Page 70 of The Cottage on Blueberry Bay

“When I lost my wife, I stopped everything that didn’t involve Kyle,” he said, wanting her to not feel so alone about it all. “So, I stopped going to my poker night, my racquetball group, my career, dating…”

Meredith thought about her own grief. “I thought I was fooling everyone, but it was only myself.”

She leaned her head on her arms, looking into the fire.

“I’ve taught piano lessons for years,” she said. “I loved it.” Her eyes danced back and forth as she watched the flames. “When my mother was sick, I stopped most of my lessons to take care of her, but after she died, the kids I had taught had moved on.”

He thought how she must have felt. How alone she must have felt. He knew that loneliness. “I’m so sorry.”

“My children had left the house by then,” she said, shrugging. “I had been so wrapped up in my own grief that I never saw my marriage falling apart around me.”

“That’s a big blow.”

“So is losing your wife.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry you lost your father before you knew what a good man he was.”

Tears sprung to her eyes as she smiled. “Thank you for that.”

She looked back at the water, exhaling out a long breath.

He looked out to the moon. Its light drew a line across the ocean, splitting the Atlantic in two. Looking down, he saw a piece of sea glass and picked it up.

“Make a wish,” he said to her, holding out the blue piece.

“What did you say?” she asked, her eyes widening. She held out her hand to the piece of sea glass.

“Make a wish?” He placed the small piece in her palm when he looked up and focused on her lips. “It’s a mermaid kiss.”

“I thought it was a mermaid tear,” she said, looking at him questioningly, but with a smile across her face.

“Oh, right!” He laughed at his fumble, embarrassed of his Freudian slip. “A mermaid tear.”

“I think I’m going to hold on to this one,” she said, keeping it in her palm. “I need to save my wishes these days.”

He needed all the wishes he could get as well.

“Thanks for coming for dinner,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time the house was that boisterous.”

It had been well before his Pops had died. Maybe even since Lisa had passed.

“How long has it been without your wife?” she asked.

He could feel her reluctance to ask the question. Funny thing was, he wanted to talk about Lisa, but everyone tiptoed around her death, even him.

“She died about ten years ago.” Ten years and twenty-two days, to be exact.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. Her eyes met his with a sadness that pulled at his heart. “I can’t imagine losing my spouse when my children were practically babies. It must’ve been so hard for both you and Kyle.”

Quinn didn’t like thinking about the little boy who had lost his mother. “People kept telling me time would heal all, but with a kid, I feel like it’s harder now that he’s getting older, becoming an adult himself.”

Meredith rested her head on her knees. “No one told me that parenting gets more complicated the older they get.”

Quinn laughed out at that one. That was exactly how he felt. “I just wish I had someone to run things by. Remind me I’m doing okay as a dad. You know? I’m the good parent and the bad parent.”

“My children are grown and out of the house, but I still live like a housewife with three little ones at home,” she said. “I get up at the same time and do the same things. Go to the grocery store, clean the house, run errands, do laundry. I’m still making dinner every night as if someone will stop in. Not even my dad, who lives down the street, stops by that much. I don’t even eat half the time. Then I watch television and go to bed.”

“I still sleep on one side of the bed,” Quinn confessed. The feelings of losing Lisa came and went like the waves. “Sometimes I feel like I just lost her yesterday, and other times it was a whole other lifetime.” He couldn’t explain his crazy thoughts or why he was even sharing them in the first place with this beautiful woman, but somehow Meredith felt…safe.

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