“I told him he would have liked me better before…” I swallowed, then tried again. “He would have liked me better the way I was before Will died. You know, when I was all sharp-tongued and vivacious without the alcohol.”

She snorted. “If you think your tongue isn’t just as sharp, then it’s only because you haven’t been on the receiving end of it.” She set down the note as I put on the necklace. “Did losing Will change you? Absolutely. But at your core, you’re the same person you always have been, with the same big, beautiful heart. The fact that he sees that heart earns him my approval, but my opinion doesn’t really matter here. Yours does.”

I stared down at the pendant that rested just above my breasts. “I really like him.”

“I know.”

“I’m really scared.” My eyes found hers.

“I know that, too. Anything new is scary, and that’s without you already knowing the cost of risking your heart.”

“I’m not sure I have a heart to risk.” But that little flare of hope in my chest argued otherwise.

“If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be so scared.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “Now, are you ready for morning homework?”

The recording. The usual dread settled on my shoulders, but it was lighter today, easier to bear. Every day, this got a little easier. The improvement had been so small that I hadn’t seen it to start with, but now that we were seven weeks into the treatment—almost halfway—the progress was obvious.

Hope, there it was again.

“It’s not really morning homework since it’s after noon,” I quipped.

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Sam shot back, already going for the tape recorder, but there was a grin on her face. “For real, are you ready?”

I really was.

“Let’s do it.”

…

I paired my new necklace with simple gold studs, put on my favorite cream dress, and walked into the school district office on Monday at ten forty-five, exactly fifteen minutes early for my intake meeting with the superintendent.

In less than four months, I would be a fifth-grade teacher.

The house renovations would be complete, and then… What then? I was supposed to deliver a list of long-term goals to Dr. Circe tomorrow, and I was drawing a big, fat blank. Did maintaining my sanity count as a goal?

Or maybe trying to ease into a relationship—I mentally stumbled over the word—with Jackson?

Jackson. A texted thank you wasn’t enough, though he’d sworn it was. I wanted to see him, but he’d gone to nights this week, which meant whenever I was awake, he was asleep.

Complicated, indeed, but there was something to be said for anticipation.