Chapter 12 #2
Then she finally thought, just start, just start anywhere. He’s not going to judge you. He never judged you.
She started with the morning he died. She had never written it down.
She had told the story to the police, to the hospital, to Elena, to Claire, and Harper, but she’d never put it on paper, because putting it on paper felt different and permanent.
Speaking was just putting words out into the air, and it dissipated, but the paper stayed.
She wrote about that morning, how normal it was, how impossibly and terrifyingly normal.
Coffee, toast, and David kissing her on the forehead on his way out the door, which he did every morning.
Putting his hand on her shoulder for half a second.
Lucia was already at school, and the house was quiet.
Nina was standing at the kitchen window, watching her beloved marsh, thinking about nothing, or maybe thinking about groceries, or maybe thinking about whether she needed to call the plumber about the drip in the bathroom sink.
It was just a normal Tuesday, the most normal Tuesday.
Then the phone rang, and a voice she didn’t know said words that she couldn’t process in the moment. And the normal Tuesday became the day the world ended.
She wrote about the hospital, about the waiting room with its terribly uncomfortable chairs and its horrible coffee, about the flickering bright fluorescent lights that made everything look dead.
Elena arrived with her rosary and a fury, because Elena fought grief the way she fought everything, like a gladiator, on her feet with God in one hand and rage in the other.
Claire arrived twenty minutes later, still in her school clothes with chalk on her fingers. Harper arrived from Charleston wearing heels, having driven ninety miles an hour. Nina knew it because Harper later told her with no apology.
She wrote about the funeral, about Lucia, 14, standing in front of the church in a black dress that was way too big, because who buys a funeral dress for their 14-year-old?
She sang the song that David loved, her voice small and clear and absolutely unbearable, and Elena collapsed into the chair afterward and said in Spanish, “My boy, my boy, my beautiful boy.”
And Nina holding her because there was nobody else to hold Elena. And holding someone while your own heart is shattering to pieces is the hardest thing Nina has ever done.
She wrote about the after, the cards and casseroles, the people who had said, he’s in a better place, trying to mean well, and the people who said, call me if you need anything, and the people who said nothing because they just didn’t know what to say, and how people who said nothing were often the ones who helped the most, because at least they didn’t ask her to feel grateful that the love of her life, her soulmate, was in a better place that she couldn’t see or touch.
She wrote about the numbness, about the glass wall she lived behind, about the months of going through motions, making the coffee, driving Lucia to school, existing in a life that was completely empty from the inside out, about sitting in parking lots, about the television left on, about leaving his boots by the door because she couldn’t move them, because it would mean he was never coming back through it.
And then she wrote about the pact, about the napkin, about Hank's and the karaoke and the way her voice cracked on the high note, but she kept singing, about the polar plunge and the way the cold had shocked her body back into feeling something, about Senora Morales’s kitchen and the mole and the index cards, and about how Elena had said, good girl, on the phone, about the tattoo, about his initials on her skin forever, about Asheville and the hotel room and the first night she slept through the night without reaching for him, and about how that made her feel good and guilty, about Sam and his kind face and his garden design for the hospice center, and about the way she had checked his name on that card and felt guilty and free at the same time.
And then she wrote,
I’m learning to live without you. I hate that.
I hate every single minute of it, but I’m doing it, David, because I have to.
You would be furious with me if I didn’t.
You would have stood in that kitchen and pointed at the marsh and said, look at that, mi amor.
Look at that bird. Look at the sky. How can you not want to be fully alive for all of this?
I want to be alive for this. I want to be alive for Lucia and for Elena and for Claire and Harper and for myself.
And maybe Sam, who seems kind and patient and doesn’t try to replace you, because no one could.
He understands that without being told. And maybe not even for him.
Maybe it will be someone else down the road. I just don’t know.
I love you, and I will always love you. But I can’t sit in parking lots anymore.
I’m not going to leave the television on.
I’m going to cook your grandmother’s recipes and teach them to Lucia.
I’ll put those index cards in a box with your name on it so that a hundred years from now, someone in your family will make mole negro and it will taste like you.
I’m keeping your boots by the door because I’m not ready to move them yet. But I’m going to leave the door open now, David. I’m leaving it open.
She put the pen down. Her hand was cramping, and her face was wet. She didn’t even know when the tears had started, but they had, because the page was spotted with them, the ink blurred in places. And she didn’t care.
David would have said the best letters are the ones you can’t read through your tears.
She read the letter that evening. She hadn't intended to, but Susie said sharing was optional, and Nina had spent the afternoon fully intending to keep that letter very private, folded up in her notebook between herself, David, and the rocking chair.
When George read his letter to Barbara, his voice broke on her name, but he continued.
It was so brave and bare that Nina felt something shift inside of her.
Diana read her letter to her son. It was only four sentences long, but it destroyed the entire room.
And Keisha, who had been angry all day, read a letter to her mother that began, “I’m so mad at you for leaving,” and ended, "but I understand why you were tired, and I forgive you.
" The room was weeping; everyone was even, and Harper, who was crying silently with her arms still crossed, had tears streaming down her face.
Susie looked at Nina, and Nina just instinctively stood up.
She stood up and walked to the center of the circle, unfolded the letter, and read it all.
The normal Tuesday, what happened at the hospital, Elena and her rosary, Lucia singing at the funeral, the numbness she felt, the parking lots, the television she left on.
And then the pact, the karaoke, the mole, the tattoo, the boots still sitting by the door.
Her voice broke several times, but she kept going. She read it the way she’d sung at Hank’s, badly but bravely, and all the way through.
When she finished, the room was silent. It wasn’t the silence of a polite audience, but a sacred silence of people who had just witnessed something important and true.
George was nodding. Diana was holding her notebook against her chest. And Frank, who hadn’t spoken all day, looked at Nina and said, “Thank you.”
His voice was rough like sandpaper, so full of grief that was old and had become a part of him. Nina understood that “thank you” meant you were saying the thing I couldn’t say. She nodded back.
She then sat down, and Claire and Harper were on either side of her. She felt Claire’s arm around her shoulders and Harper’s hand on her knee, and that is what broke her.