Pleasing Mindy

Pleasing Mindy - Chapter 1

Evergreen, New Hampshire, USA...

"I don't like it here, Mommy. Can we go home now?"

"In a few minutes, hon." Mindy smiled down at her five-year-old daughter huddled against her legs as they stood in subfreezing temperatures in Evergreen Cemetery.

She took a deep, unsteady breath as her eyes fixated on the limestone headstone. Kyle Grainger. Loving Son and Father. Gone Too Soon. 1993 - 2013. She wished she'd had the luxury of adding Loving Husband to his headstone. Loving Fiancé would have been her next best choice, but his mother had objected, blaming Mindy for her only child's death.

Virginia Grainger had claimed that if Kyle hadn't gotten mixed up with Mindy—the little trailer park trash—he would still be alive. If it was strictly up to Mrs. Grainger, Mindy would have been banned from attending Kyle's funeral altogether. Dudley Grainger, Kyle's father, had come to Mindy's aid and forced Virginia to back down. He'd told his wife that their son must be so ashamed at the way she was treating the mother of her grandchildren.

Mr. Grainger had been very kind to Mindy, and he'd loved and spoiled his grandchildren every chance he got. After Kyle died, he'd begun paying Mindy's portion of the rent on the apartment she and Kyle used to share with two of his friends. He'd become the father Mindy never had, and she'd ravenously soaked up the attention. Then tragedy struck again when Mr. Grainger suffered a heart attack and died three years after his son's death.

Mindy's gaze hesitantly traveled to the gravestone on the left of Kyle's. Mrs. Grainger had blamed her for that death too, claiming that her husband had had to work overtime at Grainger & Son Painting to make up for Kyle's absence.

For the past five years, Mindy had carried the guilt for Kyle's death in her heart, and then for his father's for the past three. Taking another deep breath, she pushed the regrets and the guilt aside, knowing that if she dwelt on that period of the past, if she gave it one moment's attention, she would not be able to get up the next day and take care of the two beautiful children she and Kyle had created from their young crazy love for each other. She had to stay positive, cheerful—the devil-may-care kind of girl that Kyle had fallen in love with during their high school years.

She wiped at a half-frozen tear on her cheek. She missed him so much still, and even more on two specific dates every year.

"Why do we have to come here every week?" Her son's contentious voice pulled her out of her cave of bittersweet memories.

"We come here twice a year, Kyle," she said, understanding that a six-year-old's concept of time was somewhat warped, especially when he was forced to do something he didn't want to do. "We visit your father on his birthday and on the anniversary of his death. It's a sign of respect," she continued in a gentle voice. "We want your father to know that we haven't forgotten him. Now, say 'Happy Birthday' to him."

"But he's dead. He won't know if we come here or not. And I don't know him."

"I knew him. I loved him," Mindy said emphatically. She wanted her children to have a sense of belonging, something that she'd never had since her own mother hadn't told her who her father was until she was fifteen, and by then he'd been diagnosed with lung cancer brought on by chain-smoking since he was a teenager. She'd only had a few months with him before he died, but he hadn't seemed to care one way or another that she existed. Mindy still couldn't decide if it was worse to have had one parent who just completely ignored her existence, or the other who'd constantly told her that she was an inconvenient mistake.

One thing she knew, though—she never wanted her children to feel that they were mistakes or inconveniences in her life. They would always know that they were wanted and loved by both their parents, even if one of them lived in the afterlife.