Chapter 2
DORIAN
The leader of the suicide-loss group was very specific about the rules.
Speak only if we wanted to. Do not fix anyone.
Do not compare grief. Do not describe the worst of it unless the room could bear it.
One might think they’d be hard promises to keep, but I found the rules helpful.
Without them, I might have struggled to keep myself from offering solutions rather than listening.
And anyway, who was I to tell anyone else how to handle their grief?
I wasn’t exactly a poster child for moving through it with grace.
Maybe no one could. Grief robbed us of control, dignity.
There was nothing to be done about it either.
Except, as my therapist often reminded me, to do the work.
I’d been confused at first about what that meant, other than a buzz word I heard way to often from self-help gurus and celebrities who took it upon themselves to share intimate details about their lives.
I mean, the word work in itself was problematic.
To me, it implied there was a craft to making a way through the treacherous waters of sorrow and loss simply by spending hours upon self-reflection.
How did work fix a broken heart? Or erase the memory of the last phone call I ever had with my best friend?
Or keep the nightmares from waking me screaming at five a.m.?
My therapist had explained it to me this way.
Doing the work meant stopping and looking at patterns instead of just checking out.
Examine the same fights, the same kinds of people you keep choosing, the same feeling you can't shake, the same way you check out when things get hard.
Getting curious about where they came from—usually childhood, family, early attachments—and then actually trying to do something to break the unhealthy chain.
That was all well and good, but I still didn’t know how that helped me with this aching sense of loss.
Or simply, just missing the heck out of my best friend.
Regardless, she’d convinced me to attend a group session over individual therapy.
To my surprise, I found it immensely helpful to hear what others were struggling through.
Maybe that was the work.
For a year now, I’d attended a grief support group on Thursday evenings in the basement of the Presbyterian Church.
I listened to others talk of losses and guilt.
In a further surprise, I found it easy to talk about Nate and the hole he’d left in me.
I’d opened up more than I ever would have expected.
That made the grief in this group all that much more powerful.
Losing someone the way we all had is a special kind of cruelty.
Not only do we mourn the loss but we have to maneuver through guilt and regrets and “what could have beens.” What we didn’t see until it was too late. Sadly, we all had that in common.
“All right, folks, should we get started?” Ellen, our facilitator, was in her early fifties, with a hippie mother energy in her dress made from hemp and comfortable sandals. No toenail polish for Ellen. Nor did she dye her hair. Wafts of patchouli filled the room whenever she moved. I adored her.
Before she could ask her opening questions, someone entered the room.
I looked over to see that it was Annie Delacroix.
My heart missed a beat. She was too young to be here.
Fifteen, though she looked so vulnerable standing in the doorway with a canvas tote bag hanging from one shoulder and her dark hair pulled into a ponytail that she could have been much younger.
She was an athlete, playing soccer on the same team as my friend Alex’s daughter Bella.
Her mother was Delphine Delacroix, possibly the scariest woman I’d ever met.
She owned the art gallery just up from my bookstore.
In addition, she was a skilled and talented potter who sold her work up and down the coast. I’d recently seen some of her pieces at a shop in Cliffside Bay and had been tempted by a blue vase exquisitely crafted but had decided against it.
For whatever reason, it felt like she wouldn’t want me to have something she’d made.
I’d like to have said Delphine Delacroix never crossed my mind, but that would be a lie.
We ran in the same circles, mostly because several of my good friends were married to her best friends.
For that reason, I was invited to many of the same parties and events as she.
Seraphina Sinclair, who had done multiple book signings at Ink & Anchor over the years, was one of Delphine’s friends.
She married Hunter, who had once run the local watering hole, but had resumed his career as a songwriter.
Not that any of that was relevant. Nor was the fact that Seraphina had encouraged me to ask Delphine out.
When hell froze over.
Not that she would go out with me anyway.
Now, in the dank church basement, we all stared at her child, unsure what to do. However, Ellen quickly took hold of the situation.
“Hello,” Ellen said, as she rose to her feet. “Come in, sweetheart. You’re welcome to sit wherever you’d like.”
