Tides That Bind

Chapter 5

TWO MONTHS LATER

When the kite crashes, I hold my breath.

Lucas runs over to it. “It’s broken.” He sighs. “Daddy made that.”

I quickly wind the rope around the spool. “Maybe we can fix it. Let’s bring it home and see.”

Doing my best to secure the kite under my bag and not do any more damage, I try to ignore the blank stare on Lucas's face. I tilt my head toward the water.

“Come on. Let’s go in!” I call out to Lucas as I jog toward the shore. When there’s no answer I look back, finding him now sitting on the beach blanket with his hand in a bag of chips. He alternates between bringing one to his mouth and tossing another to Tides. My feet sink into the wet sand.

“Not now.”

Not has been at the forefront of Lucas's answers to my questions these days.

How about we go to the diner for dinner? We’ll get milkshakes with our burgers .

Not tonight.

Want to watch Avengers?

Not now.

Do you want to stay home from school today and go to the arcade?

Not really.

My calf muscles ache as I make my way back to him, or I should say, what muscle is left. I feel as gaunt and hollow as I probably look.

“Why not? It’s never this warm in December.”

“It’s January, Mom.”

I freeze. Lucas is right. It’s January. And not the first of January. It’s nearly halfway through the month—Martin Luther King weekend, which means it’s just more than two months since Nate died.

Everyone talks about the firsts that follow losing a loved one.

There was our first Thanksgiving, when I fled to Claire’s for a week.

Our first Christmas and New Year’s, which we also spent with Claire.

The hardest firsts aren’t the major ones. The initial moments that shatter my soul are the everyday ones, like picking up Nate’s dry cleaning he’ll never wear again, or holding that first piece of mail addressed to him. I’ve never cried harder than I did two weeks after the funeral when I couldn’t find the remote to the TV in our bedroom and couldn’t blame Nate for not putting it back in the drawer beneath the console.

But without a doubt, nothing was harder than the first time I went to sleep as a widow, knowing that I’d wake up one too. It was like in just a split second, I became an entirely different person that was the antithesis of my current identity.

I was no longer a wife . I was a widow far too soon.

But one thing remained constant.

“Mom?”

I hold my breath, waiting, wondering what the question will be.

Where do you go when you die? How do you get there ?

Lucas points to a shovel at my feet. “Can you hand me that?”

My heart sinks, and I hate myself that in the first few days after Nate died, I was frustrated by the sheer amount of questions, frustrated by Lucas's reluctance to just accept his father was dead without any inquiry.

But the questions became less. And now, they hardly come at all.

The first thing I did the night after the funeral was google what to say to your kid when his father dies and order every book on the subject. None of them were helpful. You could take the minds of the greatest child psychologists and go nowhere with all the knowledge. Because some words— your dad died or daddy isn’t coming home— they’re too hard for little ears to hear and even harder to understand.

At a loss, I spoke with Lucas's school and started having him meet with the guidance counselor twice a week, hoping that she might be better suited to help him than me. His mother. His only parent. In the meantime, all I could do was try to fill Lucas's draining cup up with all the fun things he loves to do. Like go to the beach.

“Will you come get your feet wet with me?” I ask, sighing in defeat when Lucas shakes his head.

I pick up his unused boogie board. “Can I borrow this?”

Tides rises to his feet as I take it, heading toward the water.

“Mom!”

I turn immediately. Lucas stands, shuffling his feet, twisting his little hands. The sight draws me back to him.

“Can you…can you not swim today?”

“Why?”

It’s impossible to ignore the fear in his eyes that is so palpable it steals my breath. With just one look, Lucas reminds me of the most important lesson I’ve learned in the last two months.

Grief never stops taking.

It rips away the closeness of memories we’ve made and the possibility of ones we haven’t yet .

It steals joy from places we used to find it.

I didn’t know how deep and encompassing a child’s grief can be. It’s full of missing and longing and wondering and fear.

I stare at the shovel Lucas holds out, one that is normally caked in wet sand, and find it relatively clean. The bucket, usually overflowing with sea water, is dry.

