Jillian had known where most of the contracts I needed were, the majority of those being digitized, but there were quite a few orders I couldn’t locate. So, rather than the quick stop I’d hoped for, we were on hour number two of me calling our vendors all around the world.
Jillian nodded, her orthopedic shoes squeaking against the wood floor as she backed out of the door. “Well, if you need anything, just give me a holler.”
“Will do,” I once again lied. Accepting help was still a foreign concept to me.
Rob had been an amazing husband, but he’d worked a lot. I couldn’t fault him for trying to take care of his family. The majority of the time, it was just me and the kids. That was my job. A job I’d picked. A job I’d dearly loved. A job I should have been able to do without relying on everyone around me. I understood the whole it takes a village concept, and when someone was in need, I was the first one to offer a helping hand. But being on the receiving end of that help was a slightly harder pill for me to swallow.
People meant well; I knew they did. But letting go of that kind of control did not give me comfort. Especially since it felt like every portion of my life lately was up in the air, flying around in a state of upheaval. I needed to grab on to anything I could and rein it in. Even if at that moment all the help I needed was something as simple as asking Eason or Jillian to watch the kids for a few minutes so I could actually get work done. I just couldn’t do it.
With the click of the door, Jillian disappeared, leaving me alone, the way I feared I would always be.
“Asher, stop!” I whisper-yelled as my son dragged a six-foot-long paperclip chain across the floor.
Madison squealed with delight as she crawled after it like a baby Olympian. Using my foot, I lifted it out of her reach before she had the chance to grab it—and no doubt put it into her mouth.
“Hey!” Asher objected—which I would like to note was not a whisper-yell. Half of Prism’s employees must have heard it.
“Mr. Winters?” A man’s voice finally came through the line.
I quickly switched the phone to my other ear, nearly dropping it in my frenzy. “Yes. I’m here. Well, I’m not Mr. Winters. But I am his wife.” I cut my gaze to Asher. He had already moved on to shredding the paper I’d given him to color on. Damn Eason and that syrup. Giving him my back as if it could shield him from the truth, I finished, “My husband passed away last month.” The slice through my heart was just as sharp as ever.
“Rob? Really? What happened?”
None of your fucking business.
“An accident.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. Rob was a good man. But I can’t help you with this order, Mrs. Winters. I’m going to need to speak with someone at Prism.”
This had been the general consensus of everyone I’d spoken to that day. And it was all I could do not to lose my ever-loving mind each and every time I heard it.
I’d built that business from the ground up. Rob had taken over as CEO, but I had hardly fallen off the face of the Earth in the five-ish years since then. I still attended board meetings and maintained final approval when it came to creative control. Sure, most of these decisions were cast over dinner or on the sofa with a glass of wine at night after the kids had gone to bed, but I was still very much a part of the company.
“Then you’re in luck. I’m the owner. And I need those purchase orders emailed over by the end of day.”
“Uhhhh…” he drawled.
But I did not have time to paint the man a damn flowchart of Prism’s leadership team. Especially not when I turned around and saw Madison sitting at Asher’s feet as he removed the top off a crystal decanter Rob had kept in his Mad Men-esque corner bar.
Snapping twice to get his attention, I hissed, “Put that down.”
Being the obedient child he very seldomly was, he immediately set it down—directly in front of his sister.
“No!” I shouted, abandoning the phone altogether as she knocked it over, causing it to shatter all over the mahogany floor.
Madison screamed as I raced over, but it wasn’t until I saw the blood drip from my baby’s palm that the adrenaline hit me.
The cut was small. But the wave of panic that slammed into me was towering.
It was too much. Too familiar. Too consuming.
An onslaught of raw emotion stormed the gates of my brain. With trembling hands, I scooped her up and then hooked Asher around the hips, carrying him away from the glass before depositing them both on to the leather loveseat. My head spun as I dropped to my knees in front of them and tried unsuccessfully to slow my breathing.
Three drops of blood.
A wound so tiny that it barely required a Band-Aid.
Yet my body reacted as though the world were ending all over again.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Asher screamed hysterically at the sight of his sister bleeding.
Amid the chaos, Jillian came rushing into the room. “Is everything okay?”
No. It was safe to say everything was not okay.
My husband was dead. My heart was broken. And I was realizing that, no matter how much I wanted to be, I would never be superwoman.
In that moment, there was only one person who could possibly understand.
Clearing my throat, I dragged both of my children into my lap, holding them as if they could ground me. I desperately fought back tears so I wouldn’t scare them more than they already were and asked in a shaky voice, “Could you please call Eason Maxwell for me?”
It was cool for June in Atlanta. Pulling my cardigan around my shoulders, I sank deeper into the corner of the wicker sectional I’d had custom cushions made from my favorite blue damask after Rob had surprised me with a raised deck and firepit overlooking the pool and transforming our backyard into my own private oasis.
“Winter and Summer. We have it all covered now,” he’d said, knowing how much I loved to spend my nights under the stars. Sometimes he’d join me, reading a book or playing on his phone, but for the most part, I’d sit outside alone, absorbing my day while planning the next.
Yet, that night, as I stared at the lights dancing in the pool, I couldn’t find the peace I so desperately longed for.
“You in the mood for company?” Eason asked, appearing at the end of the couch, a glass of red wine in one hand, a beer in his other.
I couldn’t exactly say no. Not after he’d dropped everything and spent the day taking care of the kids while I’d stared into space like a robot with a dead battery.
“Sure,” I replied, taking the glass from his hand. “Thanks.”
He pulled two video monitors from his back pockets, passing one my way before settling on the far end of the couch. “Kids went down pretty easy. Ash had a lot of heaven questions about Rob tonight, so I thought he might need a distraction for a while. I told him he could use his flashlight to read a book until nine. He’s holding the book upside down, but I figure reading’s never a bad thing.” He took a sip of his beer while pulling the side chair in front of him, resting his bare feet in the seat. “Ahhh,” he moaned, stretching out between the two pieces of furniture, his lean muscles sagging with exhaustion.
A pang of guilt struck me hard. Of course he was tired. Eason had enough of his own problems without shouldering mine as well.