didn’t spend with them. He understood perfectly what she was trying to do, and what she had done. He knew he could never have done it himself. And he filled in for her whenever, wherever, and however he could. Olivia always said he was a saint. She loved her children, but he was the perfect husband and father.
It was a terrible blow for her when Joe died at sixty, and she was widowed at fifty-five. It was impossible for her to imagine her world without him in it, after thirty-two years together. And she found that the only thing that dulled the pain of the loss was work. She worked harder than ever then. Cassie was already in college, the others were grown and gone, and married, and Liz had children of her own. They didn’t need her as a daily presence anymore. And when Cass left for England, Maribelle moved into a senior residence. She was eighty years old and said that it was time. She had given Olivia a remarkable gift, which Olivia was well aware of. She had brought up her children for her, and had put in thirty years taking care of them so that Olivia could run the business that supported them all. Once Cass moved away, with her mother gone and the emptiness of her life without Joe, Olivia’s life became only about work. And the years flew by.
It had been fourteen years since Joe’s death, and now what Olivia looked forward to every year were the brief two weeks she spent on vacation with her children every summer. She had missed so much of their childhood that what she treasured now was the time she spent with them as adults. It was too late for her to repair the damage with Cass. Cassie wouldn’t let her mother do that, and had put an unbridgeable distance between them ever since her father’s death. He was still sorely missed by all. He had been such a good man, and a kind one, that Olivia’s heart still ached whenever she thought of him. Olivia knew just how lucky she had been to be married to him, and she was well aware of the blessings he had bestowed upon her life.
Olivia had started their annual vacations in order to mend her fences with her children, ever since Joe had died. It wasn’t enough, she knew, to compensate for what she hadn’t done before. She hadn’t realized at the time that while she had been assuring their future, she had been missing so much of the present and past. She knew that no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t do it all. Joe, until the very end, thought that Olivia could do no wrong. And Olivia knew how lucky she had been to have the love of a good man such as Joe. She had always loved him and their kids even if she was away a lot. Joe understood that. Not all her children did.
Olivia was still trying to make up to her children for the important moments she had missed when they were young. Her mother said they would forgive her one day, but she was beginning to wonder if that was possible. You couldn’t give someone back the time you had taken from them early on. All she could do now was try. She had always been honest with them. She had loved them, and she loved them now as adults, probably more than they realized or could understand. And some of them were more forgiving than others. Liz had done somersaults for her approval, although she had it anyway. And John didn’t seem to hold the past against her. Phillip kept her at a distance, and she knew that Cass would never forgive her for her sins, particularly for not being there when Joe died.
And in the final accounting, who was to say who was right and who was wrong? Olivia couldn’t help wondering how different it might have been if she had stopped working when the children were born, if they would have been happier, or if having her mother and Joe there for them had been enough. They would never know. Their life would have been simpler certainly, but maybe the empire she had built for them mattered to them less than she hoped. You couldn’t turn back the clock. She had done the best she could, and she still did, maintaining the business for them, and providing them with