Chapter 1•
I'm standing in Tasha's kitchen with a wine bottle in my hands, staring at the cork like it personally fucked me over.
The corkscrew is buried crooked in the cheap plastic, my palm slick around the handle, my hip braced against Tasha’s spotless island like this bottle and I are in a hostage negotiation.
It does not move.
“Come on, you piece of shit.”
I yank.
The cork gives with a rude pop, and I stumble back into the counter hard enough to rattle a drawer full of Tasha’s perfect silverware. Red wine surges up the neck, threatening her perfect floor, then settles.
Small victories.
I pour myself too much. Not cute too much. Widow-at-a-girls-weekend too much.
Tasha’s house hums around me, cold air blasting from vents, music tucked low in the walls, some moody indie girl singing about doomed love because apparently the sound system has jokes. Outside, July presses wet hands against every window. Mississippi humidity waits out there like a living thing, ready to crawl into my hair, my bra, my lungs.
Inside smells like Tasha. Clean linen. Citrus. Hospital soap.
Like even her chaos has been sterilized.
I take one swallow before anyone arrives.
Four days in the woods with women who knew me before Marcus died. Before everyone started talking to me in soft voices. Before my kitchen table became my office, my grief cave, my whole sad little kingdom.
Eighteen months.
His coffee mug is still in my sink.
Dried brown ring at the bottom. Handle turned left because Marcus was left-handed and always set things down like the world would wait for him. I cannot wash it. I know that is weird. I edit romance books for a living, which means I spend my days fixing fake heartbreak while real heartbreak sits in my sink, growing dust, holding the shape of my dead husband’s mouth.
If I wash it, it becomes ceramic.
Right now, it is evidence.
This morning I packed his Grateful Dead shirt. Faded black. Soft as breath. Smelling less like him every time I unfold it, which makes me furious at cotton, detergent, time, every stupid thing that keeps going when he does not.
I shoved it into the bottom of my bag like I was stealing from a ghost.
The front door slams open.
“I swear to Christ, if anybody comments on how I look, I will commit actual violence.”
Elena storms in dragging a suitcase large enough for witness protection. Designer sunglasses sit on top of her head. Her hair falls in glossy waves that probably required prayer, money, and a woman named Svetlana. She looks famous because she is, in that almost-famous way that makes strangers squint at her in airports.
“You look like a movie star,” I tell her.
“Bitch, I said don’t.”
Then she sees me.
The performance drops so fast it makes my chest ache. She crosses the kitchen and hits me with both arms, perfume, bone, heat, Elena. My Elena. The girl who held my hair in a sorority bathroom while I vomited tequila and sobbed over a man who owned cargo shorts. The woman who flew in for Marcus’s funeral and slept on my couch because she did not trust me to be alone with silence.
“Jordan,” she breathes into my hair.
I grip the back of her shirt. “Missed you too.”
“You better have.”
If we hug longer, I will cry, so God or Mara saves me.
“Move your asses. I’m carrying half of Target and my spine is filing for divorce.”
Mara barrels in loaded with grocery bags and a twelve-pack of toilet paper balanced on one hip. Purple paint streaks her forearm. Her messy bun leans sideways. Her shirt says I SURVIVED ANOTHER DAY OF TEACHING MIDDLE SCHOOLERS, which feels less like a shirt and more like a cry for help.
Elena points at the toilet paper. “Seriously?”
“We are going into the woods.” Mara dumps everything on the island. “Woods have leaves, snakes, murder vibes. They do not have bathroom attendants.”
I hand her wine.
“It’s a scam,” she announces after one gulp.
“What is?”
“Motherhood. Adulthood. Plants. All of it.” She digs her phone out of her back pocket. “Cora cried when I left, then handed me this.”
She shows us a picture of a painted rock with two black dots for eyes and yarn hair glued crooked across the top.
“Is that you?” Elena asks.
“Apparently. I look like a potato with trauma.”
My throat tightens. “It’s perfect.”
Mara’s mouth wobbles, then hardens. “Kevin missed pickup again. Too busy finding himself in Austin with Moon, the yoga fetus.”
“Moon?” Elena repeats.
“Twenty-two, flexible, and doomed if I ever see her Honda in my driveway.”
The door opens softer this time.
