Hannah absorbed that for a moment. “Do you think we’ll ever find him?”
“I don’t know.”
She sagged against me briefly, and then in the way only a four-year-old can recover, she bolted upright. “Oh! I know what I forgot! I forgot to tell you that I want another puppy!”
“You do?”
“Yup, I just decided when you were away. Can we?”
The time had come for everyone to move on. I didn’t have the heart to say no outright, but I was just starting to feel on my feet again. Dogs meant training and walks and things I wasn’t sure I could keep up with. Yet. “What if we could get a cat instead? I think that would be nice, Hannah. We’ll go to the ASPCA and adopt a cat that needs a home. What do you think?”
“Would he be a kitten? Like a baby?”
“Probably not. But that’s okay. We’ll give a cat a home when he doesn’t have one. It’s better than getting a kitten.”
After a moment, she nodded. “Then he’ll have a family. He’ll have us, right?” Her big brown eyes, mirror images of Greg’s, implored mine, seemingly desperate to get the right answer.
“Yes, he’ll have us.” I pulled her to me, and for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, kissed her head, smoothing her hair.
With my newfound resolve and my self-proclaimed “awakening,” I viewed my house with a critical eye. When had things gone to pot? I realized we’d gone the entire winter with the screens in the doors, as Greg hadn’t been there to replace them with storm windows. The back door where Cody had scratched his way out remained ripped. The gutters had clogged because Greg hadn’t been around to clean them out in November after the trees shed their leaves. The winter hadn’t been kind, and the blocked gutters had collected water, which had frozen, and because of the weight, the gutters sagged in places, straining their brackets. I wondered if I would stay in the house, with the big yard and all the work, if it remained just me. There were tough decisions in my future.
For the time being, I needed to get control over my home and learn how to do the things Greg had done. I watched a YouTube video on screen replacement, made a trip to Home Depot to pick up new mesh, and rescreened the patio door. That job took me half of a Saturday. Dad called twice to see if I needed any help, but I declined his offer. I borrowed a ladder from Pastor Joe because the one I found in the barn seemed rickety, and while Greg might have kept on using it, I wasn’t about to break my leg or worse.
Monday, while Hannah was at school and Leah was napping, I started on the west-facing side of the house, pulling mounds of rotting organic material from the gutters. The April air was brisk, but the waterlogged leaves were held together by thawing ice, making removal easier. I did the same thing to the east side of the house the next day.
I noticed the grass getting long and searched my memory for when Greg usually did the first cut. Sometime in April or May? I’d have to tackle the riding mower at some point when I wasn’t exhausted from gutter cleaning. I realized I hadn’t given Greg the credit he deserved, as most of the husband duties around the house were turning out to be the more physical variety. My arms and back ached, and fleetingly, I thought about how fantastic a massage would feel. Only then did I realize that I had never offered one, in all the years being married, as Greg performed backbreaking labor in our home. Maybe he found someone who would massage out every kink.
Tuesday evening, I made a quick dinner of chicken nuggets and peas—about which Hannah complained—read appropriate bedtime stories, and tucked the girls into bed. I sat in the dimly lit living room, drinking a glass of white wine and staring blankly at the phone. Dreading the call I knew I had to make, I dialed the familiar number.
When Drew picked up, he sounded genuinely happy to hear from me.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called,” I blurted.
He chuckled softly. “I was starting to wonder.”
“No, I’m…” I swirled the wine in my glass, thinking of how to explain. I drew a blank. “Just getting through, I guess. How are you?”
“I’m good. I’m working on another print series.”
“Really? Tell me about it?”
“Are you sure? You might be offended.”
“Of course.”
“It’s… um… businessmen. At lunchtime. In public parks… with women.”
No wonder he had been hesitant. I was speechless. “Really? Isn’t that… wrong or something?”
“No. I have permission to use the images from men and women in the picture. So it’s not actually wrong, but it does look like clandestine affairs. But the weird part is most of the people I approached were husbands and wives meeting for lunch. So, innocent and harmless. But my photographs paint a slightly different picture.”