That wasn’t the answer he expected, and he didn’t know what would change in one month.
“Who wrote your letters?” she asked.
Wade winced. “Kristiansen.”
Hazel’s smile quirked up the corners of her mouth. “I should have known.”
Kristiansen had a romantic streak the size of the mountains. Wade almost didn’t want to know what sorts of things he’d written in that letter to Hazel.
“May I ask you another question?” she said softly.
“Of course.”
“Do you get along with your family?”
It caught him unprepared, and he wanted to brush it off and act as though she’d never asked about them. If he told her she could ask a question, could he then refuse to answer?
She’d leaned closer to him, as if she couldn’t bear to wait to hear his answer. It was odd. Wade couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked about his family, much less shown such interest in what he might say about them.
Speaking about them felt like drawing water from a dry well, but the words came anyway. “I have no family left.”
Hazel’s face immediately softened. She laid a hand gently on his arm. As he stared down at it, half mesmerized by its presence and half wondering what he’d done to deserve such affection, she said, “I’m so sorry. You must miss them terribly.”
He drew in a deep breath, which shuddered through him as he exhaled. “I miss my mother. I miss the man my father was when she was alive.” He said nothing about Cole.
Hazel nodded, her hand tightening just a little around his arm to show support. “My parents have both passed on.” She gave him a conspiratorial little smile. “Which you might have known if you’d read my letter. My mother died several years ago. Watching my father grieve was almost unbearable.” She paused, as if she were remembering that time. “But we came through it together. None of us were the same afterward, but I suppose that’s to be expected. But Papa did the best he could, and he ensured my sister and I had all we needed. It was a terrible loss to us both when he passed on.” Her voice caught in her throat, and Wade felt the strangest urge to lean over and take her into his arms.
He settled for laying a hand over the one she still had on his arm. “I’m sorry you lost him,” he managed to say.
She nodded but said nothing in return, and Wade was almost thankful. His mind was a flurry of thoughts and emotions he fought to keep at bay, and Hazel’s hand was warm and comforting under his own.
Her story played again through his mind. How strange it was that two men could react so differently to the loss of a wife. Hazel’s father grieved, of course, but it sounded as if he continued to be a father afterward.
How was that possible when Wade’s own father barely spoke to him or to Cole after their mother’s passing? The grief consumed him whole, leaving nothing but an empty man who bided his time until death came for him too.
Just the thought that he could have reacted differently—that not all men lost themselves entirely to grief—was so overwhelming that Wade couldn’t begin to understand it.
He’d lived his life not wanting to be like his father. And the thought that it was possiblenotto felt like the sun rising over the horizon.
He blinked into the darkness, uncertain what it all meant. Uncertain what allowing Hazel’s hand to rest on his arm meant.
And uncertain about everything he thought was true.