Lucas fears water. Because at the end of it, the car accident didn’t kill Nate. He drowned.

I have to remind myself to breathe but I’m only able to take in air when Lucas's eyes round, pleading before his voice does. “Can you stay here and help me dig a hole?”

“Yeah. Sure,” I muster up. “Let’s dig.”

Even though something as simple as digging feels like too much, I do it. Because I don’t have a choice to sit back and cry and curse the universe for hurting my son like this. I’m all he has.

When the hole is one Lucas-leg deep, he announces, “I need to use the bathroom.”

I point to the public bathrooms. “Let’s go.”

“We could go to the Shack,” Lucas says and my heart spasms. “Do you think Riley’s there?”

I begin walking in the direction where I initially pointed. “I’m not sure.”

Lucas giggles when Tides halts mid-stride and shakes, freeing his coat of sand. And then he asks a question that should have a simple answer.

“Where is Riley anyway?”

I shut my eyes. That was Lucas's question at the funeral as well.

Distance remains between us and the coffin. Tides pulls forward, but Lucas pulls back.

I give Tides’s leash a tug before I bend down. “Do you want to tell him something?”

Lucas shakes his head.

“Lucas.” I sink into a squat. I imagine what Nate would tell him. He’d tell him try to be brave. But this isn’t the first time we took the training wheels off his bike. It’s not the first day of school. This is his first introduction to death . And it happens to be the death of the most important person in Lucas's world. How can I tell him not to be afraid?

I try anyway.

“It’s okay if you’re scared.”

“I’m not,” Lucas says. “I don’t have anything to say.”

“Do you want to go sit with Nana? Or Caroline and Finn?”

Lucas peers around. “Where’s Riley?”

I swallow, remembering my own words that night when I woke up on the couch alone almost four hours after Nate had left when Silas showed up at my door with a distraught face and a police Chaplain.

Before I could even bring myself to accept what they were about to tell me, I asked, “But where’s Riley?”

Caroline must sense my unease, as she approaches. “Lucas, let’s sit so Mommy can have a moment.”

I drop the leash so Tides can follow, but he doesn’t. Instead, when Lucas sits down, I find myself following Tides’s tail to the coffin for a final goodbye.

But like Lucas, I don’t have much to say. And that’s not because I’m afraid of this goodbye. It’s that the love Nate and I have is so consuming, I’m certain he already knows everything.

He knows that even though it hurts to reach out and smooth a small crease free from the flag draped over his coffin, I do anyway.

He knows I’m not about to bury him—my husband—but what was our family too.

“I’ll take care of Lucas.”

Nate knows this too, of course. But I say it anyway because I know if it were me, I’d want to hear it.

From my side, Tides breathes uneasily, the rise and fall of his chest thumping quickly against my leg. I reach down to sooth his anxiety through a head pat, but it does nothing to change things.

There is nothing that can change this .

“Harper?” Silas comes up beside me. He offers his arm. “Can I help you back to your seat?”

I stare at his pristine uniform. He’s so official. It’s a stark contrast from how he showed up at my door in sweats, his eyes swollen from sleep. But like I didn’t want him there that night, I don’t want him now either. I’d prefer to never see him again.

“You can sit. I can walk back on my own when I’m ready.”

I just don’t know if I’ll ever be.

Silas’s mouth hardens into a line. I don’t care if I’m being impolite. I’m sure Nate would tell me to be easy, the way he would with Riley.

I take a deep breath and wait for Silas to leave before I pat Tides again and finally return to my seat beside Claire. The dog doesn’t follow, but I let him be. He deserves a final goodbye in peace too.

For a minute, Tides walks the length of the coffin, dragging his leash before he finally lays down. And for the next twenty minutes, he doesn’t even twitch an ear as our families and community bids farewell to our hero.

After the line thins, Lucas slides into my lap and clicks his tongue. Tides lifts his head before he stands and walks toward us, sitting at my feet.

My heart shatters, threatening to burst out of my chest. But instead, the broken pieces make their way up and sneak out through my eyes in what feels like an undammed river of tears.

