“She’s lovely,” I said. “Looks identical to you all. She must’ve been very young when this was taken.”
“When she was an exchange student in Paris,” Kate said.
Tears welled in my eyes. They were losing their mother. Slowly. And they couldn’t even be by her side. My mind was being pushed and pulled, contorting itself with varying emotions. Empathy. Guilt. Fear. Dread. The darkest sorrow. Guilt, most of all, for living in the house they’d lost through tragic circumstances. As if I were somehow responsible for everything.
“What about your dad?” I asked. “Can’t he help out?”
Dan jumped off the countertop and moved over to the window. Rain clouds scudded across the horizon in thick purple swathes, racing preternaturally as if in a sped-up film. “Nope,” he said to the view. “Mom’s a widow.”
My heart thumped with sympathy. “Oh, no, I’m so sorry.”
Dan threw me a misty-eyed glance. “Our dad was a marine and died in the line of duty. We were just babies.” He pulled something from beneath his T-shirt and held it to the window. The metal glinted in the light. A dog tag. I’d seen those in movies. “I wear this every day,” Dan said. “He was a brave man. Wish I’d had the chance to know him.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said again, feeling embarrassed that I’d pushed this answer out of him. “Your dad made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. How brave. But so awful for you all to be left without a father.”
The information hovered in the space between us. Wretched. Desolate. I didn’t know how to react. Poor children. Practically orphans. Their mother with lung cancer, them homeless, with no ongoing financial or moral support. What was I supposed to do? All sorts of solutions and possibilities spun around my mind. But it was too much to digest. I’d just met these people. I needed a drink, but it was still only teatime. I got some cups and saucers out from the cupboard and some teaspoons.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I slowly walked—forced myself not to run—to the lower ground floor where my wine cellar was. It wasn’t a real wine cellar, more like a fridge, the temperature set perfectly. I grabbed a Chablis, because un-popping the cork of a champagne bottle would draw too much attention, even from down here. After what they’d told me about their mother, it might sound too celebratory.
I slipped into the bathroom that served one of the downstairs bedrooms, and once inside and out of earshot, glugged down half the bottle, hardly stopping to breathe. I let out a satisfied sigh. A new, dazy sort of confidence bloomed through my limbs—a buzzy buoyancy that paradoxically made me weighty and light all at once. I could deal with this! But then I felt instantly contrite. What was I doing?
I needed to stop. Needed to stop using alcohol as a means to numb my grief over losing Juan, to make things seem all right. Habits lock themselves into your system fast. And I was forming a habit that would soon spiral into addiction if I didn’t watch out. Not me. Not who I was.
I wasn’t an addict.
I gazed at my reflection in the mirror: two of me, just for a flash. But then my face settled, and I regarded just one rather sad human being with sad, dull eyes. With the flat of my hand—it was cool and calming—I wiped off streaks of mascara that had blurred into my under-eye bags, making them worse. I brushed my teeth, rinsed my mouth to mask the smell of wine.
Decisions, decisions! There was no choice but to make a decision. Start afresh.
Sometimes in life you are offered opportunities and gifts. But you can’t dither. Dithering is the enemy of progress. Opportunity rarely knocks twice in a row. I, of all people, knew this. I had wanted kids forever. This was a sign. There are no coincidences! These three had been brought to me, not only to alleviate my loneliness, but as a way to open my heart, to share a part of myself.
“Yes!” I said to my reflection. “I will do this. I will do this!”
I rushed up the stairs, buoyed and dizzied by alcohol, excited with the rush that comes with a one hundred and eighty degree turn in your life.
“Guys,” I called out to the three of them. “I have a proposal to make!” In my eagerness, one foot bashed itself into the other and made me tumble flat on