Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was weirdly quiet.
Evelyn entered her apartment, throwing her items down by the door.
There was no David to contend with, no heartbreaks .
. . even the production schedule, notes and to-do lists that ran constantly through her mind were no longer necessary.
She was alone, basking in the quiet of a break after hard-fought success, and yet she didn’t feel happy.
Something was missing.
She resigned herself to filling up the empty space with activity.
She ordered some food, splurging on two desserts for a job well done.
She straightened up her bedroom and her living room .
. . putting away the aluminum menorah and candles in the cabinet for next year.
And then, pulling on her pajamas, her dinner having been delivered, she took a seat on her couch.
Turning on her television, she found the DVR recording she had made for A Christmas Carol and hit Play.
It was really the best work of her life.
She found herself laughing at the funny bits, feeling shock and horror with each puppet, her heart wrenching with emotion over the loss of Belle, Scrooge’s love interest . . .
And then, halfway through a second slice of double chocolate fudge ganache cake, she thought she heard a child laughing. She blinked, putting down her fork. Muting the television, she listened for it again. But all was quiet.
She must have been dreaming.
She went to turn the television back on, when lo and behold, the sound of a child, a little girl, giggling appeared once more. This time, she rose from her spot on the couch, fully startled. It sounded like it was coming from the second bedroom.
She made her way there. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.
It was a disaster zone.
Even now, all these years later, Evelyn was aware of the absolute absurdity of not using an extra bedroom in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.
Most people—but New Yorkers, especially—would kill to have the luxury of extra space.
Or any space. But after April died, and David left her, she couldn’t bring herself to go inside the room.
Instead, the room became a graveyard of Evelyn’s life.
The place where stuff she owned but didn’t have the heart to deal with went to die.
Sweaters she had shrunk or that had gone out of style, but which she wasn’t ready to throw away.
Boxes of old documents, office items and printer paper.
And of course, mementos from her time with David.
Evelyn stood at the threshold, her heart rattling inside its cage.
It was strange how you could have everything—your dreams reached, your goals fulfilled—and it felt like nothing at all.
Totally empty. Stepping inside over all her own crap, she made her way to the closet.
Opening it, pushing past her wedding dress and veil still hung up, she found the tiny wooden box engraved with the name April and pulled it down.
It was all she had left of her. Her ashes. Plus, the memorial stone they had made of her tiny feet and hands after she had died.
In Judaism, April hadn’t been alive long enough to be mourned.
But Evelyn mourned her anyway. She mourned the dream, and the child—she mourned the way it had broken her, destroyed her faith and her relationship with her husband completely.
The world had moved on, and changed, and they had returned to their respective lives, but she would mourn her little girl every goddamn day for the rest of her life.
She pressed the box against her heart, crumpling to the floor, and began to cry—big heaping bellows that could not be contained.
She cried for April. She cried for herself.
She cried for every heartbreak of her life, all those stabbing life pains that had made her.
Her parents’ divorce. Her first failed romance.
Her father’s death. The loss of her child .
. . when suddenly, she heard someone else crying.
It rose above her own tears, forcing her to stop and take notice.
Evelyn stood up, unsure of what was happening, and followed the sound.
Her cheeks still wet, the box with April inside still pressed up against her heart, she passed the threshold.
David was sitting on the couch, crying. His cell phone at his side, he was gripping a small striped onesie in his hand.
Evelyn didn’t understand. She glanced toward the door and found the dead bolt still locked.
“David?” she asked.
He didn’t hear her. She tried again and again.
“David?” she kept repeating. “What’s wrong? What happened? What are you doing here?”
But still, he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—acknowledge her.
It was like she was a ghost, unable to operate in a place with the living.
She wasn’t sure what to do—or what was happening—but she couldn’t seem to break whatever spell had brought him to her place.
And so, unable to reach him, she bent down at his side, placing one hand on his knee.
And David kept crying, bawling. His hurt, so vast and unmanageable . . . but also, a pain she recognized.
“I know,” she whispered, her own tears returning. “I miss her, too.”
She leaned her head on him, feeling him shatter.
Feeling her own guilt, for never seeing it, never realizing it—avoiding him when he was suffering, because she couldn’t manage another person’s heartbreak when she could barely manage her own.
And then, her mind wandered back to Jared Sparks, and something he said before departing.
Scrooge doesn’t change because of the ghosts.
He changes because he experiences the heartbreaks of life from a perspective outside of his own.
Suddenly, she understood the lesson. She understood what the eight heartbreaks of Hanukkah had been trying to teach her.
She had been so certain that what they were showing her were her heartbreaks—her parents’ divorce, her first failed romance, her father’s death, the loss of her child—but they were David’s.
She understood why David left. She understood what he meant when he claimed that Evelyn had abandoned him.
And he was right. David had needed her. He’d needed her to be there for him, to grieve April together.
Instead, she’d escaped into places that were safe, that she could control—she’d gone to work, staying late, arriving early, always with an excuse to never come home.
And it was in that moment she realized something important.
He loved her. He had always loved her, and she, absolutely, still loved him.