The only times Tides ever left my husband’s side so easily was when Lucas called him away from the coffin. And now it hits me.

Nate is gone.

I squeeze my eyes shut and hold my breath so my cries and shaking don’t scare Lucas. From beside me, Claire brings her hand to my back and I wish so badly I can comfort her too, but I can’t. With one arm wrapped around Lucas, I let my other hand fall, finding comfort in Tides’s thick fur.

I hold on and wait for it to be over—the crying, the funeral, all of it. I only loosen my hold on the dog when he stands and Lucas gasps in such amazement, I wonder if all this has been a nightmare and if I look up, we’ll find Nate standing in front of us .

“Riley!”

I take in the silhouette of his body, his broad shoulders and slender build. He wears dark blue pants and a shirt that’s torn at his elbow, making room for the cast that covers his left hand and forearm.

Riley doesn’t make it to the coffin. He hangs his head for a minute, standing just steps away from a goodbye. Lucas shimmies in my lap since he hasn’t seen Riley since…before.

There’s now a before and after.

Before, Riley would find Lucas in a crowd of a thousand. He’d probably make some stupid, silly face, sticking out his tongue. It’s something I might think Lucas has grown out of now, but Riley always manages to keep him a kid just a moment longer.

And now—in the after—when Riley turns, he walks right past Lucas as if he’s not even there.

We’ll never be the same.

“Mom?”

Tides wags his tail frantically as if Lucas has been gone days instead of minutes, the enthusiasm sparking a giggle from my son I wish I could bottle up so I can remember the sweet sound when I go without it later.

When we head back onto the sand, I unclip Tides’s leash and he runs alongside Lucas back toward the blanket, not leaving his side.

It will have to be enough. This dog and I will have to be enough.

I know I’m about to eat shit and hit the floor.

Sometimes, just knowing is a saving grace though, because I manage to grab a handful of fabric as I untwist too fast, which saves my head by an inch, but doesn’t do much to stop the side of my thigh from taking most of the hit.

“Shit,” I hiss, turning onto my back. I know if I look I’ll find the exposed skin below my shorts beet red, a collage of tiny, burst blood vessels below the skin. I curse again and throw myself onto my back. The hammock hanging from hinges anchored to the ceiling sways. I’d normally find beauty in this movement. But really, if I had the strength, I’d rip it from its hinges and forget all about the aerial yoga program I was once so excited to now offer. After all, it’s why I took the place next door to my studio that had higher ceilings. It’s why I knocked down the wall to connect the spaces so they flowed together.

But that was before.

Now? I don’t give much of a shit.

Remaining flat on my back, I shut my eyes and bring my arms to my sides and my legs together. But I feel nothing apart from my diaphragm contracting in this kind of Savasana. I won’t ever tell my students, but sometimes, yoga is bullshit.

“What are you doing?”

I press up onto my elbows when I hear Caroline’s voice. “They came to hang a few hammocks today. I’m trying to prepare movement for when I start a class.”

She places her hands on her hips. “And how’s that going?”

“About as good as everything else.”

Caroline touches the seafoam green hammock that failed to cooperate for me before. She jumps when Tides approaches quiet and cautiously before sighing and patting his head.

“I meant, why aren’t you home? It’s after eight.”

I don’t know how I can properly articulate what it’s like for me to be home when it doesn’t feel like that anymore.

“Claire took Lucas to a late movie. They should be done soon.”

When I stand, Caroline eyes my leg. “Do you know anything about aerial yoga?”

“Of course I do. I was just distracted.” I walk around Caroline. “But I actually should vacuum and get everything shut down for the night.” I see tufts of hair blow across the floor. Under normal circumstances, I’d never bring Tides to the studio. But there’s something I find comforting in his presence these days, and he’s not used to spending so much time home alone.

Besides, what is normal anyway?

Caroline follows me. “I called you. Three times.”

Just then my phone rings. I pick it up from the folding table I brought in until I get something more permanent for the space. I silence Silas’s call.

