Chapter 1 #3
At the end of August, she had a jolt she didn’t expect.
The Bel Air house was still on the market, which she had forgotten about completely.
She had stopped all realtor visits while Malcolm was ill, and she hadn’t started them again yet.
And suddenly, she had a serious offer. The last thing she wanted was to sell the house right now.
They had stayed at the Bel Air house while Malcolm was ill.
It was closer to the hospital and worked better with the nurses and the help they needed.
And she hadn’t been back to Malibu since Malcolm died.
She felt closer to him in Bel Air. She had Hallie decline the offer, and the potential buyer raised it significantly.
It was an offer she couldn’t ignore, and she called the children for their advice.
She felt sentimental about the house, especially with Malcolm having just died there.
But all three children agreed that she would bury herself alive in the Bel Air home, and advised her to sell it.
“What would Dad want you to do?” Lizzie asked her, knowing the response.
Malcolm had wanted to sell it before, and he was an astute businessman who wouldn’t let an offer like that go by.
The prospective buyer was one of the biggest director/producers in Hollywood and had admired the house for years, had been there before and knew it well, and was hoping that Sabrina would sell it to him with Malcolm gone.
“He’d tell me to sell,” Sabrina said to Lizzie with a sigh.
Financially, it was the right thing to do, although she didn’t need the money.
She had her own, and Malcolm had left her half of his very comfortable fortune, and divided the other half into thirds for the children. They’d been handsomely provided for.
After several days of hard reflection, Sabrina accepted their offer. The buyer was paying almost double their asking price, all cash, and wanted a sixty-day closing.
Feeling like a robot, she put most of the contents in storage for the children, and moved what she needed to Malibu in October. She hadn’t been there in months.
She had moved to Malibu as her only home now two months before, and now she looked around the living room, trying to decide where to put the Christmas tree for their first Christmas without Malcolm, and the first in Malibu.
The house looked like a breath of summer, light and open and airy, all decorated in white.
She had been happy there with Malcolm, but it didn’t look like Christmas or feel like it as she picked a place for the tree in the living room, near the white marble Italian fireplace.
She had brought all their Christmas decorations from Bel Air.
They would look strange in this sleek, ultracontemporary house, and she sorted through them, picking the ones she knew the children loved most, and those that would look the best in the house.
It took her several days to do the tree alone, and she had Hallie help her string tiny lights in the hedges and small trees around the house and on the patio.
She couldn’t stop crying while she did it, and Hallie felt terrible for her.
“Why don’t you let me do it?” Hallie begged, but Sabrina wouldn’t let her.
She wanted to do it with her. She still missed the Bel Air house, and their happy memories there.
But she knew selling had been the right thing to do.
She couldn’t hang on to the past, and she and Malcolm had made the decision a year before to sell it.
The timing was just hard, right after Malcolm’s death.
She was trying to be brave about it. She stood back and looked at the Christmas tree when they finished the lights and she smiled.
It was the first smile Hallie had seen from her in six months, since June.
And there had been few smiles in the months before that while Malcolm deteriorated day by day and was dying.
“It looks nice,” Sabrina said, satisfied.
“It looks beautiful,” Hallie said to her.
She knew that Sabrina had bought gifts for her children, although fewer than usual.
She didn’t have the heart or the energy to shop.
But she had bought small, thoughtful gifts for all fifteen of her artists, and was having Hallie give them a Christmas party at the gallery, with a buffet dinner, though she wasn’t going to attend herself.
She was in deep mourning for the only man she had ever loved.
She was forty-eight years old and she felt as dead as he was.
She couldn’t envision a future or a life without him.
When they finished hanging the lights, Hallie ordered food for them.
There was nothing in the fridge to make a meal of, and when they sat down to eat, Sabrina picked at her dinner, and barely ate enough to feed a child.
She couldn’t eat or sleep without Malcolm.
She still couldn’t absorb what had happened.
It went against everything they had both believed.
Until then, they had led a charmed life. Now the dream was over.
Their friends had been calling her since June, and she sent messages to thank them for their calls.
There was no one she wanted to talk to. Malcolm had been her best friend and confidant, the perfect partner for their life’s adventure.
She felt as though she had lost her voice and her spirit.
She tried to sound upbeat for the children when they called, as she didn’t want to worry them, but they knew her better.
She knew she just had to get through it day by day, but so far she didn’t feel any better than she had on the day he died.
Hallie wondered how long it would take, and so did her children.
Their parents had been so close, so happy, and so much a part of each other’s lives that Sabrina felt as though someone had torn her limbs off, or carved out her heart with a knife.
A life without him was inconceivable, but it was what she had to face now.
He was never coming back. The thought of it made her feel faint sometimes.
Hallie brought her up to date on the gallery over dinner, and then she left.
The lights they’d put on the trees in the patio were twinkling brightly when she drove away, and the tree in the living room looked beautiful for the children.
Sabrina wasn’t going to let them down. She knew she had to make the best of it for them.
She had to do it for Malcolm, and for her children, but she couldn’t imagine Christmas without him, or any other day of the year.
He had taken her heart and soul with him, and she felt like an empty shell.
She felt like she had no real home now, no solid ground under her feet.
He had been her rock, her foundation, her joy, her bright blue sky, the sun that lit her world.
And it was a very dark world now without him.
The only thing she had to look forward to was Christmas with her children.
They were staying for five days, and then she would be alone again.
They wanted to be back in their own cities to celebrate New Year’s with their friends.
And Sabrina knew that after they left, the life ahead of her would be a long lonely road to eternity without Malcolm.
She couldn’t even imagine it, any more than she could have imagined the past six months, or the year she had just been through.
She turned off the lights in the living room, and left the tree lit for a minute.
It looked beautiful, and was picture-perfect.
But Christmas without Malcolm in the house that had been their weekend love nest was unthinkable.
She clicked the remote control to turn off the tree, and walked up the stairs in the dark to her bedroom for another sleepless night without him.