With them, she transformed into this very sweet woman that wore her affection on her sleeve. She had been that way with Grady too. She loved him deeply. His death had shattered her as profoundly as it had me.
She had already buried her husband. Grady’s dad passed away while Grady was in high school, the victim of a drunken driving incident. And now her oldest boy. This woman was a pillar of strength and control, but I couldn’t get past her icy demeanor long enough to form a real relationship with her.
At first, I had thought Grady’s death would bring the two of us closer together. We loved him the most in the entire world. Surely, we could bond over our mutual loss. But if anything, she’d pulled back even more.
And so we tolerated each other for the sake of the children, but that was it. If Grady and I hadn’t had children, I was positive Katherine and I would have parted ways permanently following the funeral.
The sight of her this morning did nothing but stress me out. Why hadn’t she at least called first to let us know she planned to stop by?
“Hi, Katherine,” I smiled down at her. “I wish you would have called first. My house is a mess right now.”
Her cool gaze floated over my disheveled living room and staircase piled with stacks of things that needed to be taken upstairs. “Don’t worry about that. We just wanted to stop by and see the kids.” She stood back up and moved into the house.
“Hi, Trevor,” I greeted Grady’s younger brother who clearly resembled his mother’s side of the family. His hair shone a honey brown and his eyes a somber blue. Grady was the spitting image of his late father from what I could tell from pictures. Trevor hadn’t inherited any of the red hair or freckles. But his face still reminded me of Grady. They made similar expressions and they both had this draw to them, this aura of something real and genuine. People had always been attracted to Grady. Trevor had that same charisma about him.
Only he was unforgivably less mature than Grady. He was twenty-nine now, without a serious girlfriend or kids. This apparently set him back light years from where Grady and I had been when we were that same age.
“Hey, Lizzy.”He patted my cheek as he walked by and I tried not to shatter. Grady called me Lizzy and Trevor picked the nickname up from him. It nearly killed me to hear that endearment from someone so much like Grady but I didn’t have the strength to correct him.
I closed the front door and leaned against it. Katherine and Trevor followed the kids into the kitchen, but I couldn’t find the motivation. Since these people showed up three minutes ago, my emotions hadn’t stopped picking up speed. I felt wild. Out of control. I felt the fragile threads that held my sanity together pull and tear.
There had been progress last week. I had thought maybe I was finally pulling myself together. But just a few minutes with these people had undone every bit of headway.
“Mommy, I’m thirsty!” Lucy called from the kitchen.
I closed my eyes and let a lonely tear slip. Brushing it away, I squared my shoulders and pushed the rest of my emotion back. They wouldn’t stay forever. I could survive this.
I joined the rest of the family in the kitchen and went to work getting drinks for everyone. Katherine sat at the small art table with the kids that I kept near the paneled windows. Trevor slid onto a bar stool and looked down at his hands.
His hair was tidier than usual and he wore something besides a t-shirt. The polo look was new for him. But so were the wrinkles around his eyes and the bags underneath them.
His pain hit me hard, like a punch in the gut. I loved Trevor like a brother, and he had lost someone he loved too. Unlike his mother, I could bridge the gap between us with shared grief.
Grady was my life, but he was also the sun that shone in his brother’s life. Grady had been the one to pull Trevor out of trouble and stand up for him whenever someone doubted Trevor’s worth. Grady had been Trevor’s constant champion. He had believed in his little brother like no one else could or would.
He had believed in Trevor so much, that in his will, he had left Trevor his construction company.
Despite my concerns.
Despite my objections.
I received a paycheck from Trevor as if I were a partner, but Carlson Custom Construction was now Trevor’s sole and permanent responsibility.
“How’s business?” I asked while handing him a glass of iced tea.
He took it without looking at me. “Fine,” he mumbled. “It’s fine.”
A sick nervousness fizzled through me. It wasn’t just that I depended on the business doing well to feed my kids, but this company was Grady’s baby. If Trevor allowed this business to fail, I would never forgive him.
I opened my mouth to ask him what exactly “fine” meant, but he spoke before I could get the words out. “I don’t know how he did it, Lizzy.” He finally lifted his dark blue eyes to meet mine. I sucked in a breath and forced myself not to look away. The lost look in his expression hurt my heart. My chin trembled and I started crying before I could talk myself out of it.
“Don’t know how he did what,Trev?”
Tears shone in his eyes, causing them to brighten. “I don’t know how he balanced everything. I don’t know how he knewwhat was the right decision to make all of the timeand which projects to take or not take. It’s too much.”
Trevor had worked for Grady since he graduated from high school and Grady had always treated him like his second in command. When Grady got sick and couldn’t manage the day-to-day business or even when he got really sick and stopped being a part of the company completely, Trevor had stepped in and managed everything.
When Grady was alive, Trevor hadn’t had a problem coping with the responsibility.