I just can’t , I think to myself. Not with one of Nate’s co-workers, and not with my best friend.

“You’re not the only one. Sorry. I’ve been swamped.” I open the closet for the vacuum. “I’ve got someone certified and have had to sit in on all her classes. Now that I have the hammocks—"

“Harper….” Caroline sighs before going quiet.

If there’s anything I’ve learned I hate since Nate died is how my name sounds when people say it just because they don’t know what else to say, like what Caroline is doing now. She’s checking on me, I get that. She’s my best friend and I’m lucky to have her in my corner.

But I don’t want to be looked after right now. Because all the pity and empathy does is remind me I’m not looked after by the person I need the most. And I won’t be. Ever again.

I pull out the cord of the vacuum, but Caroline reaches down and takes it from my hand. “I get that I don’t know what you’re going through.”

My eyes flash to the eternity band on her left finger. I took off my simple gold band the day after the accident when the coroner returned Nate’s. Why wear mine? I’m not married anymore. Both rings sit in the small safe at home which I never plan to open again until Lucas turns eighteen and I have to hand over his birth certificate and Social Security card.

“You’re right, you don’t.”

Caroline’s face sinks. “What can I do? I…I know it was an accident, Harper, but Riley was in that car and he’s my brother and—”

“How I felt and feel about Riley has nothing to do with you. It never has. If it did, we probably never would’ve been friends to begin with.”

“Felt and feel ?” Caroline steps closer. “Harper, it was an accident. Riley didn’t—”

“I know it was an accident. I read the report. And the autopsy.”

I know there was no way Riley—or anyone—would’ve been able to get Nate out of the car in time for him to live.

“He didn’t do anything wrong,” I continue, but these words, I don’t believe. And that’s not because I believe Riley could’ve done something that night that would’ve changed the outcome, something that would’ve kept Nate here with me.

They’re a lie because Riley did do something wrong. He left .

I can’t explain that to Caroline and it’s not just because Riley is her brother. It’s because I don’t even know why I’m upset by his absence when that’s really what I wanted all along. But the combination of Nate and Riley’s absences is so palpable it keeps me from wanting to be home where I feel impossibly alone.

My hands slide against my spandex shorts when I place them on my hips. “I don’t blame Riley. You can tell him that. I’m sure he’s staying with you and Finn.”

Caroline shakes her head sadly. “He’s not.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Where is he?”

“He’s fine. I mean, fine, like as fine as he can be. He’s just not staying with me.” She places her bag down, moving to plug in the vacuum.

“What are you doing?” I ask her.

“Helping , Harper. “

“I can clean.”

“You shouldn’t have to!” Caroline says exasperatedly. “You shouldn’t have to worry about more than yourself and Lucas. So I’m going to vacuum and then I’m going to”—she pauses, looking around—“do something else. And then I’m going to leave and pick up dinner and a bottle of wine and come over and do something else at your house, like iron your sheets, or clean your baseboards.”

I let Caroline snatch the vacuum, watching as she bends, searching for the power button. When the vacuum roars to life, Tides scampers through the plastic curtain partition and into the main studio, but I stay put. The ridiculous sight of Caroline pushing the vacuum around in her heels and work dress makes me giggle and I let her continue just so I can have a laugh, even if it’s at her expense.

“Okay, stop.” I turn off the vacuum. “You missed all that anyway.”

Caroline looks at the tuft of Tides’s hair in the corner and sighs. “Riley won’t let me help. Can you let me? I’m horrible at cleaning and I’m an awful cook. But there must be something I can do.”

I press my lips together. “I’ve got a mountain of mail that I don’t want to open,” I whisper.

Caroline’s face lights up. “Paperwork is my love language.”

“Look. We did it.”

Caroline is being kind. The only dent I made tonight was in the wine bottle.

In the two hours since I tucked in Lucas and was force fed Mexican takeout by Caroline, the overwhelming pile of unopened mail has been opened, sorted, and categorized by color.

