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"So," Sylvie's son said, looking from his mother to Alberto, "did you ever love Dad?" Sylvie expected the question; it would've been ridiculous not to. And while the whole situation was inherently, and tragically, ridiculous, the tone in which it was asked was more gentle, more compassionate than she had any right to expect.
"Of course I did," she told him robustly, and truthfully. "Just not the same way I love Alberto."
"Then how, exactly?" Sylvie's daughter asked. Always pragmatic, that one, organizing everything from seder to PTA bake sales on Election Day.
"Alberto is a storm, your father was a warm breeze," Sylvie said contemplatively, and immediately regretted it when she saw that her children were not in the least enlightened. "Your dad and I both wanted children, but we couldn't have them with the people we wanted to have them with."
"Vampires," Sylvie's daughter said, "famously being immortal and therefore sterile?"
"Hmm," Sylvie agreed.
"And Dad knew about this? And was okay with it?" Sylvie's son asked.
"Your father was not interested in romance at all, and sex only occasionally," Sylvie said, knowing she had to share details about her late husband's personal life with her children and doing so only reluctantly. Even though he'd long ago given her permission to be honest with them upon his death, it still rankled a bit. "A few years ago, he got to googling and decided he was aromantic and gray ace, if that helps," she added.
She watched, sipping her tea while both her son and daughter whipped out their phones and did some googling of their own.
"Oh," Sylvie's daughter said after a few minutes.
"This explains a lot," her son agreed.
"Were you, ah, seeing Alberto this whole time?" her daughter asked. Again, Sylvie was grateful for the tone of the question: curiosity, not condemnation.
"Not really. I knew he was around, keeping an eye on us, ready to step in to assist if necessary. But we didn't, ah, associate too much. I wanted to concentrate on my family," she said, looking at her children with justifiable pride. Both of them moved to either side of her on the sofa, each holding one of their mother's hands.
"Hey," her son said suddenly. "Is this Alberto guy why we don't have student loan debt?"
"Yes," Sylvie said simply, and both her children laughed.
"I knew a trust fund from a rich uncle we never had was too good to be true," her daughter said thoughtfully.
"Yeah, Mom," her son added, teasing. "Calling him 'Uncle Rich' was a little on the nose, in hindsight."
Sylvie couldn't help but smile as she replied, "When really the truth, and much more plausible explanation was that your education was funded by your mother's vampire lover?"
And all three of them laughed, for the first time since Sylvie's husband died.