Page 123 of Walk on the Wilder Side

Tom gave her a look then nodded. “Yes, your salad came too.”

“Oh, good! Where is it?”

“Alejandro has it.” Tom pointed and she hurried over to him.

“Baby! I’ve got you a slice!” Roxie called to Marge, and she trotted over to join her girl ... the one she couldn’t stop passionately kissing even though the rest of us had told them to get a room more times than we could count.

“I’m gonna go by Axel.” Doris hurried off to where Axel sat beside the pool.

“It’s pretty cool your friends stuck around, Mom,” Rachel said.

We both looked around at all my favorite people laughing and talking while they dove into the pizzas we’d ordered.

“Yeah. I’m pretty lucky I found them. Not many people I know would snowmobile through a blizzard to get me to the airport so I could get home to my baby.”

“No one would.” Rachel laughed. “Literally no one else on the planet would have done that for you.”

I looked at Doris, Alice, and Marge and smiled. “You’re right. No one else would. I sure got lucky when they came knocking on my door.”

“Yes, you did.”

Blake came over and offered to take Emma. Rachel handed her over then gave him a kiss.

“And you sure got lucky with that one,” I said to her as he walked away kissing his new little girl.

“Yeah. I did.” She smiled.

“Come on. Let’s eat.”

“Just keep that gross pizza away from me.”

I gave her a gentle shove, then we walked over together and joined the group. After pizza was done and the sun started to set, Tom lit up the fire in the middle of the firepit. We all gathered around it and passed the beers around.

“This is the perfect last night,” Doris said. “We’re sure gonna miss you until you guys get back.”

“Yeah, we’ll miss you too,” I said. “But we want to stick around until we’re sure Rachel and Blake are all set with Emma, and I want to get a few more weeks in with that precious baby. I don’t know how we’re going to stay away from here. Too bad I hate L.A., or you’d be stuck with Tom and I living in your back yard.”

“Hey! You can’t leave us!” Marge protested. “We’re the Wilder Widows. We live on Wilder Lane. That’s the rule.”

“I’m not leaving you,” I said. “I’m just saying it’s going to be hard. I hope you’re ready for me to visit. A lot.”

Rachel looked down at Emma and smiled, then she gave Blake a look. He gave her a little nod back, and the two of them got matching sinister smiles.

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking between them. “Why do your faces look like that?”

“Well ...” Rachel started. “You aren’t the only ones that hate L.A. Blake and I have been talking for a while about leaving here, and now with Emma, we really want to raise her up in a smaller town. A community. We think that’s really important.”

“You’re moving?” My mouth formed an “O” as I stared at her. “Really? Where?”

They looked at each other again. “We actually closed on a house today. It was a surprise.”

“Where? Where are you living?”

Rachel’s smile, the one that looked a lot like Tom’s, spread wider. “We bought a house on Wilder Lane.”

My mouth dropped open as I struggled for words. “Wilder Lane?MyWilder Lane?”

“Yes. Your Wilder Lane.”

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