She frowns. “Well, the four-hundred-dollar-a-month rent with utilities included was too hard to pass up.”

“Because it’s a funeral home!”

“I mean, good point . . .” She chuckles. “But that lease is almost up, and I have to figure out what I’m going to do.”

She reaches for the remote and picks a cooking show. As the redhead on the screen babbles about shrimp and grits, my mind drifts off.

There are virtually no rentals around Bloomfield. The few available are sketchy—like the funeral home. Val has played with the idea of moving elsewhere as soon as she finishes her nursing degree, and I do my best to talk her out of it. But if she can’t find somewhere to live now, I might lose her.

And, really, she’s all I have besides Ethan.

“I’m not going to leave you,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“I didn’t say a word.”

“You don’t have to speak when I can read your face, friend.”

This is why I love her.

“I’ll find something,” she says. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Sure. Right.”

She lowers the volume and flops from her side to her back. From that angle, she’s looking directly at me.

“We could move somewhere together,” she says. “Me, you, and Ethan—the three amigos. We could get the hell out of this weather and go somewhere warm. Or somewhere cold and magical. Or somewhere with both but more temperate.”

I grin at her. “You know I’d love to get out of here. But I’ll never leave Bloomfield until at least Ethan is an adult, and probably not even then if he sticks around this area.”

She frowns. “Because Jared is here.”

I take in her tight lips and narrowed eyes. “Yes. Partly.”

“Fuck him.”

“Val . . .”

I sink back into my chair and try to figure out how to explain this to someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to be a single parent with a child in a grown-up’s body as the coparent.

“Look—my job right now is to give Ethan every advantage that I can possibly give him in the world. I believe it’s beneficial for Ethan to be able to foster some kind of a relationship with Jared. And, honestly, he’s the only male figure he even has right now.”

“That doesn’t mean a shitty figure is better than no figure.”

I consider that. “Okay, true, but Jared isn’t evil. He’s not mean. He’s not abusive. He’s just not . . . around.”

“You’re a bigger person than me. You literally center your whole life around that kid and expect nothing from Jared.”

I don’t have a choice.

“Trust me. One day when Ethan’s an adult, I’m going to go wild. I’m going to blow up on Jared, buy gratuitous things from social media ads, and . . . I don’t know. Go to Vegas or something.”

She barks a laugh. “You’ve lived such a sheltered life. You don’t even know how to have fun.”

“One day. Right now I’m trying to give Ethan the stability and love and structure that I didn’t have growing up.” The levity of the moment passes, and a shadow falls across my soul. “Only I’m afraid that I’m failing at it. I’m continuing a cycle, albeit a variation of it, that I promised myself my whole entire life that I would break.”