A Lifetime in 30 Days

Chapter 1

July 31

“So, this is what a dead body looks like,” Savannah Carlson murmured, her voice low amid the loud thumping of her heart.

My husband’s dead body, she corrected in her mind. The man—or rather, the body—lying perfectly still on the metal table a couple of feet in front of her was her husband.

“Caleb.” She forced herself to say his name.

Forced her eyes to remain open and her knees not to wobble. All those things were hard to do because, really, she just wanted to run up out of there.

She shouldn’t be the one making the identification. But that was her own fault. Caleb had sickle cell anemia and, at Vanna’s insistence, had worn a MedicAlert bracelet; that was how the medical examiner had gotten her name and phone number. Since receiving that call, she’d been chastising herself yet again for what she deemed the biggest mistake of her life—marrying Caleb Carlson. Well, no, an even bigger mistake had been not divorcing his trifling ass immediately after putting him out five years ago.

Forget blaming her failure to divorce him on the alcohol—that decision rested solely on the heart that refused to learn its lesson. Love didn’t come easily, and if it did, then Vanna must’ve missed the boat that was supposed to take her to it, because damn ... having her heart broken so completely twice in her thirty-nine years of life was some majorly bad mojo.

Although, if anybody asked her, she’d vehemently deny that for those first three years after she sent Caleb on his way, she’d held out hope that her taking a stand would shock him into acting right. She certainly hadn’t been able to love the red flags out of him, and she’d definitely tried in the twenty years she’d known him—had prayed and tried, wished, hoped, and waited. But that change never came. And when she’d finally started to realize that it never would, the process of letting him and all the dreams she’d had for their marriage go had begun.

Once she’d taken her vows, Vanna hadn’t thought she would ever walk away from them, so the letting-go part of their separation had taken a lot longer than she would’ve imagined.

“Are you okay, ma’am?”

She jumped at the voice and kept her gaze focused on Caleb’s swollen and ashen face. She knew damn well he wasn’t the one talking.

Caleb’s and all the other dead bodies that were probably in this building were freaking her out. But she couldn’t let the uneasiness get the best of her, so she put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath. “Y-yes,” she stammered when she lifted her gaze and saw the medical examiner who’d escorted her into the room standing on the other side of the table.

He looked like he might’ve been younger than she was, maybe in his early thirties. There wasn’t a speck of gray in his low-cut black hair, but a box of Bigen hair color could always be the culprit for that.

“Would you like me to go out and get the woman who accompanied you?” Mr. ME Guy asked.

“No” was her hurried reply. The last person she wanted with her right now was Granny. Or Frito, Granny’s moody French bulldog, whom she never traveled without.

Vanna cleared her throat. The ME wanted her to confirm that this was Caleb so they could get on with whatever the next steps were. Vanna wasn’t too sure what that involved, because while she worked as an office manager in a law firm now and had been in the legal field for over a decade, her expertise regarding the handling of dead bodies stretched toward the medical malpractice realm, not homicide or anything else criminal.

She could do this. She nodded in agreement with herself. She could look at him one more time, just to be sure. But her throat had already started to tighten, her rapid heartbeats giving the tears she’d sworn on the ride over that she wouldn’t shed permission to at least form in her eyes.

“I’m okay,” she told the ME, more so trying to convince herself, and continued to stare down at the man she’d once loved.

From the time she’d received the call to the moment she’d sent a text to let her boss know she would be in late—and even when her car hadn’t started and she’d had to call Granny for a ride—Vanna hadn’t felt sad, glad, or even angry over the news that Caleb might be dead. But the second she’d walked through the doors of this building, an uneasiness settled over her. Yet she’d marched into this room, fake bravado in action, and stepped up to this table like what, or rather who, lay on it didn’t faze her.

But it did. Her breath hitched, and she suddenly clapped her hand over her mouth. Those tears threatened to fall, and her knees said to hell with the previous warnings—they began to shake.

This was indeed the once-handsome face she’d loved to stare at. One of his eyes was blackened and even puffier than his other features. They’d found him in the Potomac River, in an area of National Harbor where the Maryland state line met Washington, DC. So she presumed that was why he appeared to be bloated.

She shook her head, a motion that seemed to trigger the rest of her body to begin quaking as well. This wasn’t the Caleb she knew. And yet it was definitely Caleb. She had no idea how or from where she summoned the strength, but she took a step forward and then another, until she was standing right next to the table. The hand clamped to the strap of the purse on her shoulder moved, shook, and lightly touched the sheet where it rested just beneath his chin.

“Caleb,” she whispered again.

Then, as if a partition had been dropped down on her emotions, she sucked in a breath and squared her shoulders. “This ...,” she said, and swallowed deeply. “This is Caleb.”

Pulling her hand from the sheet, she took a step back. Her gaze lifted and she repeated, “This is Caleb Carlson.”

“Well, you’ve done your part, right? You made the ID like they asked?” Granny said as Vanna sat quietly in the back seat of her grandmother’s twenty-year-old Buick.

