The morning was overcast, as if the sky had conspired with my mood. I stood at the bedroom window, watching sparse raindrops slide down the glass in uncertain paths. Today was the reading of Howard’s will—my husband’s will.
The words still felt unreal, like a bad dream from which I couldn’t wake. The clock on the nightstand read nine. Three hours until the notary’s appointment, and yet I was ready to go: a simple black dress, minimal jewelry, discreet makeup to hide the sleepless nights.
Howard had always appreciated naturalness. “You’re beautiful just the way you are, Ellie,” he used to say, and somehow the words warmed me even in the coldest Vermont winters. I touched my wedding ring.
Twenty-five years—a quarter century together—and now I was alone in a house full of memories. Our first meeting flashed across my mind: Everglade High School, where I worked as a counselor. Howard had come for help with his son, Noel, thirteen and bruised by grief.
His mother had died two years earlier. He’d stopped studying, challenged teachers, withdrew into himself. His homeroom teacher referred him to me.
“Ms. Beckett,” I had introduced myself, extending a hand to a tall man with tired eyes and the early gray at his temples. “Howard Hollister,” he replied.
His handshake was firm and steady. “Thank you for seeing us. I don’t know what to do about Noel anymore.”
His voice held both despair and fierce love.
In an instant I saw everything he carried—running a family pharmacy, raising a hurting boy, working through his own loss. I could never have imagined that the exhausted widower sitting in my office would become my husband. That I would love him for his kindness, his integrity, his way of listening until you felt heard.
That his small drugstore on Everglade’s Main Street would grow into a thriving pharmaceutical company. That our marriage would be the happiest time of my life. I stepped away from the window and drifted through the house the way you drift through a museum that used to be yours.
There were framed photos on the mantel—our wedding, our trip to Lake Champlain, the ribbon-cutting at the new pharmacy in the next town. Most pictures were of Howard and me. Noel appeared rarely, or stood off to the side wearing a practiced smile.
My relationship with my stepson had never found terra firma. I still remember his eyes the day Howard introduced me as his bride—the cool, appraising stare of a teenager asking silently, What do you want from my father? As a psychologist, I recognized the rawness beneath the glare.
I didn’t try to replace his mother—that would have been a violation, a betrayal of his feelings and Caroline’s memory. I tried to be a friend. I learned about his hobbies, suffered through interminable talk of game consoles and skateboarding, helped with his literature assignments, cooked his favorite dinners.
I didn’t intrude; I simply stayed available. Sometimes the ice seemed to thaw. He’d laugh at a joke, tell a story from school, accept help without a sigh.
Then the wall would rise again, higher than before. Howard bounced between us with a peacemaker’s patience, hurt that the two people he loved most couldn’t find a way to each other. He never blamed Noel or demanded love for me, but I knew he hoped.
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