Sunshine After The Rain

Chapter Two

The days passed in a fuzzy blur of condolences, calls and cocktails. Sophie did her best to get through each minute at a time, having to use every ounce of willpower not to scream at the top of her lungs.

She had her children to consider, and despite her mother having arrived who'd been taking care of them for the last two days while she took care of everything else, Sophie needed to at least appear strong even if that strength wasn't within in her.

Ella still didn't understand where her daddy was and why he'd never be coming home again. She was much sharper than she was generally given credit for because of her age and saw the gloomy cloud that emerged above their house like a plague, ready and willing to devour them. Yet in her young daughter's heart, her father was still alive and somewhere out there in the world, awaiting to greet her once again somewhere down the line.

Justin's age didn't allow him the leisure of deceptive optimism. The reality of what happened to his father consumed her son in a way she couldn't reassure. He'd been performing the blame game since it happened, saying that if she'd only loved him more, he wouldn't have been driving around that night and would still be alive.

The cold hard realism of it all, however, was that it was he who hadn't loved her; not in the manner they expected a husband to love a wife. Sophie hoped beyond hope that he'd loved her in some other small way for all these years. If there'd been any love at all, she would no longer consider her youth wasted. She would no longer be obsessed by the secret resentment that raged within her.

Sophie was crying for losing her children's father and of the man she'd spent the last nine years wholly in love with before it all fell apart in an array of shattered pieces too damaged to piece together. Though she remained his wife on paper, she was not his wife in his heart or her own at the end and that loss seemed stronger than death at that moment. She was so devastated by the destruction of her marriage that it seemed impossible to concentrate on the death itself.

"Sophie, will you please concentrate," Laura scolded as she snapped fingers in front of her face as if she were a waitress Laura considered herself superior to.

Laura may have been rooting for the marriage to end, but didn't appear informed of Jason's plans or follow-through to end it. Her mother-in-law seemed to know nothing and Sophie didn't dare bring it up.

A part of Sophie just wanted to cremate him and dispersed the ashes somewhere out in the world. Maybe give some to her husband's girlfriend, whoever she was, or smuggle the ashes into his work since it appeared to be the only thing in his life that he loved. But tradition forced her to pick out a casket and bury him in the family plot. Seeing as his family had been here for generations upon generations, all of them together in death, there was no other option.

The only option was for Sophie to grin and bear it all. After the funeral, surely the haze would lift and she could feel something real from all of this besides her own fury; feel the genuine loss deep in her bones so she could pick up her scattered life and put the fragments together again. As Sophie stood there staring at the caskets, the only thing Laura seemed willing to let her decide on. The reality of what happened and what was happening still hadn't yet sunk in. Like her daughter, she still expected Jason to be out there in the world and return to her, only for her to endure him leaving her yet again.

At least then her children would still have a father, even if she no longer had a husband.

Sophie pointed at a casket with a cherry finish. "That one."

"Really?" Laura asked as she crossed her arms and surveyed it. "I would have expected you to choose a less extravagant one."

There was enough history with her monster-in-law to appreciate the underlining meaning in her remarks. 'Less extravagant' meant that Laura thought she would pick a cheap piece of crap one because Sophie generally didn't like spending money on things that didn't matter. She didn't demand nor desire the most costly of anything.