Chapter 2
One Month Earlier
The Funeral
My priest, Chloe, reads the funeral liturgy about committing Philip’s body to the ground.
Heathcliff farts loudly.
She pauses, suppressing a giggle.
“Usually, we do that away from people,” I hiss at my six-year-old, before noticing that everyone except griefy-killjoy me seems to think it’s cute.
Even Philip would have loved the idea of our son stinking up his funeral service.
Still.
“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” I whisper.
“No.” Big grin, a giant front tooth next to a baby one. “I just wanted to poot!”
I sigh and drop it.
God, the sun is hot in this old church graveyard; a strand of curling star jasmine keeps tickling my neck like an insect. Sweating profusely under my black dress, I hope I remembered to wear deodorant. Widow’s brain is a thick fog. Last night I left the keys in the front door.
I can’t look at Philip’s urn in the open two-by-three-foot niche. We made quiche together last Saturday morning. Quiche with
roasted red peppers and capers. My chest tightens.
I distract myself by thinking of all the people here who loved Philip.
My family would do anything for me. I glance at my brother, Ian. In spite of his high-pressure bank job, he flew in from Indiana
last night. Mom would have driven down in a heartbeat. Even while I’m grieving for Philip, my heart still aches from losing her last year. My quiet professor-father sent white roses this morning. He threw out his back yesterday and was
unable to fly. I want him with me now like I did as a child during thunderstorms. But he doesn’t need to sit through Philip’s
funeral. Dad’s still swallowing losing Mom, and Ian and I are worried for him.
Mirabel dabs her eyes with a silk handkerchief. She’s a Southern Martha Stewart, classic whiskey in a teacup. At sixty-years-old,
she still sports thick blond coiffed hair and fits perfectly into a size six black tailored Talbots dress. I used to tell
Philip that I really want to know the witch her great-great-great-grandmother sold her soul to for Mirabel to inherit that
fabulous skin and hair.
My father-in-law, Ted, puts his arm around her. He’s dry, mild, but nice enough. Mirabel runs the show. Ted doesn’t get excited
about much. He likes his low-fat grits and chilled berries by six thirty every morning and lukewarm tea with lemon sliced
thin and circular.
Philip helped so many, often pro bono, through the law firm.
At home, sympathy cards clutter my desk from clients describing how he compassionately guided them through a divorce or out of a bad contract.
Many more people would have turned up, but I tried to keep the funeral attendance small.
Besides family, I allowed Philip’s closest friends from law school.
Through a tangle of jasmine, I spot his best friend and law school roommate, Henry Lawton.
He’s staring stonily into the niche, jaw set tightly under his trim beard.
I’ve only seen Henry a handful of times in the past several years. But Philip and Henry met often—for lunch, an after-work
beer, a Saturday fishing excursion upstate. And although he’s in the middle of his own divorce, Henry has offered to help
me close the estate. He glances up, meets my gaze, and I look quickly away. I can’t face his pain.
Philip’s parents, his friends. Too many grieving hearts here for me to handle.
I can only tend to my own and Heathcliff’s.
I glance down at him making silly faces back and forth with Ian. His six-year-old brain can’t wrap his mind around the finality
of it all. His world is Batman, LEGO, and dairy-free ice cream bars. There’s no room for a world where his dad doesn’t come
home at the end of every workday or make the world’s best quiches on weekend mornings.
After the funeral, I put Heathcliff to bed and sit alone in my backyard staring at fireflies lighting up amid my overgrown
grass, and I realize I don’t know what to do. I have no idea how to grieve, how to mourn, and mostly—how to live without Philip.
Desperate for some widow guidance, I pull up my phone’s Google Images. I stare at an elderly Queen Victoria, cheeks saggy
and pale as bread pudding. When Albert died, she made widowhood fucking performance art. She set the bar high for all widows
to come.
If I were a Victorian widow, I’d wear black crinoline petticoats, dresses, and gloves.
I’d look like a gothic wedding cake topper.
I’d tie crepe sashes around vases and doorknobs, signifying that my house would be in mourning with me.
Although ghoulish, I’d wear remnants of Philip around my neck—hair in a brooch or locket.
At the funeral home, I’d clipped a lock of Philip’s sandy blond hair and put it in a plastic Ziploc baggy.
Now I’ll place the lock lovingly in a piece of jewelry.
If I were a Victorian, I’d not “move on” quickly.
I’d respectably wear my black. I’d never attend wild parties or show too much cleavage, and I’d most certainly keep men at arm’s length.
