Chapter 13
Subject: TLWWC
Hello John,
How are you? Is that a silly question? I suppose it is.
I’m having the strangest week. And I thought winning the lottery and my husband dying was a funny one.
I think I’ve made some friends. They’re lottery winners, too, like me. Like us. Their names are Audrey, Ivy and Teddy. Teddy has the most beautiful hair – it’s even nicer than Sigourney Weaver’s! They call themselves The Lottery Winner Widows Club.
Ivy is the newest member of our group – we only met her on Thursday.
She’s got a lovely big house and we talked for a long time in her living room.
She made me a peppermint tea and then complimented Audrey’s scarf.
Then Audrey said it wasn’t a scarf, it was a pashmina, which I had to google afterwards.
Apparently a pashmina is much fancier than a boring old scarf, and is made with the finest cashmere wool.
So then I googled what cashmere wool is and it turns out it’s wool from cashmere goats.
Don’t ask me what cashmere goats are because I got a bit tired of googling after that and went to watch Selling Sunset instead.
I’m getting off topic.
So, like I said, all three of them have won the lottery, but they also – I think I should probably just blurt this out because I don’t know how to bring it up naturally – killed their husbands.
Which I know must seem very shocking to you, but they really did have their reasons.
Poor Ivy is such a sweetheart and awfully young – only 27 – and her husband sounded like a really dreadful man.
He used to hurt her, physically. He would beat her when he was drunk.
Which was every night, by the sound of things.
They were together for twelve years. They met when Ivy was only fifteen and he was in his mid-twenties.
Which was hard to hear, I have to say. She ended up pushing him down the stairs a little over a year ago.
And it’s difficult not to think . . . good for you, Ivy.
I’m afraid they think I killed you, too. I’ve tried to explain, but they just don’t believe me and it’s getting too awkward to keep insisting.
Last week, they took me to see a house that’s for sale. Though it’s hard to imagine anyone thinking of such a place as a house. It was gigantic! Like Downton Abbey but with fewer servants kissing each other. I’m sorry, I know you hated that show.
It was beautiful and they couldn’t understand why I didn’t love it.
And I don’t know how to explain to them why it’s so hard for me to see things change.
They don’t seem to understand that I’m grieving.
And I’m not talking about my grief for your death.
I mean that I’m grieving a life we might’ve had together with all this money.
A life I thought we might be able to have one day.
These women – these new friends – they don’t understand that you and I talked about what kind of house we’d buy if we ever had that kind of money.
It’s hard to explain any of it. To anyone. Even to myself.
Maybe this is what Tilly means by saying grief has tentacles.
Although I really wish she would stop saying it.
I think about you a lot.
Paula