This was supposed to be our first quiet Easter after losing my mom, just me keeping my head down while my husband handled dinner. Then I checked the kitchen camera from the grocery store parking lot and saw something that sent me flying home.
This was our first Easter without my mom, and I was barely holding myself together.
I told my husband I could not do Easter this year.
“I mean it,” I said that morning, standing in the kitchen with my coat still on. “No guests. No dinner. No pretending this is normal.”
Liam looked up from the coffee maker. “Then do not pretend.”
“I took the day off. I will make dinner.”
I let out a tired laugh. “That is not how Easter works.”
“It can this year.”
Liam came over, took my face in both hands, and kissed my forehead. “I took the day off. I will make dinner.”
I blinked at him. “You?”
He looked offended. “I can cook.”
“You can heat things.”
I almost started crying right there.
That got the smallest smile out of me, which was probably his goal. Still, I nodded and grabbed my purse. “I just need to get out for a while. Maybe groceries. Maybe a drive. I don’t know.”
Liam touched my arm. “Take your time.”
I almost started crying right there.
That first year without my mom had been awful in quiet ways.
Reaching for my phone to call her. Seeing lemons and thinking of the cake she made every Easter in the same square glass dish with too much glaze on top because she never believed in restraint.
I opened the kitchen camera on my phone.
Grief is exhausting because it keeps showing up in ordinary places.
So I drove to the grocery store and sat in the parking lot longer than I needed to. I watched people carry hams and flowers and foil pans into their cars.
Instead, I opened the kitchen camera on my phone. We had installed it last year after a pipe issue. I told myself I was only checking to make sure Liam had not started a fire.
At first, it almost made me smile.
A second later, the doorbell rang.
My husband had flour all over his black T-shirt. One ham was hanging halfway off the roasting pan. He was staring into a mixing bowl like it had offended him.
“Come on,” Liam muttered. “This cannot be that hard.”
He picked up his phone, typed something, then looked toward the front window.
A second later, the doorbell rang.
I frowned.
A woman stepped into view.
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