Page 20 of Silver Lining Love

In an instant, I became the mom to those three adorable kids, and lemme tell ya...I am far from strong. Or kickass. In fact, up until that night, I was a party girl who never worried about anything deeper than my plans for the weekend. I’m not equipped for this—especially since I lost the person I would’ve normally leaned on in this situation!

To say I’ve been flailing would be an understatement.

There has been one bright spot in the messy-house-late-to-school-bedtime-chaos darkness, though.

My neighbor.

He comes over pretty much every evening and spends almost the entire weekend at our place. Every weekend. He’s amazing with the kids, which isn’t surprising considering he’s the second of nine siblings and helped to raise the younger ones.

That’s kind of the problem, though. He’s always said he never wanted kids. That his childhood burned him out. That it was a dealbreaker.

So, even though the sparks are flying so fast and furious it feels like they could burn the house down (which, to be honest, with the year I’ve had, a burned-down house would pretty much fit), I don’t feel safe trusting those sparks.

Or the look in his eyes when he turns to me. Or the soft smile on his face when he watches me with the kids.

I would’ve asked my sister about this, so I’m asking you instead. And I’ve gotta warn you, those are big shoes to fill. But I trust you!

So, JGC—is there a chance that a newly-reformed party girl, a guy who swore he’d never have children, and the three kids neither of them ever expected to land in their lives can come together and make an unconventional but happy family?

(Not to tell you your job or anything, but PLEASE SAY THERE IS A CHANCE!)

Heartbroken but Hopeful

I reread what I’d just written. Was I really going to send this? It was supposed to be anonymous, but would people find out that Whitney in the Wild had posted this?

I hadn’t been active on any of my social media and had not publicly commented on what happened in my life. There’d been lots of speculation over my absence, including that I’d joined a cult, but no one on the Internet knew the truth. I never wanted my sister’s death to be a clickbait headline.

I stared down at my question, read it once more, then shut my eyes and pressed send. Now, all I could do was wait.

“What’s for dinner? I’m hungry.” Alice didn’t look up from her iPad. I could hear that she was watching Dinner at Julia’s.

She was probably hungry because she was watching cooking shows. I wasn’t sure what most four-year-olds liked to watch on YouTube, but I doubted it was old clips of Julia Child. Those were Alice’s favorites. I didn’t get it, but it seemed to make her happy.

“I’ll get you a snack when we get home and I’m not sure. Wyatt said that he was going to take care of dinner tonight.”

She sighed and her shoulders dipped in relief as she enthused, “Oh good!”

I tried to ignore her excitement but heard myself asking, “What do you mean, oh good?”

She looked up at me. “Wyatt never burns anything, and his food is never…” She scrunched her face and pursed her lips. “…chewy or cold or salty or gr?—"

“Okay, okay, I get it.” I cut her off before she could finish, but I was sure she was about to say gross.

I would be offended, but the truth was, I was a terrible cook. If it were up to me, we’d order out every night. But Addison had been adamant that she wanted to raise her children on home-cooked meals. That was important to her since we’d never had that growing up. Even when we moved in with Gamma Mary and Grandpa Mike, we ate mostly frozen dinners.

Addison had spent a lot of time learning how to cook. She’d loved all cooking shows but was a huge fan of Rachael Ray, Ina Garten, and of course Julia Child.

Oh, shit.

Was that why Alice was always watching those cooking shows? Because she missed her mom? How had I not put that together before?

I needed to snap out of the fog that I’d been walking around in. I needed to be more intentional, more aware of what was going on with the kids instead of just trying to make it to the end of the day.

When I finally pulled up to the front of the line, I saw that Mikey was walking toward the car quickly with his head down, and there was a woman walking beside him. At first, I thought that she must need to talk to me about his science project. But, when I saw her expression, I knew that it was something more serious.

When Mikey opened the door and got in, I saw what it might be about. He had a pretty bad shiner on his right eye.

“Are you okay?” I reached out instinctively.

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