care of it, the way he’d always taken care of his family.
“Why did Aunt Fay take all those pills?” Bree asked. “Didn’t she know they’d make her sick?”
“Aunt Fay has been very sad lately,” Neil told Bree and began rubbing her back, an almost instinctive, parental gesture that warmed Maddie’s heart. “We all get sad sometimes but Aunt Fay’s sadness goes beyond feeling bad for a while. Sometimes people feel so sad, they don’t think they’ll ever be happy again.” He breathed deeply. “That’s what happened to my real mother.”
Bree sat up, her eyes huge. “She died because she killed herself?”
“Aunt Fay and I came home from school one afternoon and found her—just like you found Fay tonight. Except, we were too late to help her.”
Maddie knew that he’d only been nine when he’d walked in and discovered his mother dead from an overdose. Six months later, his father abandoned Neil and Fay. It’d been his childhood that’d made him so emotionally closed off, and while she wished he could have opened up to her, she couldn’t entirely blame him for protecting himself.
“It’s so important that if you’re sad, you talk to someone about it,” Maddie told Bree, not even wanting to consider the possibility of her baby ever feeling that much pain. Ever feeling as if she had no other choice. “Even if you think nothing will help, you need to reach out to the people who love you. Promise me?”
“I promise.” She yawned again.
“Why don’t you go lay down on the couch?” Maddie said. “Close your eyes for a little bit?”
Bree slid to her feet. “Will you be here when I wake up?” she asked Neil.
“I have to go back and check on Aunt Fay but I can wake you up before I leave to tell you goodbye.”
“Okay.” She hugged him and Maddie noted how he held on tight, shut his eyes as if he didn’t want to let go.
“We have a very brave daughter,” Neil said after Bree had left the room.
Maddie turned her cup. Turned it again. “She held it together while Leo was here. I think she wanted to be brave for her cousins but as soon as she saw me...” Maddie stopped, swallowed as she remembered her daughter’s face crumpling when Maddie had walked in the door. “As soon as she saw me, she broke down.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. But it doesn’t feel right blaming Fay, either, does it? It breaks my heart that my best friend was in so much pain she couldn’t see another way out. And I feel guilty, God, I feel so damned guilty for telling her to buck up and get a backbone.” For expecting her to act like Maddie had when Neil had left. To gather her pride around her and move on, holding on to her resentment as a way to make it through.
“I hate to even admit this,” she continued, her gaze on her coffee, “but I’m also pissed. I’m furious that Fay would do this to her children, to our daughter. I want to go to that hospital and shake her until her teeth chatter. I want to grab ahold of her and beg her to never do anything like this again.” She raised her head. “Neil, what if...what if she tries again?”
“She might.” He shoved his chair back so hard, it banged against the cherry cabinets. “She might and I’m not sure there’s anything we can do to stop it. To fix her.”
Maddie crossed to him, grasped both of his hands in hers. “We might not be able to fix her, to stop her from wanting or, God forbid, trying to hurt herself again, but we’ll be here for her. Always. In any way we can. Maybe that’ll be enough.”
“I hope so.”
So did Maddie. She couldn’t imagine her life without Fay, couldn’t imagine a world where such a gentle and loving soul as Fay’s ceased to exist.
“Maddie, tonight was...”
“Hell.”
One corner of his mouth kicked up. “Not all of it,” he said, reminding her of how they’d started their evening. “But, yeah, it’s been rough. It’s also made it clear to me how important it is to let the people you care about know what they mean to you.”
Her fingers tightened on his involuntarily. “Neil, now’s not—”
“Mostly,” he continued, his eyes serious, his shoulders set, “it’s made clear to me what I want. What I really want.” He leaned down and kissed her, an incredibly sweet and tender kiss. One that scared her to