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I was jolted out of my reverie when Jenny poked my arm. “The nurse is here,” she said gently, looking guilty for disturbing me. I’d jumped when she did it. I looked around in confusion for Ryan until Jenny told me he’d left for some sort of business meeting. “Helena’s here too.”

“Oh right, lunch!” I exclaimed, looking at Helena apologetically. “I forgot.”

“It’s perfectly fine, darling,” she assured me, waving hello to Shane and Jenny and walking over to kiss Alice hello while the nurse stepped aside to let her. “I’m stealing your wife for a bit. I promise to return her later in the condition I found her,” she told Alice, who laughed. It was starting to sound surprisingly like her old laugh, and it made us all smile, even the nurse.

“Hey, do you guys wanna come?” I asked Shane and Jenny, but they shook their heads and said something about going to the Planet. “You can come to the cookout tonight if you want,” I said, feeling like I was excluding them.

“That’s a family thing,” Shane told me. “We’ll have something as soon as this one gets home,” she said, pointing at Alice who glared at her. I laughed and said my goodbyes, then followed Helena to the cars and then to the restaurant. We ended up at the little sushi place she loved where Alice refused to eat since she claimed she’d found a hair in her nigiri once. Helena always said that was ridiculous and loved it there anyway.

Over lunch, we talked about getting the house outfitted for Alice, and how Helena would come over to keep us both company whenever we wanted her to. I was struck for a second, remembering how lonely Helena had been since Dylan had passed away a couple of years ago. I assured her that she could come over whenever she wanted to.

She smiled, and from there we started talking about my family and how good it would be to see the grandkids. Helena had a couple of her own, as both Wilson and Jun-Ying had gotten married and become parents. She didn’t get to see them as much as she would have liked, though, since they lived across the country. She’d somewhat adopted mine, much as she’d done with the kids when they were younger.