Page 108 of Happy After All

“You want to go home?” he asks.

I nod. “Yes.”

He opens the car door for me. “I’ll see you back there.”

I feel good, knowing someone is going to be waiting for me. Even in the middle of this strange, unsettling wave, I know I can reach for him.

And that changes something.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Found Family—when the protagonists create deeper bonds with their chosen community than they had with their family, and these bonds help the protagonists to heal.

I’ve done my best to recover from the earlier upset, and I’m ready to lose myself in Nathan. I had my word count to hit—several days of it—and admittedly, I throw myself into it a little bit more vehemently than maybe I need to.

I need the distraction. When I’m done in the office, I walk outside, wrapping my arms around myself. Alice, Lydia, Gladys, and Elise are sitting in the courtyard.

Alice looks at me, her eyes kind and soft. And I stop.

I want Nathan. But something makes me linger at the courtyard.

“Join us,” Alice says.

I hesitate, then ultimately open the gate and head into the swimming pool area.

I can tell she’s acting with caution but that she wants to ask if I’m okay. Suddenly, I feel ... tired. Tired of holding my secrets in. Tired of carrying the weight of all this. Like it’s something I’m ashamed of. It’s not that. I’m not ashamed; it’s just that sharing hasn’t made it go away. If anything, it feels closer to the surface. I’m not broken, but ...

Nathan understands grief. He wasn’t thrown off by my reaction to it.

He didn’t think it was odd that this many years later I’m still affected.

I’m searching for something, and I don’t even know what it is. So I sit down.

“How did the rest of rehearsal go?” I ask.

“Fine once we got the camel settled down,” Alice says, smiling. “I love that I can still experience new things even at ninety-five. That’s a gift if you ask me. Though I’d like my next new experiences to include fewer barnyard animals.”

“Is a camel a barnyard animal, really?” Lydia asks.

“It depends on where the barnyard is, I think,” Gladys says in a sage tone.

Alice looks at me with those laser-focused eyes. She doesn’t want to put me on the spot, and I know that. For some reason, right now I don’t feel on the spot. I feel safe.

“It’s okay,” I say to Alice. “You can ask me.”

The others in the group look at Alice and me intensely.

“Amelia,” Alice says, in the most gentle tone I’ve ever heard from her. “Did you lose a baby?”

I nod. Wordlessly.

“I recognized that look on your face,” she says softly. “It was the same one I saw looking back at me in the mirror after I lost my little girl.”

Her little girl.

“Alice . . . I didn’t know.”

Alice does something I don’t expect. She smiles. “Oh, it’s amazing to think, it’s been so many years. So many I don’t count up how old she would have been.” She lets out a gentle sigh. “Because there is nowould haveorcould have, only whatis. I do think, though, about how long I’ve loved her.”

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