“The girls love you,” Oli said with a smile. “Mia asked questions about you all day.”
“Yeah, I drive all the women nuts.”
Oliver snorted and elbowed him.
“What about Abby?” he asked, voice roughened by suppressed emotion.
“Abby—” Oliver hesitated. “Abby understands.”
She did. At least she tried. She smiled like a broken woman if she smiled at all. No longer the high society Barbie who Aberlour met years ago. The fake blond, so easy to despise, was now a mother watching her life fall apart. A wife who was losing her husband very soon and learning that he’d never really been hers to begin with. Aberlour still hated her, but not—it definitely was different now. He hated her for existing. For taking Oliver from him for so long. He no longer blamed her. In fact, he broke for her a little. He understood, all too well, how devastating these months had been for her. When he glanced at her now, he wanted to scream at Oli that it wasn’t fair. He wanted to, but he wasn’t altruistic enough to do anything about it. So, he just accepted his limited time with Oliver and closed his mind to anything else but grabbing what happiness he could get with both hands.
“Sabine called me,” Oliver said, breaking the silence.
“She has your number?” he asked, but Oliver didn’t answer.
“They’re organizing a celebration. At Sabine’s house. All the wives are in on it. We’re invited.”
A celebration. What was there to celebrate? They’d been dead for five long years. Five long years and their bodies were still somewhere out there, far from home.
Aberlour could barely recall what he’d been like five years ago. There was so little left of that guy. Everything was different now.
“We’re invited? Or you’re invited and she doesn’t know I’m coming?” Aberlour asked.
“Abe, come on.”
“They don’t want to see me, Oli,” he explained gently, as though it wasn’t obvious enough.
“They don’t blame you,” Oli reassured him.
Aberlour heard it again. The lilt, the change, the tone.
He was lying.
“They don’t need to,” Aberlour answered. “The blame is mine. I own it.”
Oliver looked as if he was garnering an argument for that, but Aberlour shot him a dark look.
He sighed, giving up on that particular fight.
“I want—need you to be there. If not for them, for me.”
It wasn’t quite right, Aberlour thought. If he went, he’d go for Oli, in spite of how the widows felt about it.
“I’ll think about it,” Aberlour replied, knowing he’d already lost. He cupped the side of Oli’s face, content to lose himself in the pools of cerulean for a minute.
Then another, and another. Three minutes had passed, so how many were left now?
“I’ll think about it,” he repeated, but Oliver heard the yes just as Abe had intended.
Abby made burgers on the BBQ, and Abe helped to finish preparing the tossed salad. All five of them ate outside, enjoying the summer weather. Oliver’s daughters, both little rays of sunshine in their own right, monopolized the conversation, dizzying Abe with dozens of questions and demands. It was—easy, almost. So much easier to exist than it usually was. After dinner, they played in the pool some more, Aberlour tossing the children up in the air, their giggles and shouts echoing around the neighbourhood. Oliver watched from his chaise lounge with a smile, too tired to participate. Abby pretended to read. Then, as the sun set, they lit the fire pit and made s’mores. The girls ended up sticky and covered in chocolate. In the background, Aberlour could feel time ticking away.
Make it count. Make it count.It was the underlying thought in every interaction. Every game. He had to make it count, for Oli, for his daughters, for himself, and though he’d never admit to it, for Abby as well.
Aberlour was putting out the fire in the backyard when he caught sight of her.
She was dressed for bed, wrapped in a robe she kept tightly closed with her arms crossed over her chest.
“He’s asleep,” she said, in lieu of a proper greeting.
