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I told him I understood, of course I did. Then when I closed the door behind him, I broke down in tears, angrily kicking the garbage can by the back door. Luckily the girls had been at school.

I’d allowed myself to wallow for only a few minutes before straightening up and assessing the situation. We weren’t going to be tossed out—not yet. Of course, I wouldn’t let that happen.

“We could always move back to Mom’s,” I said when I talked to Reese about it.

“NO!” she’d said, emphatic. “You can’t leave me—I came here to be closer to you! And what about our plan to get Mom and Dad over here?”

When we left Mom and Dad’s place after Thanksgiving, mom had been bereft. It was Reese who’d suggested maybe we should try getting them to move to Jewel Lakes. I’d never thought about asking, mostly because I didn’t want Mom to think I needed more help.

So far, when Reese asked a couple of weeks ago, it had been a hard no. They were attached to the home we’d grown up in. They had friends there. But we’d decided to keep trying, together, even though I wasn’t sure it would ever work.

“I know,” I said. “I’m just saying, if things got really dire.”

“If things get that dire, you guys could move in with me.” Reese lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Millerville. Hardly appropriate for a family.

I smiled, though she couldn’t see it. “You’re young and single. You don’t need us cramping your style.”

“First of all, I’m two years older than you. Second, cramping what style? My lifestyle is ‘work and come home’.”

“And dating?”

“I’m not doing that right now, remember?” she said. “Per your advice.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” She sounded annoyed.

“Okay,” I said. “Sorry.” Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised she was taking my advice. But I couldn’t help the note of suspicion in my voice. She hadn’t said a word about Eli since Thanksgiving. I wasn’t naive enough to think that meant he was out of her mind completely—I’d only ever known Reese to put her whole heart into her relationships.

I would have run it by Will—as an outside party, and my friend—if he and I were talking. But we weren’t, not since I’d stopped texting beyond perfunctory replies to his now-dwindling texts.

It was for the best—he could only stand to be friends and I

but thinkingabout that only added to my depression.

“Anyway we’re not talking about me,” she said, pivoting the conversation back to my financial stress. “What about the firefighter money?”

I hedged. “Yeah… I guess.” I had a few thousand left in savings from the firefighter fund. But I was saving that. I wasn’t sure for what yet—maybe nothing, but it was psychological at that point. Like I was holding onto a dream. But I knew if I used it now, I’d dip into it again, and the saddest thing in the world would be for me to run through it with living expenses over a couple of years.

Joe would tell me I was being stubborn, but when I listened for him, he wasn’t there.

“Okay fine,” Reese said. “You know what the other option is.”

“What?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

I scowled. “I’m not putting him back in the blog.”

“But it would be so easy! A couple of photos every other post. Bam. Rent increase covered.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said. Though she was right—my readers were still sending me messages asking what had happened to the mystery White Knight.

Reese didn’t know the whole story with Will. She didn’t know how things were between us. How it hurt to be around him and how I’d had to step back from even texting with him after it got too hard.

“You care about him, don’t you?” Reese asked.

“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. But that was what was so hard.