Hopefully, I can pull it off properly. I won’t be wearing crinoline or petticoats, tying sashes around every doorknob in the
house. But I’ll be gesturing to it all—proper grief stationery, black clothes, keepsake jewelry.
In the wake of Mirabel’s text, I pack up my lackluster lunch and realize I don’t have the energy to keep office hours or attend
another meeting. I pull out my stationery and pen a note.
Dear Patrick, please give my regards to Admin as I will be absent from the Strategic Growth Committee meeting this afternoon.
Sincerely, Lizzie
I leave the letter with Sandra. “Thank you, Dr. Wells.” But she barely looks up from the Fox News segment where a blowhard
yells about feminists. Patrick and I tolerate it all because she makes to-die-for Christmas shortbread cookies and organizes
semester schedules like nobody’s business.
As I drive back home from campus, I try to think through the widow brain fog.
I’ll need to figure out how best to talk to Mirabel about that night.
Henry sent me a kind text reminder earlier today about helping me with my legal paperwork.
Important, as now I know anything can happen at any time, so I need to tie up loose ends.
Oh, and the jet-black locket necklace I ordered from the antique jewelry store in Charleston should have been delivered and left on my porch.
I hope I can figure out how to fit Philip’s lock of hair in it.
I approach my front door (Philip painted it red five years ago because I thought storybook houses always had red front doors).
I see the small jewelry package. There’s also a lavender orchid, stem straight, blooms budding out like little hearts, a note
attached: Thinking of you—Dad.
Fifteen Years Earlier
“Sorry, we don’t take credit card, only cash.”
I stare longingly at the overpriced cinnamon powder iced latte, my reward for turning in my monster-length research paper
for the Bronte seminar.
And drat. The barista is Garrett. I failed him for copying shit from Wikipedia in my class last semester. He smiles smugly while I
rifle through my worn faux-leather satchel for loose change.
“I’ll get it.”
Just behind me a guy about my age—good-looking, tanned, with blue eyes and thick sandy hair—pulls six bills from his wallet.
Wikipedia Garrett reluctantly hands over the iced latte.
“Thanks,” I mutter, cheeks burning. “Really.”
I walk away with the cold drink, not wanting to look at the other ten people in line behind me. I pause and take a long sip
through the straw.
“Hey . . .”
I jump, turn around, and it’s the cute guy who paid for my coffee. He smiles warmly. He has nice teeth and a small dimple
on his lower chin.
“Aren’t you going to get a coffee?” I ask.
“Well, I sort of used my last change to buy yours.”
“Oh . . .”
“Philip,” he says, putting out his hand.
“Lizzie,” I reply, shaking his hand like we’re colleagues.
I’m not sure where this is going. He’s cute and I’m flattered.
But I don’t date much. It’s not that I’m unattractive.
But my idea of a fun Friday night is sipping Malbec and reading Middlemarch.
Guys like this guy don’t usually flirt/buy coffees for book nerds like me.
I’ve only had one boyfriend in grad school: Wes
Harker. We dated last semester as he finished up his PhD thesis on Lord Byron. Unfortunately, he was a Byron wannabe. While
seeing me, he slept with my thesis advisor and three fellow students in our Romantic Poets class—Jenna, Dana, and Scott. (Who
knew academia was so scandalous?) I’m ashamed that I still dated him until we went with friends on a quick trip to Haworth,
England, and I walked in on him having sex on a nineteenth-century icebox with Samantha. Who does that to an antique? He had
to go. Seeing him in the act was the last straw. He broke my heart, and I spent Christmas vacation crying in my childhood
bedroom in Indiana. I’d bawled my eyes out in my frilly canopy bed just under the shelf displaying my large show-choir trophy
and rows of spelling bee ribbons.
“Ummm . . . I have class soon,” I say stupidly.
I glance down and notice his worn loafers and similarly worn bag. Definitely a student. But he’s wearing a semiprofessional
button-down shirt, so likely a law student. Word on the street is that they’re just as poor as we humanities grad students,
but they pretentiously try to dress like lawyers.
“But you do owe me a coffee, so would you like to go out?”
“Yes?” Condensation from my coffee drips onto my fingers as I grip the cup.
“Is that confirmation?” He smiles.
“Yes. Sorry . . . Yes, it is.”
He pulls out his phone to get my number. There has to be a catch. This kind of meet-cute doesn’t happen to me. Obviously,
he’s a charming serial killer who lives with his mom and her thirteen cats.
I chuckle awkwardly. “You’re not a psycho, right?’
He laughs. God. That dimply smile again. I need to pinch myself.
“Nah.”