Chapter 29
AUDREY
Weeks pass through the window of anxiety.
‘I don’t know where I stand with anything,’ I tell Mum on the phone, wishing for the millionth time that they lived closer.
‘I’ve lost control of everything!’ Parker, Maggie, my house, Fraser’s estate, my work.
Rach. Even Josh. I feel like I’ve flatlined.
Woken up in this half world, where nothing looks right and everything that’s still standing could evaporate.
I don’t tell her I’m constantly shaking. Or what might be causing it.
‘Should I book a flight?’ she asks, my pain absorbed and reflected in her voice. ‘I could be there late this afternoon?’
Late this afternoon! I have a hot flash.
Surely I’m too young for hot flashes? It would be just like the gods of fate to take my almost husband and exchange him for perimenopause.
Or maybe it’s that I’m hot and flustered at the idea of someone, even Mum, interrupting my increasingly disturbing private evening routine.
‘You could stay with Sara?’ I suggest, hopefully. Her guest bedroom is set up for visitors. Mine resembles Vesuvius, mid-eruption.
‘Hardly! Your sister runs her household with more military precision than your father and me. It’s you who needs the support.’
‘I just … I feel like I need space, Mum.’ Even through the lie, it’s hurting my heart that I need her this much, yet I’m pushing her away. ‘I feel like I’m the worst widow in the world.’ And the worst daughter. And the worst friend. ‘Everyone else is doing everything, even this, better than me.’
‘I need a more reliable job,’ I confess to Rach an hour later, crying into a cup of strong black coffee that I hope might resurrect me after another bad night of self-medication.
‘Maggie and I met with lawyers about the estate. It’s so complicated, my brain hurts even thinking about it, but part of Parker’s inheritance needs to come from Fraser’s share of the house. I’ll have to sell it.’
‘Move in with me,’ she says immediately. After a series of promotions, she’s recently upgraded to an executive apartment near the lake. ‘Till you’re back on your feet.’
The concept of being ‘back on my feet’ seems so far removed from reality I can’t understand how she’s even entertaining it.
And I would move in with her, except … God.
This is bad. The idea of trying to get through an evening ‘normally’ in front of Rachael sets off a panic attack.
It’s not like Rach doesn’t appreciate a nice wine.
It’s just she doesn’t use copious quantities of it to knock out her life every night the way I have been now for weeks.
I can’t sleep without it. I have visions of leaving my nonexistent new job at five o’clock, calling in at the club for a couple of drinks on the way home, hiding bottles in my car, drinking after she’s asleep …
What is wrong with me? Pushing away my inner circle over this?
‘I might have to!’ I tell her, knowing she’s right.
It’s okay. This is not a permanent dependence.
Just a temporary leaning, sequestered in my grief bunker while I get through these initial chapters of my nightmare.
Doesn’t everyone who has just lost someone grasp at whatever survival tool is within reach?
I could stop if I wanted to. I just don’t want to.
‘I’m going to sell the piano,’ I announce.
She gasps. ‘Audrey, no. Fraser told you that was yours.’
‘Parker doesn’t stay over now. Her piano is at Maggie’s house. The school said I can use theirs to see out the term for my students instead of teaching at home. It won’t fit if I move in with you—’ And there’s just no point. ‘Oh, and I’ve withdrawn from the plagiarism case.’
Haunted by Clair’s drunken words about Josh—that it was his fault I was on that Zoom and that Fraser is dead—I just can’t bear to face it anymore.
The butterfly effect might be true, but was it Josh’s one injustice or my fifteen years of holding on to it that caused me to be on the call that day?
My brain has been wrestling with it, exhausted by it, concluding that, accident or not, my career choices are interlaced with Fraser’s death.
The end result is I can’t do this anymore.
Classical music. I am traumatised by it.
‘Even if I wanted to write something, my mind is locked. I can’t even hear music in my head. I’m walking away from it.’
Walking away from the piano. An unbearable new layer of loss.
‘But you can’t breathe without music, Audrey. You’re the same as Parker …’
I wish I were the same as Parker. Maggie said she is pouring herself into it, wrestling with her grief through the keyboard. That’s the way I imagined I would carry myself through, too. I glance at last night’s empty bottles peeking out of the recycling bin near the fridge and shudder.
