Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,20

efficiently. “I’ll take you up on the offer to have Luna though. I’d prefer if she wasn’t home alone.”

I nodded. “Of course. She’s welcome anytime, though when my sister isn’t cooking it’ll be something frozen or takeout.”

He nodded once and then turned on his heel and left.

Like walked away.

Without a word.

And I watched his retreat.

6

It was Ryder’s birthday. He didn’t want a party ... because he was Ryder. Most of the kids who went to Black Mountain had parties that cost more than your average wedding. There were live bands, professional catering, fucking dress codes.

We’d gone to one, David and I, the night before he died. Wendy’s son. We’d both joked about how she’d judge us when she came to our place for Ryder’s birthday the following week to pizza, beer, and a karaoke machine.

But then he’d gone and died.

A week before his son’s sixteenth birthday. There had been no party. Not even the amazingly crappy one we’d been planning. Instead, there was pizza, sorrow, and an empty space at the dinner table and in our lives.

I was making it my mission to make sure that Ryder’s seventeenth birthday wasn’t as soul destroying as his last one had been.

So I was driving home from the dealership were I’d just bought him a brand new car. He was currently driving around in David’s SUV which was safe, expensive, and surely all he needed, but I didn’t want my son thinking of his dead father every time he got in the car.

I was also trying to lie to myself by thinking that getting him a new car would help him forget about his dead father. But that was all I could do right now, spend money, buy the boys things as if material possessions might make up for what they’d lost.

I had just gotten off the phone with the dealer when Alexis walked into the kitchen. She was using David’s office as her home office, with my permission. She hadn’t changed a thing, at least that’s what she told me—I hadn’t been in there. She worked long hours and worked hard. She’d emerge for coffee, smoothies, or to hang with us.

“Did you get Ryder’s car?” she asked, reaching into the fridge for a kombucha.

“I did,” I said. “Though David is probably scowling down at me for not trying to negotiate the price.” I shrugged. It hurt to even say his name, but I had to get used to it. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t just stop talking about him because it hurt less. It was my duty to keep him alive in whatever ways I could. Talk about him often, remind the boys of who their father was.

“Well, I’m sure he’ll approve of the car itself,” she said. She’d helped me pick out the black vintage Chevy Camaro. Ryder was not one for flashy things, despite the fact he wore three-hundred-dollar sneakers and always had the latest iPhone. That was more my fault than his.

He definitely wouldn’t have been impressed with whatever brand new BMW his classmates likely had. No, he wanted to stand out from all his wealthy counterparts. I knew, that to my son, normalcy was worse than death. Or maybe just a little better.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It gets here tomorrow. The dealership is dropping it off bright and early. Then I was thinking we pull both the boys out of school and go for a drive to Angel’s Sin.”

It was a small lake fed from Devil’s Bluff that David had taken me to when I first moved here. It was private and beautiful. We took the kids there often for family time, but we hadn’t been since David’s death.

I wanted to take the place back. “Have a picnic,” I continued. “Swim at their favorite spot. Then we can come back here, have Luna and Jake over. Slip them some beer and cement myself into the Mother Hall of Shame.”

Alexis frowned. “Love the plan from top to bottom and you are nowhere near the Mother Hall of Shame.”

“I’m at least a runner-up,” I replied. “And don’t try to convince me. Let me plan this for Ryder. If I don’t fuck it up, we’ll talk again.”

She eyed me and nodded once.

I was thankful for that. I tried to focus on my son, on making his birthday something other than a thing that happened a week after his dad died.

Luna quickly became a staple in our home, her presence bright and comforting, like she belonged there all along.

She and