Frito danced around in the front passenger seat, as if the ridiculous dog needed to remind her that that was his spot. Never—not in the last seven or eight years since Granny had bought that fawn-colored pooch home from some breeder she claimed to have met in the parking lot at Target—had Granny allowed anyone in that front passenger seat other than that dog.

Mabeline Jackson, with her roller-set, fluffy gray curls and lean caramel-brown face, turned to give Vanna a quick but serious glare. She’d raised Vanna, had taken her in to live with her when Vanna was just seven years old and Diane, Mabeline’s only child, had left her only child at a bus station. She knew Vanna better than anyone in this world—loved her better than the whole world did too.

“Yes, ma’am,” Vanna replied, but she continued to stare out the window as Granny broke the speed limit without remorse.

“Then they’ll send the body to a funeral home and his mother can bury him.”

Vanna’s head jerked back in Granny’s direction. “His mother?”

“Yeah. That triflin’ hussy that birthed him and defended him at every turn.”

In addition to not liking Caleb, Granny couldn’t stand his mother, Gail Carlson-Ledwig. Vanna didn’t like Gail too much either—for pretty much the same reasons Granny had—but she had tried to respect the woman for Caleb’s sake.

“Yeah, I guess she’ll want to bury him.” She sighed. “And since they didn’t call her first, I guess I’ll have to tell her.” Damn, she had hoped after she’d put Caleb out of her house and her life that she’d never have to see or speak to his mother again.

“Mothers shouldn’t have to bury their kids,” Granny said, and for the first time since she’d picked Vanna up that morning, there was just a hint of sadness in her tone. It probably wasn’t so much for Caleb or Gail, but more for the sentiment.

Frito barked vehemently as they passed a man walking his rottweiler down the street. This little dog had a complex. He really thought he was bigger and stronger than his compact twenty-five-pound body was.

“I still have a policy on him,” Vanna stated as an afterthought.

“What? Why?” Granny asked. “You don’t owe that man squat. Why would you continue to pay premiums on a policy for him?”

She shrugged. “We bought the policies at the same time. The auto pay was set to my account, and I wasn’t trying to die first and have you struggling to pay for my burial. ’Cause you know if he wasn’t paying the mortgage, car payment, or utilities, he definitely wasn’t going to pay life insurance premiums.”

And truth be told, she hadn’t really thought about those policies until now. It was a debit she saw on her monthly account statements, but that was it. At the time of their separation, the only other bills they had jointly were the car insurance and the cable bills, which he had actually canceled during those first few weeks when he was pissed at her for saying it was over.

“He wasn’t paying those bills because you were too busy doing it for him,” Granny said, then held up a hand to halt Vanna’s words. “Don’t sass me. I know what was what between you two, and you know it.”

Vanna did know it, because for all the things she sometimes held back from her best friends, Jamaica and Ronni, she told Granny everything. Always had.

“Anyway,” Vanna continued, but without the response she’d previously planned to say, “I’m sure his mother has a policy on him too. So I’ll just cash mine out and go on about my business.”

“Hmmpf” was Granny’s only response.

Frito apparently had more to say, as his yapping once again filled the air. Vanna was used to his gravelly dog talk, but she really wasn’t in the mood for it with the morning she was having.

“I know, I know!” Granny shouted at the dog. “We’ll get back home in time.”

“Did you have something planned for today, Granny?” Vanna asked, ignoring the fact that her grandmother acted like that dog had really spoken English to her just now. “I could’ve gotten a rideshare to bring me down here.”

“Sam is buying me lunch today,” Granny said, and made a turn that felt like they were on two wheels instead of four.

Vanna gripped the door handle to keep from sliding across the back seat.

“And you know I’m never too busy for you.” Granny continued talking as if horns weren’t blaring at her and one driver hadn’t rolled down their window to curse at her. “I already told him I want a sub from Jersey Mike’s, so he can put the order in and have it delivered to the building by the time we get back. I’m gettin’ the Italian today.”

The ME’s office hadn’t opened until ten that morning, and they’d been in there for about half an hour. By the time Granny dropped her off at the rental-car place Vanna had given her the address to when they were sitting in the waiting room, she could easily make it back to the senior building she and Sam lived in, located about fifteen minutes from Vanna’s house in Upper Marlboro.

“You don’t need all that lunch meat. The salt is going to give you a horrible headache; then you’ll be whining the rest of the day,” Vanna said.

She reached for her purse and dug around inside to pull out her phone and check her emails. Her notifications were on, so she would’ve gotten a buzz with a new email or text message, but she needed to do something that felt halfway normal today. Because this impromptu trip to the morgue, with her speeding grandmother and this loud yapping dog, wasn’t it.

Oh, how wrong the card she pulled from the box of affirmations and motivations on her dresser had been. At least once a day she plucked one out to give herself a mental boost, and they always worked. Today’s card had read: All journeys need a first step.

