Page 54 of Just a Heartbeat Away

She started to tell him that he didn’t need to feel obligated to explain anything but then he just kept right on talking.

“It’s hard, you know? Being a single dad and, ah, a widower. Both things can kind of be conversation stoppers on a first date. I guess I’m sort of casting a wide net these days.”

Via knitted her brow and took a big gulp of her water. It made her so sad to think that Sebastian was spending time with women who pulled away from him because of who he was, his situation. What a bummer. She didn’t like the thought of him looking so hard for companionship and just getting lonelier in the process.

“No promising prospects?” she asked in a friendly way, although her voice sounded weirdly gruff to her own ears.

He shrugged and then looked up quickly. “I hope you don’t feel weird that Serafine and I aren’t a love match. We texted yesterday and both agreed.”

“Oh really?” Via felt a strange tug in her stomach. She had been worried about Fin and Sebastian dating, sure, but at least she’d known that Fin would be sweet to him. And that he would be respectful of Fin.

“Yeah. She’s lovely. And beautiful. But in the end, she’s just too young for me.”

Sebastian’s eyes were on the video game when he said it, and Via was glad, because his words jolted her. Too young? It had honestly not occurred to her that Sebastian would think of himself as significantly older than she and Fin. Sure, he was obviously very mature and in a very settled stage of his life. But just looking at him, he didn’t seem that old. Sure, he had some gray hairs, and no hint of boyishness at all.

Evan had wide shoulders but slim hips and always kept his face shaved smooth. Sebastian had the more gruff, substantial look of a man who was done growing. He was simply...adding. Muscle, mass, beard.

She thought he was probably in his late thirties. Or maybe early forties. She considered asking, but the words wouldn’t come. She took another gulp of ice water and let her eyes drift to the photos on the wall.

There was a series of photos of baby Matty squishing his cheek against the face of that same stunning woman in most of the other pictures. She looked like a Swedish princess. Long blond hair and sky blue eyes.

“What was your wife like?”

The question was a surprise to both of them. But Via asked it with the candor and matter-of-fact-ness that could only come from having lost people close to her as well. She knew what it was like to have people cringe away from your grief, your loss, and it had meant that she’d kept it bottled up for years longer than she should have. She hadn’t planned on asking him the question, but she didn’t particularly regret it once she had.

Sebastian cocked his head to one side and pulled the blanket back over his lap. Via tossed him a pillow and he jammed it behind his head as he shimmied down to a half sit. The soup had given him a little color back but she could still see the fatigue in his eyes.

“Cora was...very intense. Very particular. The only one like her. She had this feeling about her. Like licking a battery.” He sort of laughed to himself. “She was loud and crass and people had very specific reactions to her. You were either laughing the second she came into the room or groaning. For instance, Ty never really warmed to her. She stressed him out. But Mary and she were best friends. Mary thought she was the funniest person alive.”

Sebastian stretched out on the couch, and his feet came within six inches of Via’s leg. He stared at the ceiling as he talked. “To Cora, the world was very A plus B. She liked things to fall in an order. A line. She liked controlling whatever she could control. Especially for Matty and for me. I hated that part when she was alive and missed it so bad when she was gone.”

He brushed the back of his hand over his eyes and something came wildly loose inside of Via when she realized that he was crying.

“But she was also really fun,” he continued. “It was like she spent so much time inside the lines that like once every two months she just had to cut loose and lose her mind. She’d party hard, not drinking, but like, at a water park or bowling or wherever. A one-woman party.” He wiped his eyes again. “She loved peanuts.”

Via felt something inside of her fold over, once and then twice. She kept waiting for him to describe Cora physically. She’d obviously been so gorgeous. But he didn’t. He spoke about her as a person. A mother. A wife. And it touched Via. She felt tender, both with affection for Sebastian and, surprisingly, sadness that she hadn’t known this woman.

“She was such a good mom. Honestly, it kind of surprised me. Because she was such a harsh lady. She didn’t suffer any fools. She didn’t bother with whiners of any kind. But she was so sweet with Matty. Rigid. Lots of rules. But so sweet. They had such a good thing going. He was lucky to have her. Some people go their entire lives without getting loved that hard. And he had it for the first three and a half years of his life.”

“She died in a car accident?” Via asked, though she already knew it was the case. Just like her parents. She wondered for a second if Seb hated the phrasecar accidentas much as she did. Something about the wordaccidentmade it all seem sowhoopsy daisy. Like they weren’t people alive and well with lives and kids one second and then dead on the blacktop the next second.

She felt so small there on the couch with a hand-knit afghan over her lap. Like a child snuggled in for a scary story. She wanted to be able to comfort this man who was sitting there, looking so tired. So dreadfully sick. So sad he couldn’t quite control the words coming out of his mouth.

“Yeah. Drunk driver. A college kid. He was all right, but his life was over, too. I met him once. Last year. He’s doing time for manslaughter. I visited him in prison and wished I hadn’t. He lost everything that day. Matty and I? We still have each other. But that kid’s life is just over.”

“Daddy, can I play one more?” Matty was turning around and pulling the giant headphones to one side. He looked like Princess Leia.

“No, it’s time to start getting ready for bed.”

Matty looked for a second like he was going to argue but he glanced over at Via, all tucked in on the couch, and he obviously scented an opportunity. “Can Miss DeRosa put me to bed tonight? Since you’re sick, Daddy?” The second half of his statement proved just how much of a smooth talker this kid was.

“I’m sure Miss DeRosa has places to be,” Sebastian said.

“Of course I can,” Via said at the same time. She turned to Sebastian. “Really. I’d love to. You rest.”

She didn’t mind a bedtime story with a sweet, sleepy kid, but she was also very appreciative of a moment to gather her wits. That thing that had folded inside her stomach wasn’t unfolding. If anything it was stubbornly pulling denser and denser. Watching him talk about Cora had been a moment filled with motion and transition. It was almost as if he knew she had put him in a certain box and he’d stubbornly picked himself up and plunked right down into another.

The lamp lighting his face from one side. The stubborn tears that he’d wiped at first and then just let glint in the green-and-blue light from the television. Christ. The look in his eye as he’d just said whatever had come to mind next.

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