Rhys rose but paused at the door.“You’re good girls.I know this year hasn’t been easy.But being hurt doesn’t give us permission to hurt other people.”
Olivia’s lip trembled.Jillian looked away, her shoulders slouching, her jaw no longer set so tight.
“I’ll call you when it’s time to come down.Now give me your electronics, and I hope tonight we will be better than this afternoon.”
In his room, Rhys put the girls’ phones and iPads in the bottom drawer of his dresser and then straightened and let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.He could dissect a tumor without blinking, but a ten-minute conversation with his daughters left him gutted.
Rhys scrubbed a hand through his hair and started downstairs.The scent of tea and something faintly sweet drifted from the kitchen.Cat was there, sleeves rolled up, a streak of flour on her cheek, the kettle just beginning to whistle.For the first time that day, Rhys felt something inside him ease, not because the problem was solved, but because, for once, he wasn’t the only adult in the room trying to hold everything together.
“What smells so good?”
“You must be smelling the cinnamon and ginger,” Cat said, nodding at the mixing bowl and the baking sheet on the kitchen table.“Just about to put my first tray of gingersnaps in the oven.It was one of my favorite cookies my grandmother made, and Sarah, my roommate, loved it when I made them.I thought perhaps the girls would enjoy something sweet at teatime.”
“They don’t deserve it,” he said gruffly.
“We’ll get past this.”She flashed him a sympathetic smile.“Everything will be fine.”
“They’ve done this before.With that last minder, too.Every time they act out, it’s some variation of the same thing—testing boundaries.”
She picked up the tray with the round dough balls.“Testing who’ll stay?”
“Or how long it takes for someone to break.”
“I have no idea how old Miss Pettigrew was, but I’m fairly young and healthy.I have a strong constitution.I don’t see myself breaking in three weeks in Derbyshire.”
“Thank God for that.”
*
With the cookietray in the oven, Cat turned and faced him and, as she did, she saw for the first time just how tired he was, fatigue in his eyes, fatigue in his features, fatigue in the set of his shoulders.
“This is hard on you, as well,” she said softly.“It’s a lot.Your career, your book, your girls.”
“The girls come first.”
“Of course they do.”
“But they don’t think they do,” he confessed.“Not according to Jillian.”
“Yes, well, as you warned me, Jillian is in a phase, and everyone is going to feel her wrath until she can work through what’s troubling her.”
“Which is me according to what she said upstairs.”
“You must know it’s notyou.You are the parent here.You are present.You have work to do but every day you return and spend time with them and try to make new memories, but it’s not easy, or even comfortable, being the trailblazer.My grandmother had the unenviable task of taking care of me after my parents died, and I made it impossible for her for years.I didn’t want to live with her.I wanted my parents back.It didn’t matter that they had died, I wasn’t reasonable.I didn’t care about facts.I just wanted what I’d lost.That’s the nature of grief, and your girls’ mother might not be dead, but she’s not here, and you are not together and that is what they miss.”
“You’re not wrong,” he said after a moment.“It’s just that every time I think we’re making progress, every time it feels as if we’re moving forward, something gives way.”
“That’s how grief works,” she said.“It doesn’t care about timing.”
He turned slightly, brow creased, shadows in his eyes.“It doesn’t ever really leave, does it?”
“Grief?”She struggled to smile but couldn’t.“No.It just changes shape.”
Rhys looked at her for a long moment, then nodded.
From the sitting room, the fire popped, the sound loud in the stillness.“If you think you can manage—”
“I can manage,” she interrupted firmly.