If staring at her husband’s dead body without puking up the two cups of coffee and strawberries she’d had for breakfast was the first step, she was fairly certain she didn’t want to be on this journey. Just let her off the train right now before the wreck ensued.

Okay, that was probably the exact type of thought those cards were supposed to combat. Especially since the anxiety she’d sought counseling for years ago—but refused any type of medication to help balance—had been on full blast since the phone call informing her that her husband was dead.

“Already took my pressure pills,” Granny continued without knowing about the secondary conversation Vanna was having in her head. “So I’ll be just fine. I’m getting the regular-size sandwich too. Gonna eat half for lunch and save the rest for my dinner.”

“You could’ve gotten the mini and then had something a little healthier for dinner,” Vanna said before navigating to her personal inbox on her phone.

She was infinitely more invested in those messages than the ones in her work inbox.

Great! The bowling party she’d booked for next Saturday was confirmed. She’d ordered cupcakes too, and was waiting for the baker she’d been using for the last year and a half to respond to the design ideas she’d proposed. After all the business she’d been sending the girl’s way, Vanna didn’t want to hear a word about the intricate designs for the two dozen cupcakes she’d ordered for every week of this month. Each design would represent something special in her life’s journey, so she wanted them to be perfect. She’d come a long way and was ready to face what was ahead, but she needed to mark this milestone even if nobody else cared to share it with her. And by nobody , she meant the mother who’d never wanted her for anything more than a check.

All her life, with every curveball that was thrown her way and every obstacle she had to overcome, Vanna kept her head held high and did whatever was necessary not to break under pressure. Not to falter beneath the dark cloud she swore was stalking her. She did whatever it took to save herself and to live up to those high-ass standards of a Black woman. And she did it without putting her hands on someone else’s child or burning shit down, the way she probably should have.

Now, that in no way compared to what her ancestors had gone through during those years of being enslaved, but she could certainly relate to Steven Willis’s poem about why Black people should honor their birthdays.

So this year, as she embarked on what she considered the next phase of her life, she wanted to celebrate. There were thirty more days until she turned forty—freakin’ forty and still fly, to be correct. That was what she was calling this monthlong celebration: Vanna’s FFSF Celebration. She’d already made the flyers and sent them out to everyone invited to the first of the events planned for the month. Dinner and clubbin’ were scheduled for Friday night, which was two days away, and she still needed to find shoes to go with her outfit.

“Savannah!”

Vanna’s head snapped up to see her grandmother peering back at her. They were stopped at a red light. “What? Oh, sorry, I was reading an email.”

“I said, you betta not tell me you still in love with him.”

“In love with who?” Vanna asked, wondering if she’d missed another part of this conversation.

Granny sucked her teeth. “You know damn well with who. Caleb!”

“Oh.” Vanna frowned. “No, I’m not—or I mean, I wasn’t still in love with him.” She sighed now that Granny had brought the current source of Vanna’s distress back to the forefront. “But I never wished death on him. I just wanted him to finally get his life together.”

Granny pursed her thin lips before she turned back around to put her hands on the steering wheel. “He needed to want that for himself. Just like he needed to keep a job and pay some bills. Always talkin’ ’bout he had some kind of get-rich scheme. His head wasn’t never on straight, not since day one.”

Granny had told Vanna that the night before the three of them had gone down to the courthouse, and again ten minutes after the ceremony, when Vanna had to rush to the bathroom because she’d been holding her pee so long.

The light changed, and Granny turned her attention back to the road. “Did they say how he died?”

“Drowned. At least, that’s what they said,” Vanna replied, and wondered for the second time since she’d received the call why the police hadn’t been the ones to notify her.

She wasn’t 100 percent sure that they should have, because again, she worked in medical malpractice and personal injury cases. The extent of her criminal-law knowledge had been obtained from her favorite police procedural shows, Criminal Minds and Law and Order —the original, not those other convoluted spin-offs. She was fairly certain she’d seen episodes where the detectives knocked on somebody’s door and told them their loved one had been killed. Was there a different procedure if the person drowned?

“Hmm. Well, I guess that was painful enough to teach him a lesson.”

“Granny!” Vanna shouldn’t have been surprised. Her grandmother did not bite her tongue for anybody. Vanna had inherited that candor but had also developed a modicum of act-right throughout her years of working in the legal field.

Granny was a retired cafeteria worker from the DC Public School system who had taken on the job of trying to guide her only granddaughter through a rewarding life. That wasn’t an easy feat, but Vanna was grateful for her attempts.

“What? Don’t act like you thought I was gonna be in this car shedding tears for the likes of Caleb Carlson, because you know better,” Granny said. “I taught you better. At least most of the time you act like I did.”

Vanna rolled her eyes at that response and looked back at the city whizzing by through the window. It was no secret that Granny created her own speed limit, which was evidenced by the mountain of speeding tickets Vanna was always paying for her.

And as she turned her attention once again to her emails, tuning out the new conversation Frito and Granny had begun, Vanna knew she would be writing even more checks to keep her grandmother’s driving privileges. Although she wasn’t totally sure if that was a good idea.