Taking a sip of my coffee, I manage to keep myself together and not trauma dump all over her. I’m so glad she opened up to me, but that would be way too much emotion in this kitchen for one day.

“It’s really not a problem at all,” I assure her. “I promised when I hired you that you’d have full control over kitchen staff. I trust you.”

“Thanks.” Picking up her tongs, she gestures to the door that connects to the dining room. “By the way, your family’s having breakfast out there.”

Ouch. Another word that shouldn’t be painful, but is, in this context.

“They’re not...” I start, then shake my head when she looks at me curiously. “Never mind. Guess I better go say good morning.”

Fucking Mother’s Day. This time of year is never great for me. It’s awful that May doesn’t have a mother to celebrate with. And to make things so much worse, April died shortly after the holiday, so that anniversary always brings up even more grief for me.

Usually, I’m good at preparing for the onslaught of emotions that I know are coming. I can let myself enjoy the spring festival with May, and then I spend the rest of the month compartmentalizing hard, only listening to depressing music and quietly falling apart when I’m alone in my bedroom.

This year, with Elise and Grant being here, they’ve kept me too busy and panicked to think ahead. So the fact that Sunday is Mother’s Day has kind of snuck up on me.

We hold a brunch at the inn every year for mothers and daughters, and I’m thankful Addison is on top of the menu stuff. I’ll do my part to organize, but as much as possible, I like to avoid being around during the actual event. I’ll find myself other busywork to keep me occupied so I don’t have to witness all the celebrating.

Hopefully Elise and Grant will be leaving by this weekend. Having them around for the holiday would make it so much harder for me to ignore my grief.

Because it should be April here. It should be April living a happy life with her daughter in Mayweather, and I should be fun Uncle Brenden who visits the two of them all the time.

But the world isn’t fair at all, is it? And even though that’s how things should’ve gone, I can’t imagine a life for myself now where I’m not May’s father. Maybe I’m horribly selfish, but I’d never want to give this up.