“Thanks so much for always coming in to help, Tish.”

Tracy, the woman who ran the grief support group I’d been attending, smiled at me as she rubbed her heavily pregnant belly, pressing her back flat against the wall. She still had two months to go, but I thought she looked ready to pop. It probably didn’t help that she was unbelievably tiny, just an inch or two over five feet, and if she weighed much more than a hundred pounds, it had to be because of the baby.

Her belly poked out against her dress like somebody had shoved a basketball under it.

From time to time, as we talked during group, you could see her belly start to move. I wasn’t the only one fascinated by the display. I’d seen other people stare in rapt fascination.

Tracy had picked up on it too. More than a couple had approached her and asked if they could feel the baby kick, and she was always happy to indulge.

I hadn’t done it—yet—but I was curious.

I smiled at the petite woman. Because she’d told us, I knew she was seven years older than my own twenty-four, but she didn’t look it. She looked my age, maybe even younger, with her caramel-gold skin, tight, kinky curls that she almost always wore up in a tight ponytail and warm brown eyes.

LaMarcus, her husband, was a science teacher and football coach at a local high school, and she taught art at a private school. She’d been taking classes part-time too. “Up until our little oops,” she confessed to me one night with a grin. She wanted to be a therapist, specializing in art therapy. The grief support group was a way of keeping a hand in until she could get back to school.

“Are you ready for your last Thanksgiving as a couple?” I asked her, grabbing another folding chair and hauling it to the circle. A quick look at the clock told me that I only had a few more minutes before the first wave started to trickle in, and if I paced it right, I wouldn’t have to worry about any of the personal questions she always tried to slip in.

She wrinkled her nose. There were freckles there, shades darker than the warm gold of the rest of her skin. “Well, when you put it that way…hell if I know.” Tracy shoved off the wall and made her way over to the armchair one of the other therapists had scrounged up and brought into the center for her, insisting she use it. Otherwise, she’d hurt his tender, manly feelings. Those had been his exact words. I’d been standing there when he told her.

She groaned as she lowered herself down into the worn old cushions, lines of strain crossing her face. “If I’d known I’d be celebrating my last Thanksgiving as a couple this year, I would have gotten extra wasted last year.”

I couldn’t help it. I broke out laughing. “That doesn’t sound very therapist-like.”

“Pregnancy hormones have made me cranky.” She winked at me. “Don’t tell.”

The door squeaked before I could answer, announcing the first arrivals for our group. I mimed zipping my lips and throwing away an invisible key. “Secret’s safe.”

“What secret?”

I looked over at Matt, one of the other regulars, as he came in carrying a big box of donuts with him. He owned a bakery a few miles away. He’d started it with his wife not long after they got married. Two years ago, she’d been diagnosed with cancer. Eighteen months later, she lost the fight. He’d been talking about giving the place up when he first started coming in. But lately, he seemed to be having a change of heart.

I gave him a solemn look. “I don’t know. What secret?”

“You’ve got a smart-ass hiding somewhere under that nice persona you put on for the world.” He grinned as he came closer, popping open the box for me. “Want one?”

I bit my lip as I studied the yummies he had inside. So, so many yummies. I selected a plain glazed one instead of the custard I wanted. “Thank you.”

“No problem. What about you, Tracy?”

“No. I wish.” She heaved out a glum sigh, looking at the box with greedy eyes. “I’ve finally admitted that eating after seven or eight gives me heartburn something awful at night.”

“Maybe take one home? If you microwave it for five seconds in the morning, it will taste just as good.” He winked at her. “Don’t tell my customers I said that.”

She laughed. “Okay, you talked me into it.”

By the time I was done eating my donut, most of the group had arrived, and I was sitting in my customary seat across from Tracy, sipping on a cup of coffee loaded down with cream and sugar. Tommy, another regular, almost always made the coffee, and I knew from experience it was strong enough to keep me wide-awake until midnight, at least, which wasn’t a problem. But I desperately needed something to tone down the motor-oil viscosity of it.

As eight o’clock approached, people gathered around the seats and settled in.

We started on time, for once.

Save for one person, everyone there was a regular. The new person was a red-eyed woman with pale blonde hair pulled back in a neat bun, a suit that looked like it cost more than I made in a month, and sensible flats that told me she probably spent a lot of time on her feet.

Tracy introduced herself, and since we had the new woman, she asked everybody to go around and do the same before she focused her gentle smile on the blonde. “What’s your name?”

“Amber.” She tried to smile, but it fell flat.

“It’s nice to meet you, Amber.” Tracy gave her an understanding look before continuing. “You don’t need to say the same. Nobody walks through the doors because something wonderful happened. I walked through them myself seven years ago after my twin was murdered by her boyfriend.”

I’d already heard this story. So had all the others, save for Amber.

“I still blame myself, in the darker moments.” Tracy leaned back in the seat, folding her hands over her belly. The baby kicked, hard enough that anybody looking could see it. “And the dark moments do still come. I’ll see somebody we went to school with, and there are a few who haven’t heard. They’ll ask…and I have to decide if I tell the whole story all over again, or just say that she passed away.”

Amber’s voice broke as she asked, “Does it ever get any easier?”

The raw pain in her voice made my chest ache.

“The pain will always be there,” Tracy said. “It’s like a deep wound. But after a while, you form something almost like a callous over that wound. It…buffers the pain a little. And you come to accept it. But it takes time.”

Tommy, our resident coffee maker, asked, “Do you want to tell us who you lost?”

Amber shook her head rapidly. “I can’t. Not yet.”

“That’s okay,” Tracy said.

Amber jerked her head up, staring at her. “It is?”

“We all have to come to it in our own time.” I was surprised to hear myself talking. So were others. It had taken me nearly two months in group to say much more than my name or hi or bye. Nerves tightened my shoulders, but I kept going. “I think I was here three months before I told anybody my story.”

Amber’s gaze slid to me. The morbid curiosity was there. It’s a natural thing, something I’d finally come to accept. And it was reflected in the eyes of two others, people who’d joined the group after I’d come and started to talk more. Although the nerves were still all but screaming now, I took a deep breath.

“I moved here from Oklahoma in April. I was looking for a new life…something away from all the people I knew.” With a pained smile, I shrugged. “I couldn’t leave my apartment without somebody asking me if I was okay or how was I getting along…and almost every guy I knew told me they’d have a talk with my ex. We split up a month after…” I had to clear my throat before I could continue. “A month after we buried my parents, we broke up. He just couldn’t understand what I was going through. Nobody did, really.”

I looked around the circle at the people who’d listened to the secrets I’d shared, the people who’d shared their own secrets with me. “Not until I found this group anyway.”

“What…” Amber licked her lips, then cleared her throat. “What happened to your parents?”

“There was a fire.” My voice cracked, forcing me to pause long enough to pull myself together. “They owned a bookstore, and there was some sort of electrical problem, and the wires shorted out. The books were old. Antiques. They went up like kindling.”

Tears blurred my eyes, and for a few seconds, I couldn’t speak.

Taking a deep breath, I went on, “The investigators think my mom saw something and was rushing to warn my dad, but she must have tripped and hit her head on the desk in the office. She died from smoke inhalation. My dad, though…he might have had a chance to get out, but he wouldn’t leave without her. He died trying to get to the office. They didn’t have a chance, really.”