Snowbound With The Best Man. Allie Pleiter

than okay, on the verge of okay, anything but okay. Only I don’t know how to get to okay from here.” He looked over to see Carly looking into the kitchen window, waving to him with a happy, floppy mitten. “How to get her to okay. I mean, the whole unicorn thing. Either she isn’t seeing them, and she’s upset, or she is seeing them—which means she’s living in a fantasy instead of reality. That can’t be okay.”

      “For her, maybe it is. I still get near hysterical on an airplane.” She sighed. “I don’t think there are rules to this. Not with kids, not with us.” She paused for a moment before saying, “I think maybe one of the reasons Lulu is so taken with Carly is that they’ve both lost someone. Lulu has friends who have single parents from divorce, but Carly is the first person in her age group Lulu knows who’s had a parent die.” She squinted her eyes shut. “I hate that verb, you know. ‘Die.’ ‘Passed’ sounds like it isn’t enough, and ‘die’ sounds like it’s too much.”

      Bruce nodded his agreement. He hated most of the words associated with what happened. Deceased. Lost her battle to cancer. Widower. Bereaved. None of the language ever came close to describing the thing anyway.

      “Have you had friends do the pushy date thing?” he asked, just to change the subject.

      That brought a real, full laugh from her. “Oh, yes. And believe me, there aren’t a lot of eligible bachelors my age in a place like this. Plus—no offense to your gender—having a child in tow doesn’t exactly light up your prospects with most guys.” She looked at him. “You’ll have it easier, though. It may be a gross generalization, but I think women take to blending families easier than men do.”

      He couldn’t believe he was asking. “But you’re looking?”

      She shook her head. “Not really. I don’t know about you, but what I had with Mark was better than lots of thirty-year marriages I’ve seen. Absolutely too short, but oh, it was terrific. I hit the jackpot on the first time out. Trying again just feels like inviting disappointment.” She pulled in a deep breath. “No, I’d rather spend my time helping other people get married.”

      Kelly sounded so content, so in control. She’d made peace with the parts of her life that had been taken away. She had plans and goals, wasn’t lurching though life in survival mode, doing the bare minimum to get by. Was it the constancy of her faith that had done that? His own faith had seemed to evaporate into a thin film of anger for him on the day of Sandy’s funeral. Was she just better suited to this survival journey than he was? Or was it just that time healed like everyone said?

      Maybe it really was time. He could almost believe, listening to her, that he could get to where she was one day. Right now, he just needed to get through the upcoming wedding, and maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world if she helped a bit with that.