Piece of My Heart (Fostering Love 4)

I giggled at the look on his face, my heart lightening. “I can make another pair,” I replied.

“Cool.” He handed them to me. “Make me one, too, okay?”

* * *

We stayed up talking late into the night with Alex’s parents. Eventually, we moved into the living room, where Alex and I curled up together on the couch. The closeness was like a balm, soothing all the surface hurts while we focused on the deeper ones.

Sometimes we talked about the accident, and sometimes we talked about what we planned to do for the next couple of days, but no one brought up the future. I don’t think Alex or I were ready to make any big decisions yet. We were still licking our wounds, still raw from the past couple of days and all the days that had come before.

We slept in the same bedroom we’d shared at Thanksgiving, and I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed in a way that hours spent in bed had never given me. I think what I was feeling was hope, but at the time I was too nervous to give that feeling a name.

Over the next few days, Alex and I went on long walks through the forest. We spent time quietly and gratefully falling further in love with each other. I told him stories about my parents, and he told me about his birth mother and what it had been like when she’d fallen into a depression so deep that even her twin sons hadn’t been able to pull her out of it.

I wasn’t blind to the parallels in our stories, and I held Alex’s hand a little tighter as we walked slowly through the trees. He’d lost his first mother because she hadn’t been able to climb out of the dark pit she’d fallen into, and after that, my husband had felt responsible his entire life for being the person who made others happy. He’d taken on that role with Abraham, and though I knew he wasn’t ready to hear it, I came to realize that he’d done the same for me.

His family gave us the space we needed to get back on our feet, but by the end of the week, our alone time was up.

“I missed you,” Ani said, rushing through the front door of Liz and Dan’s house, Abraham carrying Arie in behind her. She hugged me hard, then pulled back to get a good look at me. “You’re doing better,” she said. “Good. You looked like shit before.”

“Thanks,” I replied with a small laugh. I was beginning to learn how to read between the lines with Ani. Sometimes she said exactly what she meant, and other times you had to search for the hidden meaning in her words. She’d been worried about me.

“You,” she said, pointing at Alex across the room. “I called you like four days ago, and you never called me back.”

“I was busy,” he replied, backing away.

“Don’t make excuses,” she bitched, walking toward him.

Bram stopped in front of me, and as he gave me a tender smile, I finally saw the strong resemblance between him and Alex. “Hey, little sister,” he said, wrapping one arm around my shoulders. “Okay?”

“Almost,” I replied honestly.

“You’ll get there,” he said, giving me a squeeze.

We congregated in the kitchen, since that seemed to be where the Evans family always ended up, and for the first time in so long, I was able to relax. I laughed at the way Ani teased Bram and Alex, complained good-naturedly when Dan told Bram and Ani about how much I hated winking and they all started doing it, and leaned against my husband, enjoying his strong arm around my shoulders.

“You should see a counselor,” Liz told me later that night as we scooped ice cream for everyone. She laughed a little at the surprised look I gave her. “Maybe not the best way to bring up the subject, but is there a good way?” She shrugged. “I just know from experience that sometimes you need to think about this stuff when you’re feeling good, because when you’re feeling bad again, it’ll be hard to imagine anything helping.”

“You’re right,” I murmured, scooping out another spoonful of ice cream. “And kind of sneaky.”

She laughed.

“You just countered any argument I could have made by acknowledging that I’m doing better before I could use that excuse.”

“Honey, I’ve raised a lot of kids,” she replied, bumping me with her hip. “There isn’t any excuse you could make that I haven’t heard before.”

“I think you’re right,” I said quietly, thinking back to Dan telling me that admitting I wasn’t okay was the first step to being okay. I really wanted to be okay again. I looked at Liz. “I think Alex should go, too.”

“I think you’re right,” she replied.

* * *