Page 28 of Families and Other Enemies

Bridget must have felt a trace of something—his sorrow, his truths, his almost-touch, his love—for she straightened. She wiped her face and stepped in front of him. She knelt so they were face-to-face. “Before she died, Mom forgave you. But I couldn’t. I was so angry on her behalf, so angry about all the years she worked and suffered and worried about you.”

“Sorry.” His whisper was barely more than a thought.

Bridget’s voice grew stronger. “Now I’m thinking about this evening’s event, and what people said about you, and remembering the years of labor in the kitchen and all the kindness I’ve seen you show... I can’t judge you. You’re a good man who faced a bad situation and did the best you could. It wasn’t good, but in the end, we’re all just doing the best we can.”

“I am trying to do good...now.” Ralph broke down and wept. He wept for the wasted years and the love he could have had. He wept for his family. He wept for the man he wished he could have been.

But when he looked up, Bridget was smiling at him.

Her smile lit up the world.

KELLENSATINBridget’s office, reading the newest Dr. Brown sci-fi mystery on her app, when Bridget returned looking tired to death, blotchy with tears and happier than she had looked in all the weeks Kellen had known her. “Okay?” Kellen asked.

“I didn’t see that coming.” Bridget looked sharply at Kellen. “Did you?”

“Didn’t have a clue until this afternoon when I picked him up,” Kellen assured her.

As if she couldn’t remain upright for another minute, Bridget sank down on her knees, then flat on the floor, arms out, staring at the stained tile ceiling. “My mother said...she said I had to give up the bitterness and the fear of trusting any man, or I would never have a family. I want a family. I’ve always wanted a family.”

Kellen thought about her friends in the military. They had been her family. Then she thought about Max and Rae, and that familiar panic lifted her off the earth and the elevation stopped her heart.

Bridget continued. “I can give up the bitterness, but when I think about trusting a man...it’s not going to happen. That wound is never going to heal. So you know what this means?”

“No?”

“I’m going to have to adopt those kids.”

“What kids?” Kellen was honestly bewildered. Then—”Wait! Sophia and her brothers and sister?”

“I always wanted a family,” Bridget repeated. “A baby.”

“They’re not babies! And there’s four of them!” Kellen was dazzled and horrified by the mere idea of...of four children. “You’re really going to adopt them?”

Bridget turned her head and looked at Kellen. “Do you not get it? This thing with Ralph—with my father—it’s a sign. An omen. A directional marker on the bumpy road of life.”

Much struck, Kellen said, “I get it. You’re right. Sign. Omen. Directional marker.”

“For us both?” Bridget asked as if she already suspected the answer.

“How did you know?”

“No one shows up in town and goes to work at a soup kitchen because their life is perfect.”

Bridget had made the hard decision.

Now it was Kellen’s turn: to face Aunt Cora, to do her duty to her daughter and maybe open herself to something so big, so earth-shattering, it would change her life. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be in to work tomorrow.”

Bridget performed a crooked thumbs-up. “I’ll find someone to cover for you.”

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