Rach realises she’s losing the battle and drops it. ‘Can I help you with the house stuff?’ she asks. ‘I can speak to agents. Coordinate repairs, cleaners, packers. You know Jess is obsessed with interior styling. It won’t be overwhelming if you let us project manage it.’
All the project management in the world wouldn’t stop this from being overwhelming. But she’s right. I can’t handle this on my own. I can’t handle anything at the moment, and I’m sure I am privately barrelling towards either a medical or a psychological crisis, rehab, or all three, so I say yes.
It’s two nights later when I drag in from a walk to the local grocery shop—messy bun, stretched grey cardigan, trackpants, uggs—and find Joshua sitting on my doorstep.
The sight alarms me at first. I think for a millisecond that he is Fraser.
He doesn’t see me straightaway, his head bowed, deep in thought, probably listening to some symphony in his brain.
When he realises I’m there, he greets me with his usual stern expression, and I have a jolt of regret that our once close association has landed in such a wasteland.
‘Sully,’ he says, quietly. ‘How are you?’
How does he think I am? Tired of this already, I dump my shopping bag on the step and sit beside him.
‘Oh, you know. Just returned from my evening frolic,’ I inform him. ‘A little cavort through the fresh food section is the highlight of my day.’ My shopping bag tips over then, and out of it rolls a large and traitorous packet of potato chips.
‘I’ve come to buy a piano,’ he explains.
I’m going to throttle Rachael.
‘You’re moving to the Upper East Side,’ I say. To his credit, he delayed the start date of his new contract to be here for Parker in the immediate aftermath of Fraser’s death.
‘Greenwich Village, actually. But I’m keeping my apartment here.’
‘An apartment that presumably already has a full-size grand? What do you want with a mid-range student upright?’
‘I’ve got a spare wall. I like decorating.’
‘With pianos?’
He shrugs. For the first time since Fraser died, there’s a flicker of amusement. But it doesn’t last.
‘Audrey, you’ll regret selling it.’
Here we go.
‘Then don’t buy it.’
‘Consider it long-term rent.’
‘And then you’ll hand it back when I come to my senses, right? Josh, I don’t need you to rescue the piano.’ Or me.
He looks at me. Bores into me, really. Hitches this idea to what little hope I have left that I will ever return to music and pulls on it until the tension snaps.
‘I’m not being entirely selfless,’ he says.
‘You composed Fraser’s funeral piece on that instrument. It could be worth a fortune one day.’
And that’s it. One tiny breadcrumb of praise and years fall away. The professional part of me flashes back, craving his feedback, basking in the glow of having impressed someone with his indisputable talent.
‘I don’t need your money,’ I say, swatting those feelings aside, even though I do desperately need the money. ‘But I might need somewhere to store it.’
He reaches for the railing and pulls himself to his feet, then offers his hand to haul me up.
I find myself a step above him, eye to eye, as he says, ‘Respectfully, my brother left you without his affairs in order, and you look—’ His eyes roam over my permanently wrecked, hungover appearance. ‘I suspect you do need the money.’
This burns. Not just the part about my floundering financially or looking the way I do, but the insinuation that Fraser didn’t think to look after me. ‘It’s been a long time since you treated me respectfully,’ I say—an accusation it’s impossible to refute.
He passes me my shopping bag, frowning at the sound of bottles clinking, and I fumble for my keys. ‘Thanks for your concern about the piano—’
He grabs my arm and speaks in a low voice. ‘I said I was sorry, Sully—’
I spin to face him, shaking him off. ‘You said you were sorry for my loss.’
That’s what he meant that night. Wasn’t it? I’d been far too plastered to read between any lines.
For a few seconds, we lock eyes and I’m twenty-two again, swept into his orbit.
No. Not into the orbit. Just near it, like those asteroids they report in the news that have near misses with Earth but ultimately fly past with no risk of human extinction.
I fear I am already addicted to something that’s very bad for me and am fully capable of spiralling without this man’s expert assistance. His praise fulfils a need in me, but I am not so desperate for self-annihilation that I can’t step back from this particular ledge now, before I lose my grip.
‘Please just forget it, Joshua. And forget me.’ He falls back a step. ‘I can’t look at you without thinking of Fraser, and to be honest, it’s completely unbearable. Just go and dominate New York like you know you want to.’