Chapter 4
Wren
I was told the firsts were always the hardest—like the first letter that arrived in the mail addressed to her; or the first evening I found myself in our favorite restaurant without her; or the first joke that made me laugh before I realized I couldn’t share it with her.
Of course, there were also the obvious firsts, like the first string of holidays without her, the first birthday, and the first anniversary of her death.
The firsts went by in a haze, as though they weren’t even real, and perhaps they weren’t, because I spent so much of that time ignoring my pain.
What no one tells you, or at least what I was not prepared for, was that the seconds are, in fact, the hardest. Fourteen months had somehow passed since Lucy died.
To me, the firsts seemed easier to gloss over.
People expected you to be struggling. They were patient.
But by the time it all rolled around again, the same people would expect that you’d recovered, as if somehow grief was simply linear and not infinite.
Lucy would have been twenty-nine today. Would have.
She passed two months before her birthday.
She would never be twenty-nine. She would never get older.
This date would always be there on the calendar, a constant reminder that I would grow older and she would not, she would forever be frozen in time.
After the accident, I stopped paying attention to birthdays.
My friends, my editor, my cousin Marnie, they all celebrated their birthdays and I ignored them all.
I ignored my own birthday too. I felt tiny under the weight of my grief; even a single person appeared like a giant by comparison, and large groups?
Almost unthinkable. Time continued to march forward, and on so many days I was either completely untethered from it or desperately trying to hold on to everything that had not been catastrophically upended.
Everston was so far away from the life I knew. It felt simple, quieter, like I could do nothing here, except restore the old house during the day, and drink wine on the swing as the evening rolled in.
Today, the evening was fresh, a cool breeze coming down from the mountain ranges. Stars dotted the sky, growing brighter as the night became darker. It was a curious thing, the idea of mourning: stuck between wanting to remember and wanting to forget.
I loved celebrating Lucy’s birthday. Every year, we went to Momo I’d also given it a fresh coat of white paint, and it gleamed in the moonlight.
“It’s beautiful,” Lucy replied.
“And I’ve sanded the decking along the porch,” I said. “Tomorrow, I’m going to stain it, it’ll look just as it did before. And I’ll patch the railings, have the missing ones replaced.”
Wouldn’t that be simple, if you could replace the hole left by a loved one in the same way you could replace a broken railing.
Lucy didn’t respond for a moment, and I looked to her, afraid she was gone again.
“I don’t want you to feel this way anymore,” she said. “I want you to live again, to be out in the world.”
“I am,” I responded. “Did I not just tell you I’ve repainted the front fence?”
“I don’t mean the progress on this house.”
“Well, what then?” I said. “Because here I am in this town, very far from Manhattan, and I sure think I’m ‘living,’ ” I used air quotes because they always drove Lucy crazy.
“I want you to find love again,” she said.
“I could date if I wanted to,” I replied, though even I could hear the doubt in my own voice.
“I just choose not to.” I had my reasons—dating felt like too much risk, too much vulnerability.
And really, what would I even talk about?
Hi, I’m still grieving my dead fiancée, what do you do in your spare time?
“You don’t know how to open your heart again.”
I waved my hand at her. “I don’t need to. I still have you.”
I reached for the bottle of wine and realized that it was now empty.
Sighing, I stood and moved into the house, beginning to search the kitchen cupboards.
I was sure I had another bottle in there somewhere.
I reached for the top cupboard, pulling it open, but the door snapped from its hinges.
Startled, I let go and the cupboard door came crashing down onto the countertop, knocking three mugs onto the floor, and sending shards of ceramic pieces everywhere.
I stared down at the mess on the floor. “This house is me.” I laughed, the effects of the wine sending jittery sensations through my body. “I am as broken as this house.”
Lucy stared at me.
“What’s the point?” I said. “It doesn’t matter how many parts of this house I fix, something else breaks.
Perhaps it’s better off staying broken, just like me.
” I stormed to the foyer and reached for my coat.
The cool evening air would do me good. Main Street wasn’t far, a twenty-minute walk at most, but the night air might sober me up, clear my head. Maybe that’s what I needed.
“Where are you going?” Lucy asked, standing in the kitchen, arms folded. It’s an image I had of her, only we weren’t in this house, we were home.
“Town,” I said, twisting as I shrugged myself into the sleeves. “Want to come with me? I’m sure we could find Everston’s own Momo the words had a rhythm I almost recognized, as if from something blurred by time.
I knew I’d heard them before, I’d just long forgotten them.
I stepped out into the cool night and disappeared into the shadows.