Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28
One year since Gabriel divorced me, and it feels as fresh as if it happened yesterday. The only thing I’ve gotten better at is stubbornly pushing my way through the pain.
Today is one of those white-knuckle days.
“Why didn’t you hire a moving company?” Cam grunts as she lifts a box. “I saw a moving truck the other day and on the side it said it was a company run by military veterans. The driver was hot. You should have hired him.” She sets the box in the bed of the pickup truck I’ve rented for the day. “I’d really rather be sipping from a cold beverage while watching the hot veteran do all the heavy lifting.”
A sweat-matted baby hair tickles my cheek, and I shoulder it away. “You’re attracted to women.”
She rolls her eyes and turns for the house. “My eyes still work, and they appreciate pretty things.”
I smile and follow her up the driveway. “How much longer do I have your help?”
Cam’s supposed to meet Dani to look at commercial spaces for rent. After years of saving, and pre-approval for a small business loan, Cam and Dani are ready to move forward with their dream of opening a coffee shop.
Cam props the front door open with a foot. I walk past her and into my bedroom, where more boxes await.
“That depends on how much help you need. Is it just the boxes, or do you want me to go with you to Gabriel’s parents’ house?”
“I can handle his parents,” I tell her, grabbing another box and hauling it across the bed toward me. “I have enough experience with them.”
“Yeah, but his mom is”—Cam curls her fingers and holds them on either side of her cheeks while making a bare-teeth face—“you know. Like that.”
I laugh at Cam’s antics, but the sound is hollow. “She’s not as ferocious as she appears at first. I feel bad for her. In a way, she’s lost two sons.”
“Yeah. When you put it like that…” Cam grabs another box and steadies it on her hip. “I guess I can forgive her for putting Gabriel’s alcoholism on you.”
“She apologized for that,” I remind Cam. Corinne called me the day after Gabriel went to prison to check on me, and told me she was sorry for the things she’d said.
Cam frowns. “Hmph.”
“I appreciate the way you defend me.”
Cam rolls her eyes. “Well, duh. What did she say when you told her you’d be bringing all of Gabriel’s things over?”
“I haven’t told her yet.” We weren’t close to begin with, but after Gabriel went to prison, the Woodruffs acted differently toward me. They started showing interest, caring, trying to provide me with support and comfort. I pushed them away, because staying close would only prolong the inevitable. One day, Gabriel will return, and then what? It’s safer for my heart to keep them at arm's length. Caring for them is a losing game, and I’ve lost enough.
Cam gives me a long look. “Do you think surprising her is a good idea?”
“I was hoping she wouldn’t be there.” I know how it sounds, but facing her, handing her Gabriel’s belongings, is a way of checking another box. Cutting another tie. I need to be swift, without fanfare. I don’t know that I can survive it any other way.
“Very adult of you,” Camryn comments, adjusting her stance as the box begins to slip. “What are you going to do? Text her a picture of boxes stacked six-high on her porch?” With her free hand she mimes someone texting on a phone. “Thanks for the memories, Corinne. P.S. Here’s your son’s stuff.”
I groan. “Stop.” What I mean is, stop telling me what I should be doing. Stop telling me what I’m doing is wrong. I’m doing my best.
“I think you should give her a heads-up, that’s all. What if she hasn’t thought about where Gabriel will go when he gets out? And now she’s being given all his things?”
“Am I supposed to wait for him to get out before I box up his things and return them to him? I don’t want to live with his stuff for two more years.” For Gabriel, time is suspended. For me, the seconds tick by and turn into minutes, and the longer I stare at his clothes hanging in our closet, the harder it is to take that next step.
“I can’t keep his stuff around anymore. I could be a real bitch about it and donate it all, but I don’t have it in me.”
I step out the door ahead of her, only so I can hide my eyes. I talk a flippant game, but that’s all it is. A ruse, and the only person I’m deceiving is myself.
