obvious. “What do you mean?”

Owen shrugs as he watches Holt instruct Mabel on where to set a petunia for the last pot. It’ll hang on the post that’s sat in the front yard since Holt was a kid. Since then, Tate affixed a solar light to it, so now it looks like a lantern. I’ve always thought it was lovely.

“Dad started talking to me about Uncle Holt a few months before he died,” my son admits.

My eyes snap wide and my head swings to take in my son. A single word pushes from my suddenly burning lungs. “What?”

I think my heart is going to tear from the cage I’ve kept it in all this time.

“He just said they were close once, you know?”

I nod. I can do nothing more.

“He told me about you and Uncle Holt.” Owen looks bashful for a moment, and I’m taken back to a time not long ago where I asked my son how he’d known of me and Holt. Now—now the truth comes out.

“So, it’s not people at school—people around town talking about us? It was your Dad?”

Owen’s eyes come to mine. Pools of warm espresso. “I wasn’t lying. They talk, too.”

“Just omitting a good portion of the truth, then?”

Owen bobs his head a moment, his eyes moving to the front yard again. To Holt and Mabel. “Dad said sometimes people aren’t ready for the truth. I figured you might be one of those people.”

“God, Owen.” I wheeze. I feel emotionally bludgeoned. “When did you become so old?”

He looks straight into my eyes. “When Dad died, I think.”

Ruined. God, it hurts.

I did this to my baby boy. Made him grow up too fast by falling too long into my grief.

But did I really grieve too long? I’d tried to pick myself up, to hide the pain under grueling workouts and pretty outfits and smiles that felt so close to shattering.

Did I fail?

I scoot closer to my son, resting my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Owen. I’m sorry I didn’t shield you from it all, better.”

“You can’t shield someone from death, Mom.”

How did my baby become so mature so fast?

“You’re a good man, Owen.”

“I miss him,” he tells me, and there’s a crack in the steady of his voice. Hearing it is the quake that rattles my heart, splitting the wreckage of it into something I’m not sure will ever be right again.

“Me too.”