“These need to be notarized. Red for retirement, blue for health care, green for tuition benefits.” Caroline taps each stack. “Do you want to come to the office this week?”

I chew on the inside of my cheek. “It’s not too late for any of this, right?”

“There’s a grace period, but sooner than later, alright? ”

“Okay. I’ll handle it tomorrow.” I mean what I say, even though the contents of the mail is just as intimidating as the envelopes that housed them.

Caroline sits back in her chair, her eyes drifting between me and the papers.

“Did you think about talking to someone?”

“You mean did I think about therapy?” I pour what little wine is left into my glass.

“You’re probably one of the most mentally sound people I’ve ever met, but what happened…it’s devastating.”

“That’s one way to put it.” I bring the glass to my lips. “But yes, I’ve looked into therapy. Did you know there are five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—but they don’t fall in any particular order?”

“Did a therapist tell you that?”

“No,” I answer. “Google. When I can’t sleep, I google my husband died, how long until I feel normal .”

“Harper—”

“There’s no answer, you know. Just like, right now, looking at all that”—I point to the stacks of organized papers and folders—“I’m in denial. I’m denying Nate died and that I have to deal with all this shit. Because do you know what? I’m too young to be a widow.”

I sit down at the table and take another drink.

“When I go to bed and instinctively put my hand out to Nate’s side and feel a cold sheet, I’m depressed. At night, yeah, basically I’m depressed. And then, in the morning when I wake up alone, I accept he's gone, really, I do. Because Nate didn’t fold a pillow the way he likes when he sleeps. It’s still crisp. So I get it in the morning. I’m fine in the morning. And then I go downstairs and Lucas comes down and I see it in his eyes—how he looks for him, Caroline—and I swear to god I’d make a deal with the devil to bring him back for one minute. Just one .”

My voice cracks and I lean my head in my hand.

“According to Google, that’s called the bargaining stage. ”

Caroline shakes her head. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, Harper. If something happened to Finn…and we don’t even have a kid to think about. You getting out of bed each day is something to celebrate.”

“I don’t want to be celebrated right now. I don’t want to be in this situation right now.” I sigh. “I’m back into the denial bit.”

Caroline takes my hand, but again, it’s the right kind of comfort from the wrong person.

Noticing the time on the microwave, I pull away. “You should go. It’s late. Thank you for helping me. I really mean that.”

I help Caroline pack up, and walking her out.

“Oh.” She lifts open the mailbox that sits on the wall to the side of the front door. “Let me just—”

I grab the few envelopes from her. “I’ll take care of it,” I say, even though I mean I’m going to throw these on top of the piles she just organized and ignore them too.

Caroline’s shoulders drop. I know she’s aware I’m rushing her out and I hate that so much. But I also know on a deeper level, she gets it. Because she gets me.

Or at least, who I am now.

Locking the door, I lean against it. Tides appears at the top of the stairs to inspect the noise before he heads back down the hall to Lucas's room. I make my way into the kitchen, but I have no interest in tidying up, even just washing a few dishes. I toss the envelopes on the counter, watching as one slips into the crevice between the quartz and the stove and curse under my breath. But I leave it and turn off the light, heading upstairs to my bedroom and manifesting falling asleep as soon as I shut my eyes.

After an hour, I’m wide awake.

And then another hour passes.

I throw the covers off my body and get up, my feet sliding along the area rug as I make my way to the end of the bed. I don’t bother to turn on the light. I don’t want to see how a room can look the same but feel so different, so wrong and upside down.

Lifting my arms, I fall into a handstand. The rush of blood to my head is welcome and familiar. How many times did I do this as a kid in the trailer when Mom and Dad were fighting about money, about the show, about where to go next? When life felt upside down, I felt better to just fall upside down with it. That rush of blood was a comfort. It flooded my mind with images of how my life might look one day—perfect.

And now, with life not just upside down, but upside down and backwards, I see that perfection, how my life was just two months ago, and the weight of the torturous image makes my arms tremble far too early for how easy this stunt normally is for me.

I let my legs fall over and sink to the ground. Before I’m right side up, I’m already crying.