We finish loading up the bed of the truck. After I shove in the final box, I turn to her. “I’m selling the house, too. I’ll find somewhere smaller.” I can’t afford to live here. Not when I’m the only person paying the mortgage.
“Makes sense, considering you don’t have a job anymore.”
“I’m not destitute. You know I made money when Joseph and I sold the practice.” I struggled with the decision to return, but Joseph made the choice for me when he called and told me he was ready to spend his days at a beach, not listening to people bitch. I laughed, because I’d just left my last session with Dr. Ruben. I don’t feel great about getting a degree and not using it, or spending all that time going in one direction only to backtrack. Losing my career didn’t have the impact it would’ve had if I weren’t already hovering near rock-bottom. There wasn’t much further to fall.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Cam says with exasperation. “But I can’t figure out what you do with your days.”
“I volunteer at the animal shelter?—”
“Which is bizarre,” Cam interjects.
I chuckle. Oddly, I’ve found a sense of purpose in helping care for these animals. “I’m helping Dad with the books for his new business.”
“Consulting,” scoffs Cam. “Sounds like code for ‘unemployed.’”
Our dad started his own business because he wanted to have more time, but has ironically ended up having less free time than before.
“I’m thinking about writing a book.” I feel embarrassed saying it out loud. Who do I think I am? Who would want to read anything written by me? “I found my notebook, the one I used to write in when Gabriel was on shift at the station and I had trouble sleeping.”
Cam’s eyes light up. “That’s the best idea! You know Dani’s aunt is a literary agent, right? In New York. I bet Dani could get her to talk to you and?—”
“Whoa, whoa,” I say, but I’m laughing at my sister’s exuberance. “I don’t have a solid premise yet.”
Cam exhales hard, like I’m exhausting. “Tell me when you have a solid premise ”—she exaggerates the words—“and I’ll get Dani to call her aunt.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Excitement ripples inside me, but I try to keep it at bay. I know someone who knows a New York literary agent. That is HUGE. I’ve read personal accounts from people who say they queried one hundred agents and never heard a peep back. It took away my desire to even try, but now? That desire is suddenly burning inside me.
“I better take off.” Cam pulls me in for a hug. “I love you, Baxter. You got this.”
“I love you, too.”
She leaves, and I go back into my house to grab my purse and my keys. Very little has changed, at least on the surface. All the furniture is still here, the knickknacks, the rug Gabriel and I chose. He’d insisted we christen it that first time we laid it down in the living room, and I ended up with a rash on my back.
I climb in the rental truck. It’s twice as big as my car, and it takes some time for me to adjust to how much space I’m taking up on the road.
I keep thinking about what Camryn said about Dani’s aunt. Storylines and ideas bounce around my mind. I’m so deep in my thoughts I nearly manage to forget what it is I’m going to do.
The Woodruff home. I haven’t been here since before Gabriel went to prison. They learned about the divorce through a phone call from Gabriel, and then Corinne called me. She told me she was devastated for me, for how everything turned out. There we were, two women connected by a common thread, both knowing we contributed to its downfall. And yet, we are ultimately not at fault.
I feel differently about Corinne now. I see her as a person trying to make it through the worst kind of heartbreak, clinging to memories and expectations because it was all she had.
Both Corinne and Doug answer the door. I can’t tell what Doug is thinking, but Corinne has her emotions written all over her face.
“Avery.” She smiles at me, tentative. This is such tricky territory. Corinne was once mine, in the way Gabriel was my dad’s. Legally tethered, but connected by the heart. Does a snip through the binding mean a cut into the heart connection as well? Am I allowed to still care for his family if I’m not married to him?
Corinne looks over my shoulder at the vehicle in the driveway. “You rented a U-Haul truck? Are you moving somewhere?”
