Someone to Remember

Wild Widows Series, Book 5

Chapter 1

Taylor

From the second I got the call from Will’s foreman telling me there was an accident on the job site and Will was taken by ambulance to Inova Fairfax Hospital, I’m locked in an unimaginable nightmare. My brain nearly stops functioning. The one thought that registers in the chaos is that if they’re taking him to Inova, that means he’s hurt badly, or they would’ve gone somewhere closer to where he was working.

I must’ve texted my neighbor to come stay with the kids, but I don’t recall doing that. One minute, Kate wasn’t there, and the next, she was. She summoned an Uber for me and told the driver to hurry, to get me to my husband at the Inova ER as quickly as possible.

Will was working an overnight shift supervising workers on a building that’s way behind schedule, so they made the decision to go to twenty-four-hour shifts to catch up.

Thank God my kids are already asleep and won’t know anything about this until the morning.

On the way to Inova, I think about the people I should notify. His parents and mine, siblings, friends. But I don’t tell anyone yet because fear grips every part of me and has made it so I can’t move or think or do anything other than pray. I’m sick to my stomach with dread, déjà vu and disbelief.

Will promised he’d never leave me or my kids. He’s been our port in the storm as we learned to live without Greg, my first husband and my children’s father, who died at twenty-nine from brain cancer seven years ago when I was just twenty-seven.

The driver gets me there quickly, but I’m so not ready to face whatever is waiting for me inside. When he pulls up to the emergency entrance, he turns toward the back seat. “I hope everything is okay.”

“Thank you.” It takes two tries to get the door open, and when I get out, I feel unsteady on my feet. For a second, I fear I might topple over onto my pregnant belly.

Until I see Will’s smiling, handsome face, and he tells me not to worry about anything because he’s fine and he’ll take care of me and the kids the way he always has, nothing will be okay. I’ve come to rely on him, which is entirely his fault. He’s made himself essential to me and my children, and the thought of even a day without him at the center of our lives is unfathomable. I rush toward the reception desk in the crowded emergency department.

“Be right with you.”

It takes all the self-control I can find not to start shrieking for someone to tell me where my husband is.

After several tense minutes pass, I say, “Please… My husband was brought in by ambulance. William Lonergan. I need to know… to see him. Please.”

“Taylor!”

I spin around to see Will’s foreman and friend, Bryan, coming toward me. “Come with me. The doctor promised an update as soon as possible.”

Bryan puts his arm around me and leads me to a room where two of Will’s employees are waiting. Their pale, shocked expressions add to my anxiety.

“Wh-what happened?”

“He fell off scaffolding.”

Bryan helps me into a chair when the legs under me would’ve collapsed.

“How far?”

“About fifty feet.”

“Oh my God.” I want to ask why he wasn’t attached to safety gear, but I can’t get the question past my fear.

“Taylor…”

I look up at him, terrified by the way he says my name. The single word is laced with agony.

“Sweetheart… I don’t think he’s going to make it. It’s possible… Well, I think he broke his neck.”

“No.” I can’t. Please, God. No.

I’m not sure what happened after that, but when I come to, I’m in a bed connected to monitors with an IV in my hand. The echo of the baby’s heartbeat is a steady cadence.

I have no idea what’s going on until I see Bryan pacing at the foot of my bed, his face wet with tears. And then I remember. Will. Fell fifty feet off scaffolding. Might’ve broken his neck. Is probably dead.

My Will. The man who stepped into my life—and my kids’ lives—after we lost Greg and made everything better for us… Oh my God, the baby. Our little boy is due in a month.

“Bryan.”

He stops pacing and turns to me. His devastated expression says everything I don’t want to hear.

I dissolve into heartbroken sobs. “No.”

Bryan comes to my bedside and takes my hand. “I’m so sorry, Taylor. They think he died on impact and didn’t suffer.”

I shake my head as tears spill down my cheeks. This cannot be happening. How will I ever tell my kids? They barely remember the man who fathered them, and they adore Will. He became their daddy one skinned knee and tea party at a time. 

“Is there someone I can call for you?”

If I tell people, then it becomes real.

My beautiful Will is dead.

“I want to see him.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I need it. Please. Will you take me to him?”

“Let me see what I can do,” he says reluctantly.

After he leaves the room, I stare at the dry-erase board that bears my name and my nurse’s name, wondering how this nightmare can be happening again. How am I supposed to go on without the man who put me back together with his love and devotion to me and my kids?

He was so perfect from the beginning that I didn’t agonize over whether I should be with him, the way most widows do with new relationships after a terrible loss. Falling in love with Will was the easiest, most natural thing to ever happen, and I didn’t stop for one second to ask for anyone’s permission to be happy. I left my widowhood behind, became a wife again and never looked back, except to honor Greg’s life at every birthday, anniversary and sometimes just because I was thinking of him on a random Friday. I’ve never stopped thinking of him even as I built a happy new life with Will. Keeping Greg alive in the memories of our children has been one of my primary goals since we lost him.

“They said you can see him shortly,” Bryan says when he returns.

“I need my friend Iris.” She’s the only one I want. She’ll know what to do. “Do you have my phone?”

When he hands it to me, the first thing I see is a message from my neighbor Kate asking how Will is doing.

I’m also shocked to see it’s now after midnight. What the hell? “Did I pass out?”

“Yeah, you were out of it for a long time. You scared us.”

I’m so blinded by tears I can hardly see the screen as I find Iris’s number and make the call that’ll make it official.

I’m a widow.

Again.

Iris

A midnight phone call is never a good thing. That’s my first thought as I turn over in bed to grab my phone off the bedside table, hoping to quiet it before the ringing wakes Gage. I see the name TAYLOR on the screen and am immediately wide awake as I take the phone into the bathroom and close the door. I haven’t spoken to my friend and cofounder of the Wild Widows in a few weeks, and she’s never called this late.