Renee steps in like she paid for the air first. Sleek hair. Cream dress. Gold earrings that whisper money instead of yelling it. Carter Hargrove’s wife, polished until nothing shows, except tonight something does. A tightness at her jaw. A bruise-colored shadow under one eye no concealer quite beat.
“Hello, peasants.”
Mara launches at her. Renee freezes for one blink, like she forgot what being grabbed with love feels like, then folds into the hug.
Her phone buzzes on the counter while I’m pouring her wine.
Carter.
Renee stares. Her thumb hovers.
Decline.
Face-down.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“He wants the hotel name for his records.” Her smile is thin enough to cut. “I told him there is no hotel and no service. He dislikes facts when they inconvenience him.”
Before anyone can touch that, Rita slips through the patio door with her phone pressed to her cheek.
“I know, Benny. Mommy knows. Daddy will make dinosaur pancakes, okay? Big ones. Chocolate chips if you ask sweet.”
A tiny sob crackles through the speaker.
Rita’s eyes shine. Happy women should be illegal around widows. Not because they did anything wrong. Because they stand there glowing with the life you almost had, and you are supposed to smile like your spare bedroom is not painted pale green for a baby who never existed.
She hangs up and presses the phone to her chest.
“I almost didn’t come.”
“You came,” Mara tells her. “That counts.”
Tasha appears from the stairs in scrubs, hair twisted up, tired eyes scanning us like triage.
“Who opened my good wine?”
I lift my glass. “Me.”
“Good.” She bumps my shoulder. “You need it.”
Then the kitchen becomes us.
Six women. Too much luggage. Too much wine. Mara slapping laminated maps on the island. Elena demanding to know whether bears live in Mississippi. Renee judging the generic chips without moving her face. Rita showing Tasha pictures of Ben and Lucy in rain boots. Tasha sorting gear into neat piles because control is her love language.
I lean against the refrigerator and let the noise hit me.
I forgot this.
The way we fill a room until the walls have to make space. The way Mara’s laugh comes first and the explanation comes later. The way Elena talks with her whole arm. The way Renee’s shoulders lower when no one asks her to perform. The way Rita softens every time she says my kids. The way Tasha watches all of us like she is counting pulses.
This is what grief stole too.
Not just Marcus.
Me with people. Me in rooms. Me alive enough to be annoyed.
Mara claps. “Logistics. We leave at seven.”
“Illegal,” Elena fires back.
“Drive four hours, hit the trail, hike in, set up camp, drink under stars, become emotionally healed woodland goddesses.”
“Define healed,” Renee murmurs.
“No husbands, no kids, no work, no Carter calling every seventeen minutes.”
Renee’s mouth twitches. “Amen.”
Tasha lifts a finger. “Extra socks.”
“I packed boots, bug spray, and emotional baggage,” Elena says. “Take it or leave it.”
They laugh.
I do too.
Then the room tilts inside me.
Not physically. Worse. Like some old animal part of my brain lifts its head and smells smoke.
I look at them, really look, and cold slides under my skin.
This is the last time.
The thought lands so hard my hand tightens around the glass.
This is the last time we are all in one bright kitchen, safe, whole, bitching about mosquitoes. The last time Elena’s mascara is perfect. The last time Mara’s hands are stained with school paint instead of blood. The last time Renee’s phone is the scariest thing in the room. The last time Rita thinks leaving her kids is the hardest part. The last time Tasha believes a list can keep us alive.
I know what grief does. I know it makes every goodbye feel loaded. Every open door look like a mouth. Every ordinary night feel like evidence waiting to be understood later.
Knowing does not stop it.
“Jordan?” Tasha cuts through the noise. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Five pairs of eyes turn on me.
I force my mouth up. “I’m fine. Just thinking about how much I’m going to hate hiking tomorrow.”
Elena groans. “I’m going to die of exposure, and my obituary will mention humidity.”
“It’ll be fun,” Rita says. “Like old times.”
I set my glass down before I break it.
“Sink,” I mutter, gathering empties because my hands need a job that is not shaking.
Behind me, Mara starts arguing mileage. Elena accuses nature of being anti-woman. Tasha says socks again. Renee’s phone buzzes once, then stops. Rita laughs, soft and guilty.
Tomorrow we’re driving into the woods.
And something deep in my bones is screaming that not all of us are coming back.
I turn toward the sink, staring out into Tasha’s dark backyard where the tree line sits heavy and still beyond the porch light.
Whole.
Alive.
Happy.
For now.
