"Paul? You don't have to invite us to dinner every Sunday."
"I know. We just like having you guys come over."
"You're already on tap to win 'Best Brother of the Year" award again, so it's not like you need to keep looking out for me."
"Abby? I know you can take care of yourself—and Trevor. That's never even been a concern. But you're my sister. We're family. And family takes care of one another."
"It does, but you and Amanda have been taking care of us since Terry died. We love you for it, but you have a wife, and you don't need us there every single week."
Her brother paused for a moment then said, "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were looking for excuses to stop coming over."
"What? No! Nothing could be further from the truth. I just don't want you to feel obligated to look out for us for the rest of your life. That's all."
"Terry was my best friend, Abby. Losing him tore me up, too, and I can't even imagine how hard it was on you. And Trevor was so young. It just...kills me to think about him not having a father, and especially one as involved and caring as his dad was. And worst of all, he'll never know what a good man he was."
Now it was Abby who paused. She knew her brother was right. He and Terry had been best friends since junior high school. And Paul was the one who'd introduced to her to the man she'd married when she was 35. It wasn't that she'd planned to wait that long to settle down. It was more that she'd had so much fun being single that giving it up seemed too much to ask. Until she met Terry Stevens—again.
Abby had moved away from her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, after graduating from college (go Cornhuskers!) with a degree in nursing, and had her father not died, it was likely she'd still be living in the same Seattle suburb she'd moved to take a job in a local hospital. But when she learned that he'd had a completely unexpected heart attack and died while out working one morning on their huge farm.
Abby not only came home for the funeral but ended up staying. Mostly, she stayed for her mom's sake. Running the family business which consisted of growing and harvesting over a thousand acres of corn each year was too much for the then 63-year old woman.
Abby was a registered nurse and could find a job anywhere, so that wasn't an issue. But taking care of her mom and making sure she didn't work herself to death was. So for the first three months she was back home, Abby did the kind of things she'd done growing up for hours a day around the farm. The tractor became he second home for most of each day.
There were endless tasks to be done while always keeping harvest time in the back of her mind. Once she was convinced her mom could handle things on her own, or rather with the aide of the additional hand she finally, but reluctantly, brought onboard, Abby went back to work at a doctor's office in Omaha. But before she did, she found herself spending more and more time with someone she'd known forever but mostly forgotten about until this trip home.
Paul and Terry had hung out at the home where Abby grew up for as far back as she could remember. In fact, Terry Stevens was her first crush, but being four years younger, she was nothing but just the skinny little kid with pigtails to him. And by the time she grew up and became a beautiful young woman, he was off at college himself and sowing his wild oats while majoring in agricultural engineering.
Terry had never married, either, but like Abby, he was smitten from the first time he saw the all-grown up version of her. Yes, she'd been cute as a girl, but the adult Abby wowed him from the moment he shook her hand after Paul said, "And I'm sure you remember my sister, Pigtails."
That was the name Terry'd given her way back when, and no one else had ever called her that before or since. Abby blushed when her old nickname came up, and the way Terry was looking at her made her cheeks glow even more in spite of her age and experience in life.
He asked her out the next day, and began helping out on the farm after working his all day just to be near her. Within a month, she knew she was falling in love. Just two months after that, Terry asked her to marry him, and in spite of many people warning them both about rushing into things, she said 'yes' and never looked back.
Ten months after they said 'I do', Trevor was born, and Abby and her handsome husband were over-the-moon happy. But less than 18 months later, Trevor found a lump during a self check which Abby insisted he do every month. He hated doing it, and as a result, often let it go for several months until she started bugging him. She felt it, too, and when she did, a cold chill ran down her back even as she told Terry it was probably nothing. But her insistence that he get it checked immediately caused her husband to wonder if this might not be serious.
Two days later, they saw the same family practice doctor Abby grew up seeing, and she was equally concerned. A week later they were seeing a specialist and getting a CAT scan. And then a PET scan. And then came the dreaded diagnosis: Stage IV testicular cancer that had already spread to his liver and lungs.
The crazy thing was he felt fine. He was working all day and had no indication anything was wrong. But within two weeks of the diagnosis he began feeling tired. Then came the symptoms that proved the diagnosis was accurate. And the pain. The nearly unbearable pain dulled only by morphine and then Fentanyl.
Just nine months after learning that the tumor had spread, Terry Stevens took his last breath in an Omaha hospital bed with Abby and their son by his side.
Devastation didn't do justice to the way his loss affected Abby. Trevor was sad but too young to understand what happened. So Abby put on a brave face in front of her son during the day and cried herself to sleep at night for months. And had it not been for her mother, Paul, and his amazing wife, Amanda, she wasn't sure she'd have made it this far. But they'd all been there for her and her son from the time they got the worst news any of them had ever faced, and they were still there for them.
"You're sure you're not sick of us?" Abby asked in a way that told her brother she was smiling.
"Are you kidding? Never gonna happen! And I got a new video game I wanna play with Trev, so get your butts over here on Sunday. Got it?"
"Okay, okay. We'll be there," his sister replied, happy to know she really wasn't a burden on them.
Paul and Amanda couldn't have children, so that was another reason they loved having her and Trevor over each week. Paul was like a part-time surrogate father to her son, and he was very good at it. But Abby knew that her boy needed an actual father who would be there day in and day out who could also be a role model for Trevor and to do guy things with him because Paul wasn't always available.
But knowing that and doing something about it were two different things. Abby had finally tried dating a few months earlier, but her heart wasn't in it. Maybe it was more that she just wasn't ready yet, or maybe it was the men she'd dated. Whatever the reason was, she still had no real desire to get serious with anyone. But each time she thought about just throwing herself into her work and her son and giving up on ever finding someone else, she'd look at him laying in bed asleep and realize that wasn't an option.
So for now she'd have dinner with her brother, do her job the best she could each day, spend time with her son, and do her best to keep an open mind about dating, something that had become a kind of four-letter word to her. But at 43, and with Trevor now seven years old, she didn't have years and years to piddle away while she waited. But she did have days and weeks and even months, and that thought gave her great comfort as she hung up the phone with her big brother.
By the time Sunday dinner was over, Abby was more than glad she'd joined her brother and sister-in-law, and at the last minute, their mom agreed to take a few hours off and eat with them, too. The food, as always, was delicious, and the conversation was easy and pleasant. Abby, her mom, and Paul were extremely close, but she also loved Amanda dearly, as did her mother, so anytime Paul grabbed Trevor to go do something, Abby enjoyed the girl time immensely.
The three of them talked while the 'men' played the new video game, and Abby loved the sounds of laughter and things like, "Nice job, dude!" coming from the family room while they sipped a second glass of wine in the kitchen.
"Hey, we wanna do something with you guys on Wednesday," Paul said as he and Trevor walked in after playing the game for over an hour.
"Oh?" Abby replied as she looked at her brother.