I rise on my toes, then slide back down on the balls of my feet. This is more difficult now that we're face-to-face. “I boxed up Gabriel’s things. I just thought”—my intertwined fingers form a single ball and bounce on my thigh—“that eventually he will need his stuff. And if I give them to you, and you tell him you have it all, he’ll know where to go when he’s released.”
Corinne’s lips purse. “Right.” She nods. “Of course.”
It hits me that Corinne and Doug will now have a second son whose belongings are in boxes. Gabriel once told me his mother got halfway through boxing up Nash’s belongings, then stopped. She never restarted, and since then Nash’s room is half packed, half the way it looked the last day he left it.
Doug steps out from behind his wife, and on his way by me he squeezes my upper arm. His touch is the next best thing to being near Gabriel, and the sting of tears touches the backs of my eyes.
Tucking back the emotion, I make a confession to Corinne. “I almost didn’t knock. I wanted to leave everything on your driveway and make a run for it.”
She huffs a shallow laugh. “I’m happy you didn’t do that.”
Doug returns holding two boxes. Corinne and I join in, and soon we’ve unloaded the back of the truck. Boxes fill one-half of the Woodruffs living room.
Corinne stands beside a box labeled Shorts & Socks . She taps it and says, “I guess he’ll be needing these.”
“He’ll need everything, at some point. That’s why I brought it all here. I assume this is where he’ll come when he…gets out.” My voice dips. “I’m going to sell our house, too, and put half the money in his bank account. That way when he gets out, he’ll, uh, he’ll have money.”
Suddenly I feel sick. It was one thing to work through all this in my mind, but now, standing in front of people who look similar to Gabriel, it’s tearing me apart.
I look away to get composure, but I’m faced with all those framed photos on the top of the grand piano. I put away all the pictures of us that were up in my house, and intentionally avoided all photographic reminders of him. Taking in his face now feels like a drink for my soul and a knife to my heart.
“Where do we go from here?” Corinne’s voice is small.
I tear my gaze from Gabriel’s image. “I’m not sure. We move on, I guess. I don’t know what else to do.”
“We move on from you?” Her voice catches at the end. “And you move on from us?”
I sniff. God, I really do not want to cry again, but I don’t know how much of a choice I have. “Are there rules for this kind of thing? A standard operating procedure?”
Perhaps the disjointed timeline has been the most bizarre part of the divorce. We crossed the finish line, then I had to go back and hit the checkpoints.
Doug speaks. “We don’t want to lose you, kid.”
“I know. But the reminders…” I bite my lip. “They’re painful. And they’re everywhere. I’m just doing what I can to decrease the pain of all this. I have to do what’s best for me. For my mental state.”
Corinne walks to me. She takes my hand and clasps it in her own. “Oh, honey, do what’s best for you. Take care of yourself first.”
I hug them both, one at a time. Doug releases me quickly. He clears his throat and walks away. Corinne holds me tightly. We’re nearly the same height, but she strokes my hair and holds me like I’m a child. Her child. The one she lost indefinitely, and the one she lost momentarily.
Perhaps she, too, has been altered by this experience. Maybe for the better.
“I hope you know you’re welcome here any time,” she says. “In our home, and in our lives.”
It’s a sweet sentiment, but it has a timer. One day in the not-too-distant future, Gabriel will be released. He will come here, and restart his life. What he won’t need is his ex-wife in the picture. How could he possibly move on if his parents are tied to his past?
Sometimes, the simplest acts are the most difficult to execute. Walking through the Woodruffs front door feels like a first step into unknown territory.
Yes, Gabriel was gone, but I had his things. Now I don’t even have that.
As much as it hurts, I keep going. I leave his possessions behind. With every step, a little bit of my old life breaks off and tumbles to the ground.
I buckle my seat belt and reverse into the street. I am raw and exposed, and everything hurts. But there’s something deep down, a newly developed but insistent feeling.
Not hope, because that would be too much to ask, but its benign cousin.
Trust.
Trust that I will be ok. I will make it. I am almost on the other side of this storm.