I’d dragged my children right along with me.

I didn’t involve them, oh no. Never that.

But I didn’t hide it from them.

Therefore, that first Friday in Magdalene with the kids imminently arriving, I was a nervous wreck.

Auden, my sixteen-year-old son, drove. A month after his sixteenth birthday, his father and stepmother bought him a car. It was used. It was okay, not great. Through stilted reports from my boy, I learned what it was and knew that it ran (which was all he needed) and was relatively trendy (which was all he wanted).

I would have bought him his heart’s desire, even if that were a Porsche or a Mercedes.

Conrad would have attempted to educate me about the fact that if we gave everything to our children, they would become spoiled and wouldn’t know how to work for things themselves.

Conrad would have been right.

I still would have bought Auden the car he wanted, brand new with all the bells and whistles. And if Conrad and I had still been married, I’d have done it without thought, without discussion, giving it to Auden so Conrad would have had two choices: be the bad guy and take it away or give in and let him have it.

Now that I didn’t have that say in my son’s life, at three thirty on that Friday, that car drove up and parked in my drive.

A red Honda Civic.

I stood in my open front door and watched my children alight from it.

They didn’t look at the house. They didn’t look at me.

Auden and Olympia Moss just grabbed small bags from the trunk of the car and trudged up to the house like they were walking into a classroom at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning to take their SATs.

I watched them approach me.

Auden looked like his dad, tall with a straight nose, light brown eyes and rich brown hair that had a subtle reddish cast to it. My son was bulkier than his father, maybe an inch or two shorter, but he was still growing.

As if our lives were golden and the fates shined their smiles on us and gave us the perfect family, Auden got his looks from his father, but Olympia was just like me, petite but slightly curvy (or in Pippa’s case, her curves were filling out). Brunette hair that was several shades darker than her brother’s and father’s, with no reddish cast, but it had a natural shine that said someone up there liked my baby girl and me. She also had my hazel eyes that popped due to the darkness of our hair.

My boy was already handsome, like Conrad.

My girl was far, far prettier than me.

When they got close, my throat feeling clogged, I forced out, “Hey, honeys.”

Auden looked up. My beautiful boy who got all I loved from his dad (and then some), his eyes on me emotionless, my throat completely closed.