I’d done that for sure.

My voice was trembling when I replied, “I messed up.”

“You were grieving.”

I turned to her, shaking my head fiercely to shake the tears from my eyes, and repeated, “I messed up.”

“Okay, that wasn’t what I was trying to get through to you, I was simply trying to guide your way to understanding the path you’ve been on. But if you have to look at it that way, sure, okay, you messed up,” she agreed half-heartedly. “Though it burns me that any woman takes responsibility for the callous brutality a man can inflict, that burn runs deeper I hear that come from my own daughter’s mouth, but for now, I’ll let that be and just say, my beautiful girl, don’t mess up again.”

“Life is not about finding a man,” I told her.

“Life is about finding happy,” she told me. “So don’t,” she jerked her head to the window, “mess up.”

“They all went at me, Mom.” Now I was talking about Bounty.

She’d pulled it together.

With that, it killed, but the water hit her eyes and she couldn’t contain it.

It started leaking down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t lay that on you. Not you.”

“Rosalie, honeypot,” she began, lifting her hands to brush away the tears, “pray to God you learn, and when you do, trust me, you’ll learn that as difficult as it is to take, as heavy as any burden might be, when a woman becomes a mother, she can bear anything for her child. So lay it on me.”

“I’m scared,” I told her.

“Of course,” she told me.

“I can’t think of another guy right now,” I shared.

“That’s understandable,” she replied.

“I just have to get through today.”

“Then we’ll get you through it.”

“I loved him before,” I whispered the admission. “Before what happened happened to me.”

“What?” she whispered back.

“I wanted to make Beck into Snap.”

“Oh, Rosie,” she breathed, finally coming toward me, and if I wasn’t wrong, there was a grin playing at her lips.

“Mom, it was stupid,” I said as she lifted both hands and held my jaw carefully.

She tipped her head toward me, eye to identical eye.

“I just need to get through today,” I restated.

“How can I help with that?” she asked.

“Do you have Tillamook salted butterscotch ice cream?”

“Is my little girl in the vicinity?”

My grin was shaky and my nod in her hands was jerky.

“Spoons and the container and a marathon of Jason Bourne?” she proposed.

My grin got less shaky and my nod was far more definite.

“You’re on TV duty, I’ll get the ice cream,” she decreed.

She then came in, brushing her cheek against mine before she let me go and moved toward the kitchen.

“Mom?” I called.

She turned to me.

“I’m sorry you have to go through this with me,” I said.

“Something else you’ll learn, I pray, my beauty, is the good, the bad, the ugly, a mother is never sorry. Their baby needs them, there’s no other place they would be.”

Yes, oh yes.

I’d never manage without her.

“I love you,” I told her.

“And there it is,” she replied simply.

Then she went to get the ice cream.

I watched her go, knowing she was right.

There it was.

That was us. Our family. Our life.

We’d never had a mortgage (Mom still rented). We’d never had roots.

But we’d had each other.

And love.

And that was all that was needed.

So life sucked right then, it was uncertain and scary, both of those things in the extreme.

But I had my mom.

And that was all that was needed.

On that thought, I moved to the TV.

Chapter Two

Path

Rosalie

A plethora of guns lay in display cabinets before me, lined up on their sides, white tags attached to them.

A little old man with not a lot of hair (in fact, there were about three strands wafting over his shiny dome) was on the opposite side of the case, just down, eyeing me as I assessed my options.

I could imagine what I looked like. What with it being just a couple days after Tack, Hop, Tyra, and Lanie came to call, I was still bruised and stitched up with a taped nose, angry welts across my neck, and moving gingerly.

He probably thought I was a woman with revenge on my mind.

I wasn’t.

I was a woman with protection on my mind.

Chaos said they were going to cover me but they’d said that before and no protection was infallible (as I’d learned the hard way).

This time, I wasn’t going to take any chances.

The little old guy didn’t approach me, which I thought was weird. He worked there and I was a customer. I had questions. I mean, I could pick a gun that fit in any one of my purses (or at least most of my purses—I was equal opportunity with purses, and wallets, seeing as if the purse was smaller, the wallet would also have to be) but I also needed one I could handle.