“Mommy!”
Jenna whirled around to see Walsh running toward her. Delores was walking with her, trying to keep up as well as she could with her bad hip. Walsh ran straight into Jenna’s legs.
Jenna knelt so she was eye to eye with her youngest. “Where have you been?”
“Playing with the puppy,” she said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Jenna’s pulse thudded in her ears. Delores held up her hand and jogged toward them, out of breath. “I’m so sorry, Jenna. I was making my dinner when I saw her out on my patio playing with Greta. I was going to call, but I figured I’d just bring her back over before you started to worry.”
Jenna swiped at a tear at the corner of her eye.
“Oh dear,” Delores said. “I suppose I’m a little too late.”
Jenna held Walsh to her chest and tried to slow her breathing.
There were times when she wished Addie and Walsh had been lucky enough to be born to someone else, someone with a more solid, together life—a happy, All-American, dog-in-the-backyard, cookies-in-the-oven family. Sometimes she longed for that life for herself, missed it as though it was something she’d once had and let slip through her fingers.
Other times she wished she was still Jenna Sawyer, girl on the run. An old boyfriend had called her that once. Never sticking around too long, always chasing the next bright, shiny possibility. Things were different now, though there were times—like this one—when she wished she could still run. Leave before it started to hurt.
But the reality of Jenna’s world, in all its terror and beauty, stared back at her on the sidewalk. She brushed Walsh’s hair back from her face and kissed her forehead.
That night, after a dinner of pancakes and scrambled eggs, a serious talk with Walsh about not leaving the house by herself, and four bedtime stories, the girls were finally asleep. Jenna stood by the stove finishing the cold eggs. She was exhausted and still rattled from the afternoon. Even though Kendal should have been more responsible, Jenna felt the weight of it on her own shoulders.
She pulled a bottle of red off the counter and poured a few inches in two wineglasses, then settled down on the couch to wait. A few minutes after eight, Delores gave her customary three soft knocks and let herself in. “Hey there.” She closed the door behind her. “Girls to sleep okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. Haven’t even heard a peep from Walsh.”
Delores laughed as she sat on the other end of the couch. “That little girl’s gonna run you ragged. Good thing she’s so cute.”
“It’s always something. The daycare hours change, the babysitter has boyfriend problems, customers think their skinny latte is the most important thing in my life. Then Walsh goes missing.”
Delores patted Jenna’s knee. “She wasn’t missing. She was just at my house. It’s a familiar place for her. She probably didn’t realize she was doing anything wrong.”
“I know. You’re right. But not knowing where she was? It was terrifying. All I could think about was some guy in a wife-beater cruising the street in a van with dark windows.” Jenna rubbed her eyes.
“Well, you can’t let yourself go there. Walsh is fine, safe and sound in bed, and all is well. It was just a little hiccup.” Delores reached for the wineglass on the coffee table. “Don’t mind if I do. Doctor says a little bit is good for my heart.”
Jenna smiled. Delores said the same thing every night.
“Did that cute boy come to see you today?”
“As always.”
“It tells me something that he comes to see you every morning on his way to work.”
“Tells me something too. He has too much time on his hands.”
Delores shook her head. “That’s not it and you know it. Why won’t you let him—?”
“It won’t work.”
“And why not?”
“Because . . . he’s just not my type.”
Delores narrowed her eyes over the top of her wineglass. “And what does that mean?”
“He’s too . . . innocent. And he’s smart—he’s probably never made a bad decision in his life.”
“Honey, everyone makes bad decisions and he’s no different. Plus, you’re too young and too smart to shut down all romantic interests before they even get off the ground.”
Jenna shifted on the couch and settled deeper into the soft pillows behind her back. As she did she glanced at her friend. Delores had been “popping over for a quick visit” almost every night now for months. She usually stayed just long enough to have a glass of wine. And long enough, Jenna suspected, to ward off some of the loneliness that crept in at night.
Her husband, Willard, died a year ago, a day after their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Jenna’s love life was always a hot topic of conversation when Delores visited. But they talked about other things too—the best way to make a perfect cup of coffee, Delores’s dismal attempts to fit in with the “Silver Sneakers” crowd at the local gym, Jenna’s once-promising photography dreams.
As if reading her mind, Delores nodded toward the wall across from the couch. “I love those photos, you know.”
Jenna nodded. “Me too. But I was such a mess then.”
“All new mothers are.”
She’d taken the series of photos soon after Walsh was born. Jenna had been a postpartum wreck—trying to keep a two-year-old alive on her own while nursing an infant who wanted to nurse round the clock, breasts like hot rocks in her chest, her brain a sleepless blur. In her fog, she’d pulled her camera from the back of the closet, popped in some film, and started shooting.
Walsh, with her olive skin and head full of dark hair, was asleep, temporarily paused in her constant quest for more milk, her eyelashes hints of color on her pale cheeks. Addie sat on the floor with a basket of wooden blocks, her blonde hair hanging in perfect round ringlets. Jenna took photo after photo, not knowing how they would turn out, but not really caring either. What mattered was that
