Unsung by Shannon Richard

couldn’t get over, and the subsequent guilt that accompanied said jealousy.
    Grace and her husband Jax had welcomed their daughter Rosie Mae into the world last September, and Mel and Bennett were now embarking on starting a family of their own. They were in the trying phase and enjoying every aspect of it.
    Harper was happy for them, really she was.
    It was just hard.
    How could it not be? She was single… alone …and now very much pregnant. While all of her closest friends were married to men who loved them. Men who adored them. Men who would move mountains for them.
    None of them was doing it alone.
    At that exact moment someone who immediately had Harper amending her previous statement filled the empty seat to her right.
    Almost all of her friends were married to men who loved them and weren’t raising children all by themselves. Beth Boone was the exception. And her situation was way more complicated than Harper’s would ever be.
    Beth had been a couple of years ahead of Harper, Grace, and Mel when they were in high school and they’d all been friends. When Beth had graduated, she went up to Tallahassee for college. She and Mel had been roommates for a couple of years when their time in school overlapped, and they were incredibly close.
    For more than a decade, Beth’s older sister and brother-in-law—Colleen and Kevin Ross—had been next-door neighbors to Mel’s parents. Mel’s little brother, Hamilton, was best friends with the Rosses’ oldest daughter, Nora. The two kids had grown up together, running back and forth across the front yard.
    Two months ago, Kevin and Colleen had died in a car accident. They’d both been killed on impact. Beth moved back to Mirabelle and was now the sole guardian and new parent to her sister’s three kids: Nora, sixteen; Grant, seven; and Penny, three.
    How was that for some perspective?
    Penny was currently curled up in Beth’s lap, her little head resting on Beth’s shoulder while she sucked her thumb and observed the room through her wide, mossy green eyes. The pair could easily be mistaken as mother and daughter as they both had the exact same shade of blond hair, though Beth’s eyes were a light blue.
    “Would you judge me if I packed up some of that food over there and took it home in to-go containers?” Beth whispered conspiratorially. “Cucumber sandwiches and raw vegetables are an acceptable dinner for three children, right?”
    The circumstances sucked for Beth returning to Mirabelle, but Harper truly had missed her friend.
    “I mean I wouldn’t.” Harper shook her head. “But there’s no guarantees to some of the other guests.”
    “What are you talking about?” Beth gasped in mock shock. “No one here has a single judgmental bone in their bodies.”
    Penny pulled her thumb out of her mouth and stretched up to Beth’s ear. Harper could just make out the word potty in Penny’s little voice.
    “I’ll be right back. Don’t let anyone take my seat.”
    Harper nodded, and as she watched them walk away she couldn’t help but be in awe of her friend. Beth had been thrown into the deep end and she was handling things remarkably well. In the scheme of things, Harper was treading water in the shallow end.
    Barely keeping her head up from drowning.
    And as if on cue, like she sensed the moment to strike, Delilah leaned over and said, “It’s a shame things didn’t work out with Brad; you would’ve made beautiful babies. Though hopefully they would’ve had his metabolism.”
    Harper was getting to the point where she didn’t visibly cringe when Brad’s name was said. They were now starting in on month five of him being gone, and it was no secret to anyone that Delilah partially blamed Harper for the demise of the relationship. It was also no secret that Delilah was still holding out hope that he’d come back.
    She’d told her mother more times than she could count to let that pipe dream go, but it hadn’t happened yet.
    Harper closed her eyes