Page 7 of Single All the Way

“You have a good memory.” Those were the days when chocolate didn’t go straight to my ass.

“You really don’t have any traditions?”

“Thanksgiving’s never been big for me. When I was growing up, my mom and grandma were always so tired from working that we went for easy. There were a few years my mom and I did frozen pizza because Grams had to work on the holiday.”

It had always been just the three of us. My grandma was widowed before I was born. My dad had never been in the picture. A fling with a tourist, my mom had always told me, and she hadn’t been able to track him down.

“What about with Blake?”

“We had a grand total of two Thanksgivings together once we were married.” Most years he’d been overseas working. We’d tried not to let it bother us. We were young and had our whole lives ahead of us, or so we’d thought.

I swallowed down those thoughts and noticed Ben was watching me, as if gauging how hard the subject of my husband was.

Flashing him a subdued smile, I said, “I’m okay. The upside of that is that Thanksgiving doesn’t bring a lot of hard memories, you know?”

He nodded and looked somber as he glanced back at the bread.

“What about you and Leeann?”

He was quiet for several long seconds. “Holidays were…tricky with Leeann. Some of them were good. Others…drama filled, you could say.”

I knew now his late wife, who’d been raised in foster homes, had been plagued with mental health issues and had taken her own life when Ruby was a baby. Apparently postpartum depression, added to her other challenges, had been too much for the poor woman. I was beyond sympathetic, but I didn’t have much insight about Ben and Leeann’s life together. I’d lived across the country on base.

Though Blake and I had spent a lot of time with Ben in high school, our connection had weakened after graduation, when Blake and I married and moved away. After my mom died and then a few years later my grandma, I’d become even more disconnected from the goings-on in Dragonfly Lake. By the time Ben met Leeann, when he was close to finishing vet school, we were lucky to see him once a year if we had a chance to make it home.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, not wanting to pry and bring up hard memories.

“Now I go overboard to make holidays special for my kids.” He chuckled. “Let’s just say we’ve started some traditions, especially since moving out here to the country. They don’t have many memories of their mother, good or bad. They were too young. Maybe I try to overcompensate.”

“I get that.”

Though holidays were barely on my radar, I could relate to trying to love my kids enough for two parents.

My mother-in-law, Kizzy, had been so good for Xavier and Skyler, loving them like a grandmother yet never hesitating to guide them or discipline them when they needed it. She was exactly what we’d needed after Blake’s death. She’d sacrificed a lot for us to be able to live with her—her privacy and peace, for starters. That was why I didn’t begrudge her her freedom and happiness now. She deserved all the bliss and love she could find with Shannon.

It was past time I stood on my own two legs anyway. God knows I’d had it hammered into my head—and my heart—that loss was inevitable. The more people I got close to, the more I risked losing.

“What kind of traditions have you started?” I asked, more to make conversation than out of true interest. I had a grand total of zero excitement about Turkey Day. My focus was on securing the future for my kiddos by finding us a place to settle, hopefully for the rest of their childhood and beyond.

With a quiet laugh, he said, “Nothing too out there. We all pitch in to make the meal. Before we eat, we go around, and each person tells what we’re most thankful for. After dinner, we go on a long walk in the woods to burn off some of the calories and get fresh air. Then we come back and have pie and play board games. In the evening, we hit the tree-lighting ceremony on the square.”

The microwave dinged, so I took the mugs out, added the tea bags, and let them steep as what he said soaked in.

“That’s a lot,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.

Inside, I was thinking I wasn’t entirely comfortable with any of it. My introverted self would rather hole up with my kids and watch a movie, maybe even drift off during it. We’d still be together as a family that way.

“That’s the point,” Ben said as he opened the final package of bread and started ripping it up. “It’s family time overload in a good way. Memory making. It’s turned out to be a special day the past couple years.”

I nodded.

“The kids love it,” he added, “and hopefully you will too.”

I made myself smile, and my brows rose as I looked at him. “We’ll see.”

“A skeptic, huh? Challenge accepted. We’re going to do whatever we can so you and Xavier and Skyler have the best holiday ever.”

“I’m terrified.” I made it sound light and funny, but I couldn’t deny the truth in that. I wasn’t in a holly-jolly mood. Never had been. Holidays were a hassle more than anything. Ben was a dear friend, was my husband’s best friend for most of their childhood, but that didn’t mean I was up for deepening the friendship. We both had too much on our plates to focus on anything but our kids and businesses.

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