She sits at a local restaurant with her two best friends, a cigarette n one hand, her cell phone in the other. It’s vibrating. A picture of a latte with the words ‘Mom Cell’ comes up on the screen. She presses the answer button and puts her phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“What are you up to?”

“Sittin’ here with my friends, drinkin soda and smoking. Same thing I do every night that Jason’s not home. What are you doing?”

“About to go to bed. I just got off the phone with Sabrina and I saw your text message, and I wanted to call you back.”

“Well, how’d everything go?”

“It went good. Everything’s gonna be fine. We’re gonna be able to work it out.”

A moment of sheer joy overcomes her, a smile playing across her lips for the first time in days. Her friends notice and their eyes widen at the thought. They’d been worried about her. She gives them the signal to indicate just one second.

“Well, don’t let me keep you, you go have fun with your friends. I just wanted to answer your text message.”

“Okay, mom. I love you, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I love you too. Bye.”

Click.

She bites her lip, excited about what her mother had just told her. She looks at her best friend in the whole world and says “My parents are going to be okay.” Her friend just smiles and says “I told you so.”

Her other friend, being distracted by a long lost classmate continued to carry on that conversation. She takes a long drag of her cigarette, realizing that she’s been smoking way too much in these past few days. She had gone from a half a pack a day to a full pack a day, knowing that she didn’t have the money to support that habit, and neither did her husband.

She looks around the room, lit by fluorescents, and she just smiles. Everything’s going to be okay now. She won’t wake up in the night screaming anymore. No more crying. No more hurting. No more fear of losing another father.

She wouldn’t have been able to make it if she did.

And as she looks at herself in the reflection of a window, her hair and makeup done by her best friend in order to help her have a change for the night, if only for the night, she realizes that everything is going to be okay in the end. She was going to continue to have her family stay together and for her happiness to continue on. She loves her mom. She loves her dad. She loves her friends. She can continue to love life again.

That’s the way it should be.