The next day, she’d given Connor her two-week notice at the restaurant and began working at the inn full-time. She booked the reservations (though there were fewer than there once had been), made the morning breakfast (and lamented how much food was wasted), kept up with the piles of laundry that a B&B generated and cleaned the rooms, all while raising Kitt on her own and keeping an eye on Aunt Lenora.
The older woman had reluctantly given over much of the B&B’s maintenance to Erin, but that didn’t mean she’d retired. On any given day, Aunt Lenora could be found outside in the garden, tending to vegetables and flowers or crawling up into the attic to go through the expansive mementos stored in its rafters.
Erin had found her there just last week, after hours of searching. She’d fallen asleep in the attic’s drafty environment, curled up in a pile of blankets with her arms wrapped around an album. After waking Aunt Lenora, Erin returned to the attic to restore order and found the album lying open.
It was a scrapbook of Gavin’s life with pressed clippings of his high school wrestling career, a copy of his graduation program, the Findlay Roads Courier’s article about his time in the army and then, at the back, his obituary.
Erin hadn’t needed to read the words. She knew each one by heart.
Sergeant Gavin Daniels passed into eternal rest this past week at the age of thirty-two.
She and Aunt Lenora had decided to leave the specific details of his passing out of the paper, for Kitt’s sake more than anything. It had been bad enough that her son had lost his father. She wanted to shelter him as much as possible from the senselessness of Gavin’s death by a drunk driver.
The obituary had gone on to list Gavin’s various accomplishments in the army before detailing what Erin considered the most important part of his life’s summation.
Gavin leaves behind his wife, Erin, and his son, Kitt, as well as a great-aunt, Lenora, and a brother, Burke, along with many friends who will forever miss his spirit, laughter and kindness.
In the stifling air of the attic, Erin had started to cry, and even now, recalling the words, she had to blink back tears. That final statement had been truer than she might have known. She missed Gavin more with each passing day.
Her grief was cut short as Burke groaned in his sleep, and Erin turned back toward him. His face was lined with emotion, his brow furrowed in slumber.
She bit her lip, her feelings a tangled mess. On the one hand, she felt sympathy for the way the day had gone. He and Tessa had seemed like the perfect couple. She was petite and blonde, cute and sweet, and a lovely foil to Burke’s tall, muscular physique, brown hair and blue eyes. They were easy around each other. Burke would often drape an arm around Tessa’s shoulders as she leaned into him. The sight had always pierced Erin with a pang of envy, and she told herself it was the residual grief of losing Gavin.
But after today, she was forced to admit she wasn’t so sure that was the only reason. Because at the root of her jumbled emotions about this day, there was one she hadn’t expected to feel.
Relief.
She was relieved that Tessa had fled, pleased that she wasn’t going to be Burke’s wife. And that feeling frightened her. She had buried whatever she once felt for Burke. She’d convinced herself her feelings for him were long dead. She had loved Gavin, had married him, borne him a son, had been faithful during his years deployed overseas with the army and had grieved him every single day since his death.
And yet...she couldn’t ignore how her heart had thumped with joy when it became apparent that Tessa had bolted.
Burke stirred, curling his fingers into the afghan she’d placed over him. She felt herself flush as she watched him.
She shouldn’t have felt relief. She shouldn’t have been happy about what he’d lost. She shouldn’t be feeling anything for Burke at all, except to think of him as Kitt’s uncle, her brother-in-law. She had loved Gavin. She still missed Gavin.
But as Burke sighed in slumber, she felt that same rush of relief once more. Biting her lip in frustration, she quickly turned and hurried from the room, down the hall and refused to look back.
Copyright © 2018 by Cerella Delbaugh Sechrist
ISBN-13: 9781488084959
A Roof Over Their Heads
Copyright © 2018 by S. M. Stelmack
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