Annie’s gaze moved around the circle. She saw me and stopped. Recognition flickered across her face, followed by surprise that morphed into a flush of obvious embarrassment.
I gave her a small nod to acknowledge that we knew each other, but that it wasn’t a big deal. Kids were self-conscious enough without adults making it harder.
She chose one of the two empty chairs, directly across from me.
Ellen quickly resumed the meeting, reminding us of the rules of our group. After her little speech that never wavered, her eyes moved over each of us, resting finally on Annie.
“Since we have someone new with us tonight, let’s begin with names. If you’d like, you can tell us who you lost and how long it’s been. If that’s too much tonight, just your name is enough.”
June was there too, twisting the cap on her water bottle, a widow and mother of two teenagers. Mateo sat nearest the door, ball cap low, quiet as always, giving no hint to how his little sister’s death had stolen his youth and optimism.
Lorrie, knitting something yellow, needles clicking steadily, went first. She’d taken up knitting after her son’s death, telling us she’d been desperate for something to do with her hands other than chewing her nails until they were raw and bloodied.
“I’m Lorrie. My son, Daniel, died eight years ago in September.
Some weeks it feels like yesterday. Some weeks it feels like I was never really a mother.
” She lifted the yellow wad of yarn in her lap.
“He was thirty when he died. It’s hard to believe he would be almost forty. ”
Everett went next, spine straight, wearing an expensive suit, dark hair combed neatly, wedding ring still on his finger.
“Everett. My wife, Marion, died two years ago.” His voice was always measured.
“She’d suffered from depression for all of our twelve years of marriage.
We had no children.” He lifted his hands from where they’d been splayed on his knees.
“I don’t know why I always add that part. ”
“Maybe because people ask, don’t they?” June twisted the cap on her water bottle until it crackled.
She was in her mid-thirties and pretty, with short black hair and big green eyes, although the smudge of purple under them hinted at sleepless nights.
“Like they have to know how many people were left behind. It always seems like more of a tragedy when the person has children. To others. Not us.”
June had two teenage daughters, so she knew a little about that.
“Anyway, I’m June. My husband, Scott, died three years ago. I have two teenage girls. They were eleven and twelve when we lost their dad.” Her smile trembled. “This week would have been our anniversary.”
No one comforted her. We knew better. There was nothing any of us could say that would make her feel any better. But it was relief, not to have to say, I’m so sorry for your loss. Or, God forbid, the one we’d all agreed before to be the most heinous of all, They’re in a better place.
That one made even the most mild-mannered want to throat punch someone.
Mateo cleared his throat. “Hey, I’m Mateo. My sister was Elena. It’s been two years now, but feels like yesterday. She was twenty. At college. I was overseas at school, when it happened.”
Mateo was at culinary school at the famous Ferrandi in Paris when his mother had called. He’d said before how stupid pastries suddenly seemed. Like who devoted their lives to the perfect croissant when his sister was suffering?
Then it was my turn. “I’m Dorian. My best friend, Nate, died just shy of two years ago. We were in the Navy together. Knew each other almost twenty years. He left behind a wife and two children.”
Ellen gave me a small nod. “Thank you for sharing. Annie, would you like to say anything? No pressure.”
Annie sat very still. Her face had gone pale beneath a spray of faint freckles across her nose. A sense of protectiveness rose up in me. She was so young and sweet. The fact that she’d chosen to come to this kind of group made my stomach churn. Life was unfair.
“My name’s Annie.” Her voice was soft but clear. “My dad died six years ago, when I was nine.” Annie swallowed. “His name was Jon. He was a very talented painter.”
My chest tightened.
“Thank you, Annie,” Ellen said.
Annie nodded, staring at the floor.
Ellen shifted us away from introductions.
“Does anyone want to talk about how they’re feeling this week?
Is there anything on your mind that feels too big to talk about anywhere else?
” She turned to June. “Do you want to start? Since you mentioned your anniversary, I thought there might be something you’d like to share. ”