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he did the best he could.
    Not only were the odds disheartening, but i t was also difficult for both of them to give up any claim they had on their future together. They had spent plenty of time planning for the future—for a family, for their careers, financially with solid investments —but that all became irrelevant with that grisly diagnosis.
    When she became too sick and had to give up her charity work, JD ’s heart broke for her. He retired from hockey and he and Darla became teammates. “We’re in this together,” they said. “We can beat this.” It was Team Mason vs. Team Cancer. But the gimmicks and games were useless. They’d been in it together until the end and now JD was left all alone. A team of one.
    Darla had been calm about the diagnosis. She’d hammered out a game plan with her doctor and fought the cancer the only way she knew how—with charts and graphs, numbers and figures. But all of those graphs, numbers and figures revealed a stark and negative truth: the cancer was winning. Round after round of chemotherapy didn’t have any effect on the cancer and Darla succumbed after five short months. No amount of time would have been enough to prepare JD for what life without her would be like. But five measly months? It was a blink of an eye. More like a practical joke delivered by Mother Nature herself than something that could happen in reality.
    Besides his mother, who had died when he was young, Darla was the only woman JD had ever loved. As much as Darla had tried to prepare him for her passing, it did nothing to prepare him for the gaping hole he now had to step around for fear of falling into. What used to feel like quicksand pulling him under was now just plain old cement holding him in place. His sorrow prevented him from taking a step forward and moving on.
    It had been a year since Darla passed away and his memories of her were already starting to fade. That’s what scared him the most—losing her all over again. As a result, JD ended up hanging on tighter and tighter and that probably made things even worse.
    After Darla’s death, JD stayed in Red Valley, but after a few months it was clear he needed to move somewhere else. Without hockey, there was nothing keeping him in there and he couldn’t bear to stay. The house they had lived in together was loaded with too many memories. As much as he hated to sell it, he couldn’t stay there. Not alone. And not with Darla’s essence embedded in every square foot. The move to Hayley’s Point had been a no-brainer.
    He couldn’t bear to drive by the hospital when he was in town running errands. To think of all the time she’d spent there hooked up to machines that pumped poison needlessly into her veins. He didn’t want to see the restaurant on the river where they’d celebrated their first Valentine’s Day together. Or the bistro downtown where she liked to eat Sunday brunch. It was best to leave the city altogether.
    Darla left behind so many friends and family members that he was always running into someone who knew her. He couldn’t even go to the grocery store without the stark reminder of how much he’d lost. They meant well with their sympathetic eyes and kind, reassuring words and sympathy cards, but it all made JD feel more like shit than he already did. He didn’t want to deal with their well-meaning questions and the looks of pity. They were like landmines just waiting for him to take a step forward and blow him backwards. They meant well but it was just too painful.
    What made things worse was that they never knew exactly what to say—who would?—and he didn’t either. What was he supposed to tell them? How agonizing it was to wake up in bed all alone, the space next to him cold and empty? How hard it was to eat breakfast by himself with no one to discuss the morning news with? How, out of habit, he still made more coffee than he could ever drink by himself? How he didn’t have the heart to tell TiVo to stop recording