Coming Home to You Read Free

curious by now at who it might be, who might dare risk calling the grief-stricken pseudo-widow.
    That’s what I was.
    Not quite a wife, not quite a widow.
    I was without definition.
    I found my phone and hastily flipped it open, not even bothering to check the caller ID.
    “Hello?” I croaked.
    “Zoë? Is that you?”
    “Kate?” I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like her.
    Kate, who’d been my best friend since the third grade and had been there for every major event in my life.
    Every one except this one.
    “I’m on my way, Zoë. I’m here,” she said so quietly it was almost a whisper.
    Hearing her reminded me of how much I had missed her, and not having her to lean on these past months had left me feeling even more alone. I knew that if she could have been there with me, she would have. She would have dropped everything and come running the minute she heard.
    Simpler said than done, though. Kate had spent the last year in Africa doing relief work, living in poor, dangerous conditions that afforded few luxuries and complicated travel. She hadn’t been able to come home for Paul’s memorial, but we’d written to each other constantly. She gave me every bit of support possible, but I still missed her like crazy.
    Technically, she wasn’t quite home yet, but she was at least finally back in the country. She’d dialed my number the minute her plane had touched down at LaGuardia, her first domestic stop in the long succession of airports and layovers that was to come over the next hours. Knowing Kate, she probably hadn’t even waited until the stewardess had granted permission for cell phones to be turned back on.
    “What can I do for you?” she asked.
    “Just come over.” It was all I could manage without crying.
    Kate and I had met in the third grade, after one of the sadistic little boys in my class decided he liked the contents of my lunchbox more than his and attempted to lay claim to them. Fortunately for me, Kate’s innate sense of seeking justice for the underdog had kicked in early, and she came to my rescue. The freckle-faced little pipsqueak never even saw it coming. One minute, he was twisting my arm behind my back in an effort to persuade me of the merits of relinquishing my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The next, he was flat on his back with a bloody nose and one hum-dinger of a black eye.
    The mean right hook was a move she’d learned from one of her five older brothers, while her self-appointed role of school-ground superhero seemed an attempt to mirror the values that her parents had been trying to teach her. I’d always known she would pursue that fierce passion and channel it to do something important with her life; but, on that day, she was my guardian angel.
    Over the next two decades, Kate and I took our cafeteria meeting and cemented our bond to become closer than the sisters we’d each always dreamed of having. My house became her house, her house became mine. Had we been able to occupy the exact same space at the exact same time, we would have been one person, and sometimes I think our parents forgot which kid belonged where.
    We differed in so many ways that our friendship might have given other people pause. Not only in personality, but also in physicality. While I was small-boned and athletic, Kate was tall and regal, even as a child. My light brown curls were in direct opposition to the thick blonde mane that cascaded down her back like hair in an expensive shampoo commercial, my large green eyes like foliage to be watered in the wash of her impossibly bright blue ones. I maintained an “athletic” build, never managing to fill out my bras, while Kate could rock a 34C like nobody’s business.
    When boys entered the picture, none was allowed access to the inner realm unless approved by the uninterested party and a rigorous battery of tests was passed. After high school, we moved in together and pursued our respective futures at local colleges instead of flitting off to