Second Chance at the Riverview Inn (Riverview Inn)

“She’s just a girl,” Micah lied. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Six

One Week Later

Helen’s office was at the very back of Haven House, just off the big industrial kitchen. It made for a lot of noise and interruptions, but she didn’t mind. She liked the sound of women’s voices laughing and talking, and kids running in and out of her office to the big play room on the other side of the kitchen.

Her daughter, Bea, was sitting in her lap, taking edamame out of the pods and lining them up in front of her on the desk.

“You’re supposed to eat those,” Helen said into her daughter’s curls. She smelled like soap and banana and little-kid sweat from playing hard outside with the other kids before lunch.

“I will,” she said, and her chubby fingers split another bean and took out a big fat edamame.

In the last month of her pregnancy, Helen had gone for a while to a widow’s support group that met online. She hadn’t been married to Evan when he died, but that distinction was meaningless when it came to grief. And she remembered this one woman, Anna, who’d said she couldn’t stop attributing everything her children did to her late husband. Every quirk or trait was something her husband had done until she’d written herself right out of the genetic pool.

She’d laughed when she said this, and Helen, so pregnant at the time, couldn’t imagine doing that. Going through pregnancy and birth, and then somehow willingly not seeing yourself in your child? Ridiculous.

But she sat here watching her daughter, her nose buried in Bea’s chestnut curls (so like Evan’s), and watched her daughter methodically pull things apart so she could count and study them, and all she could see was Evan. Evan shining through their daughter.

She understood now, why Anna did it. Because it was comforting to see her beloved and missed Evan alive in some way.

“Hey, Helen?”

Helen spun herself and Bea toward her open office door to find Daniella, the woman who ran the kitchen, standing in her doorway.

“What’s up Dani?” Helen asked.

“Mail,” she said and handed her a small stack of envelopes.

“Anything good in here?”

“I doubt it. Are we still on for Monday night?”

Bachelor Night.

Every Monday night Dani stuck around to watch The Bachelor. They popped popcorn and talked shit to the TV screen and it was the best.

“Actually,” Helen said, feeling a giddy stab of bravery. “How about if we watch The Bachelor at your house? That way you don’t have to stick around here until eight p.m.”

“You want to drive to my place?”

It was a thirty-minute drive and Helen didn’t have to get on the highway. It was a baby step in the grand scheme of things.

“Yeah, why not?”

Dani blinked at her in a second that stretched. It was a second Helen was familiar with. It was the second after people heard about what happened to Evan. It was the second after people found out she’d had a baby on her own.

This second made her skin itch. It made her want to scream.

She couldn’t heal with everyone watching the process.

“That’s a great idea,” Dani finally said. “If you’re cool with it?”

“Totally cool. I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t.”

“Mom.” Bea was now eating all the little edamame beans she had lined up. “Your computer binged.”

“I gotta…” Helen held her thumb out toward the computer.

“Go,” Dani said. “And yes to Monday at my place.”

Helen turned to her computer. There were dozens of emails that she was expecting. Mundane ones. Serious ones. One a shipping confirmation for a new yoga mat she’d ordered. But there was only one she cared about.

It had been a week since she and Jonah went down to watch Band of Outlaws. One week since she’d sent Micah that follow-up email asking for donations for the Haven House Summer Picnic auction.

One week since that one text exchange.

Since the closet.

And she’d heard nothing else. Not one thing.

Not even from Jo about the additional asks.

So, the logical part of her brain was, like…that’s that. Nothing more to see there.

But the part of her brain that remembered what he smelled like in that closet was keeping reckless hope alive and every bing that stupid computer made might be him.

Helen kissed her daughter’s head and opened up her email.

“Hey,” she said. “My yoga mat shipped.”

It wasn’t until the afternoon that she remembered the mail and ran back to her office to grab it. She had her purse, and Bea was waiting in the kitchen, but she flipped through the mail real quick.

Bills. Garbage. Bills. And then an envelope, soft, the edges crumpled, written on with blue ballpoint pen.

Helen sucked in a breath that got caught in her chest. Lodged somewhere between her lungs and her stomach. The address was her name and Haven House.

Return address was a stamp from Taconic Correctional Facility.