Page 11 of Silver Lining Love

Unfortunately, I’d been the baby of two and had not seen it all. The only time I hadn’t been scared shitless the past six months was when Wyatt was here. The only problem was, I had no idea how long he’d keep showing up and saving me. Another week. A month. A year, if I was lucky.

And then what? I had no fucking clue.

4

WYATT

“The perfect recipe for family is one part DNA and one part who shows up.” ~ Gamma Mary

“Can you take me to school tomorrow? My project won’t fit in Aunt Whitney’s car.” Michael asked before he shoveled a huge bite of spaghetti into his mouth.

“Sure,” I agreed, even though I knew the project would fit just fine in Whitney’s Prius.

Michael just didn’t want his baby sister anywhere near it, and I think he liked pulling up at school in a truck with me rather than a car with his baby sister and brother in the backseat.

I glanced over at Whitney just to make sure that his request hadn’t hurt her feelings, which I’d noticed sometimes happened when the kids wanted to do things with me instead of her, but she looked relieved as she mouthed, “Thank you.”

As happy as I was that she’d gotten to take a bath, and she looked like she was feeling better than she had been when I’d shown up, I was still worried about her.

I’d been telling her for months that she needed to get help. I knew that money wasn’t the issue. She had the money her grandma had left her, and her sister and brother-in-law had made sure that the kids would be well taken care of. Still, every time I suggested getting a nanny or someone to help with cleaning and cooking, she immediately shot me down.

“My sister didn’t have a housekeeper or nanny. Addi didn’t want her kids to be raised by someone else. She said, more than once, she would never pay for someone to clean her house when she was perfectly capable of doing it.”

Whitney felt like the only way to honor her sister was to raise her kids the way she’d have done it if she was still here.

From what I’d heard, Addison was basically Mother Earth incarnate. She’d had a very motherly, nurturing, caretaking vibe even before she’d had children. Whitney said that her big sister had pretty much raised her and was a “mom” long before she’d popped out babies. When she’d had her own children, her innate mothering instincts just expanded.

What I wanted to point out but didn’t, because Whitney was understandably touchy when it came to the subject of her sister, was that she wasn’t Addison.

What I had told her was that her sister hadn’t become a mom of three children overnight without any warning. Her sister also had a husband who worked from home and could help her. I’d pointed both of those things out to Whitney, but she wasn't hearing any of it.

“Who is your best friend?” Alice asked as she finished off the last of her garlic bread.

Your aunt. I knew that was a strange thing to say, but she was. Whitney was the only person I spent any time with outside of work. I thought about her all the time. Worried about her all the time. If anything happened, she was the first person I wanted to call.

Since I didn’t want to freak Whitney out, I said, “Growing up, I had two best friends.”

“What was their names?” Alice asked as she picked up her color crayon and started drawing.

“Kane and Remi.”

“Are you still close to them?” Whitney asked.

She’d been asking me a lot about my family and life in Wishing Well as a kid, lately. I wasn’t sure if it was just because we’d been spending so much time together or if it was because she was trying to figure what the best environment would be to raise her niece and nephews.

“We keep in touch.” It was more texts than phone calls, but we were in contact.

“Are they both still in Texas?” she followed up.

“Kane is; he was in the Marines, but he’s been back in Wishing Well for the past five years or so. And Remi is out in California.”

“Do you miss them?” Alice asked.

“Sometimes.” A year ago, my answer would have been no. I cared about my friends and family, but I’d never really missed them. That had changed sometime over the past twelve months or so.

“Can I be done?” Michael asked as he pushed the remainder of his spaghetti around on his plate.

“Yeah.” Whitney nodded as she stood and started clearing the plates.

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