Beatrice sank into the car and covered her eyes with one hand.

“That looked…incredibly uncomfortable,” I commented, hoping I sounded supportive, even though I’d tensed at their meeting. When she didn’t respond, I continued to make a freaking fool of myself. “Guess I don’t have to worry about losing you to Stan then?”

Her jaw dropped open and she stared at me while I pulled out of the parking lot. “Lose me to Stan?” She finally managed to respond. Her cheeks had turned bright pink.

“Why is Beatrice blushing?” Thea asked from her spot in the middle of the back seat.

“Because I don’t know when to stop talking,” I responded honestly. I glanced at Beatrice nervously to see if she was paying attention. “What do you want to eat for dinner? If you tell me now, I can start watching for a place while we drive.”

“French fries,” Thea squealed in excitement.

Since Mo moved in after Megyn’s death and Beatrice was here now, Thea rarely ate at fast food restaurants. Getting to enjoy the treat on a road trip was particularly exciting. “What besides fries?” I asked with a laugh.

“Um…a cheeseburger.” Her hands folded solemnly in her lap and I knew she’d made up her mind.

“I sense I have a lot of leeway here,” I joked with Beatrice. “How about you? Any particular requests?”

“No. I just can’t go too crazy. The dress I wanted only came in one size, my thin size, so there’ll be no fries here.” She glanced at Thea sadly. “Or burgers. I’m strictly salad until after the ceremony. Otherwise, I’ll embarrass myself…more than I did picking up the flower girl.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder for effect.

“I’m sorry.” I sighed. “I don’t know what to say sometimes and maybe it would be better to say nothing at all instead of blurting out something stupid, but conversation is a skill I never truly mastered.”

“Well, you couldn’t have been all bad at it. After all, you managed to snag your wife.” Beatrice grinned.

“Megyn was…special.” I shrugged and stared out the windshield. This was one of those times I didn’t want to be reminded of her. Not when I was about to spend five nights in a hotel room and four days stuck in a car with Beatrice. “She never made me feel nervous. She was happy to blather on and have me just listen, which I could’ve done all day. The best times, though, were when we were quiet and cuddled together.” I sighed. “There were a lot of days like that at the end.”

“How do you do it?” Beatrice shook her head, then glanced over her shoulder to see how much Thea was paying attention to us. My daughter had found the bag of books I’d put beside her seat and was engrossed in one of her first chapter books.

“We have a good hour before she talks to us again,” I joked. “So, what can I do? It’d be nice to hear something I do well. After all, I spent the past two years with Mo enumerating all my flaws. You’ve been remarkably kind these past few weeks.” I smiled nervously. A few loose strands of her blonde hair had caught my eye and they were fluttering beside her face. For some reason, I wanted to reach out and brush them away from her cheek to get a better look at her eyes.

“How do you hold it together? How do you recover from that kind of loss? I’m barely skating by after Stan. You saw how well that went back at the school.” Her cheeks flamed red again and she pressed the palms of her hands to them.

“Well, with Stan, it’s more of a humiliation thing, right? Were you madly in love with him? Was he really the guy you wanted to spend forever with? Or was he just an adventure?” I tried to watch her for a reaction while still paying attention to the road.

“That’s a lot of questions. And I noticed you offered zero answers,” she challenged. “But we have a long drive and I’m game for a ‘get to know you’ session, if you are.”

“Okay,” I responded with a shrug. Then I swallowed hard, already nervous. This felt like a game of truth or dare. Every day with her was one giant dare; life dared me to ignore the attractive young woman living under my roof. Happiness dared me not to get attached. Love, however, offered the biggest dare of all: don’t fall for her. It has only been two years. How could I already be noticing other women? Only it wasn’t other women. In all this time, I had only noticed Beatrice.

“Okay, so how do you do it? You never told me.” She bit her lip and studied me while she waited.

“I had to.” I jerked my head toward the back seat. “When I wanted to die, I had to live for both of us. So I turned off my emotions. I put one foot in front of the other. I forced myself to survive for Thea. Everything I do is for her…because of her…about her.”

“That’s beautiful. Really it is.” She sighed.

“Now you. Ready to answer me?” My brows arched hopefully.

She nodded hesitantly. “You won’t judge me, right? I already feel badly enough about this situation. I think…I did want an adventure. I wanted a great love story. What’s bigger than traveling across an ocean? I think I was in love with the idea of what was supposed to be, because when I was faced with the reality of my situation, I didn’t even like it.” She frowned. “And life gets better day by day. I know this. It’s better because of you.”

I wasn’t sure how to take her words. Better because of me. “The job, right? I’m glad you’re here for me…and Thea. You’re wonderful,” I admitted quietly. In my heart, something stirred.