The visit

“Uncle Derek! Uncle Derek!” Tim’s children exclaimed happily when Derek arrived at their house, flinging themselves into his arms and hugging him tightly.

The children were twelve, ten, and nine years old. The youngest was just one year old when their father died in the accident.

Derek hugged each of them back as tightly as they hugged him and asked them how they were doing. By this time, Tim’s widow, Vanessa, had come into the living room. Apparently, she had heard all the ruckus and came to see what was going on.

She was a young woman, who was a little younger than Ava was and in the years after Tim’s death, she had become a shadow of herself and had become so lean that Derek was worried for her health.

He was glad to see that she was doing fine now and was looking robust with health. She came over to him and hugged him tightly the way the children had done, and he let her.

She had once told him that he was the closest thing she had to keeping the memory of her late husband alive, a