“Hey.”

“Iris.”

“What’s wrong?”

All I can hear are deep, wrenching sobs that fill me with anxiety over what she’s going to tell me.

“Taylor, honey…”

“It’s Will.”

After being widowed for more than five years, she remarried two years ago and is expecting her first child with her second husband.

“What about him?”

“He… he was killed in an accident at work.”

“Oh God, no.”

“Iris…” A world of need is conveyed in the way she says my name.

“I’m coming.”

“I… I’m at Inova. I passed out…”

“Are you okay? Is the baby?”

“I…”

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

“I can’t do this again. I just can’t.”

“I’m on my way. Do you want to stay on the phone?”

“I, um, I don’t think so.”

“I’ll be right there, honey.”

“Thank you.”

Gage comes into the bathroom as I throw on clothes. “What’s wrong?”

“Taylor’s husband, Will, was killed in an accident at work.”

I catch his expression as the news registers like a gut punch and worst-case scenario for a widow—hearing it can happen again.

“I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t have to. You barely know her.”

“But I know all too well what she’s going through. Or I should say… I know what it’s like to have it happen once. This…”

“I know. It’s unbelievable, and their baby is due in a month.”

“Good God.”

“Hurry. I have to get to her.”

My mom slept over last night so we could go out with our Wild Widows friends. Thankfully, I can leave the kids with her because I really want Gage with me. I text her to let her know we have to leave.

While he goes into our walk-in closet to get dressed, I brush my teeth and put my hair up with hands that refuse to follow basic commands because they’re trembling so hard. Any time something like this happens to someone I know, it takes me right back to getting the phone call about my husband, Mike, being killed in a plane crash while I was at home with three little kids, including an infant.

I’m sure Gage feels the same sickening sense of déjà vu over the loss of his wife and eight-year-old twin daughters in a drunk-driving accident.

Tragedy of any kind resurrects feelings and memories we’d much rather forget than relive, but we put ourselves out there to support others in the same situation. That’s the mission of the group Taylor and I cofounded with our friend Christy in the early days of our widowhoods.

Now Taylor has been widowed again.

It defies belief, and it’s yet another reminder that we’re never safe from catastrophe, even after walking through the fire to survive a monumental loss.

Gage’s hands on my shoulders startle me even though I’m staring at the mirror and should’ve seen him coming. I can’t focus through the haze of disbelief and unbearable grief for my sweet friend.

“Are you ready?”

“I… I don’t know. This is just…”

“It’s unbelievable and terribly unfair. She’ll need us—and the rest of the group.”

“Yes, she will.” I place my hand over my aching gut. “I’ve never, for one second, considered that it could happen twice, even though, I mean… I know it can, it’s just…”

“It’s shocking and so very sad. And it’s a reminder that we can’t take anything for granted.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. I couldn’t go through that nightmare a second time.”

“You could and you would. The same way you did the last time, because you have children and you wouldn’t have a choice, but we don’t need to worry about that now. We need to get to Taylor.”

Thank goodness for him. I’ve that thought so often since he moved in with us. He’s an amazing source of support any time I need it, never more so than during my treatment for stage-zero breast cancer. This must be how he’d felt when I was first diagnosed, and he was forced to face the possibility that he could lose me, too.

I’ve gotten good at supporting young widows over the years, which is a skill I never imagined I’d have when I was still happily married to Mike. But in the years since I lost him so suddenly, I’ve learned a lot about grief and the unique challenges faced by younger widows who still have most of their lives ahead of them.

Topics such as dating and sex—and judgment from those who think it’s too soon or whatever stupid thing they might say—as well as blending families and dealing with two sets of in-laws have become routine to me, but this… Being widowed a second time before the age of thirty-five… I have zero experience with that one and would’ve preferred to keep it that way.

When we’re on the road to Inova in his Range Rover, Gage reaches over to take my hand.

“You’re freezing.”

“It’s shock. My hands always get cold when something terrible happens.”

“How do I not know that about you?”

“Thankfully, there hasn’t been this kind of shock in a while.” I glance over at his strong profile as he keeps his gaze pinned to the dark road. “How will I get her through this? I don’t have the tools…”

“You do. You have everything you need.”

“I don’t know. This is next-level, Gage. And what will it do to everyone in the group to hear about this?”

“It’ll be a kick in the teeth for everyone, but it’s not like we didn’t already know it was possible.”

“Knowing it and having it actually happen to a friend are two very different things.”

“You’re right, but the process will be the same for her—and for us as her supporters—only this time, she’s better equipped to handle it.”

“No one should have to go through this twice.”

“That’s for sure.”

“We’re going to have to tell the others…” I absolutely dread the thought of sharing this with our widow friends.

“Not yet. Let’s see Taylor and figure out what she needs first. We’ll tell them later.”

I’m relieved to take his advice, which is always spot-on. He’s been at this longer than me and most of the others, and his insight is invaluable to us.

“Gage…”

“What, honey?”

“We need to get with Joy and make your adoption of the kids final so if anything ever happens to me…”

“It won’t.”

“If it does, I want them with you, and we need to make that official.”

“Before the wedding?” We’re getting married the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which is less than two weeks from now.

“Right freaking now. I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”

“I hope you know what it means to me that you’d want them with me.”

“Of course I do. You’re their Daddy Gage, and it’s what they’d want, too.”

“We’ll get that done, but first we have to take care of Taylor.”

We also have to take care of the other Wild Widows, who’ll be rocked to the core by Taylor’s tragedy.

We’ll get them through it. Somehow.