What Remains of You

Chapter One

Widowhood isn’t the worst part of my life, Diana Morgan thinks as she jogs up her driveway. With each step, her lungs burn and bright spots of pain shoot up her calves. This run might be even more terrible.

Intrigued by the ridiculous idea she can find an upside to losing her husband, Diana limps onto her porch and begins to make a list to answer the question Why Isn’t Widowhood the Worst?

She imagines writing the list on the Notes app on her phone, the place where she tracks what she needs at the grocery store.

Instead of “grapes,” “cheddar cheese slices,” and “juice boxes,” she could write:

Tom was the one who liked to run, not me. I don’t have to jog anymore.

I can sleep in the middle of the bed if I want; no more sticking only to the right side.

Shivering from the frigid New England weather, Diana opens her front door. She peels off her gloves, along with her hat and insulated vest, and drops them on the bench in the cluttered hallway next to her son’s basketball gear.

There’s no one to disagree with me.

Well, her kids, twelve-year-old Duncan and nine-year-old Phoebe, regularly disagree with her, so that’s not a true silver lining to her current situation. As she closes the door and kicks off her sneakers, she tries again.

I can keep the heat as high as I want. No more putting on an extra layer to accommodate Tom’s obsessive need to keep the thermostat at sixty-three degrees.

I can keep the heat as high as I want, but I have to pay the heating bill myself.

I’m the only parent Duncan and Phoebe have.

I’m alone.

Diana bends over, heaving. The breath in her chest is violent and sharp.

“Mom?” Duncan calls out.

Diana presses her hand against the wall and slowly pulls herself up. A moment passes before she can speak. “Coming.”

She finds her children in the kitchen, clustered at the island.

Duncan is clad in workout pants and Tom’s old Van Halen concert tee.

It’s too big for him, but he wears it all the time.

Diana dutifully washes it whenever she finds it in the laundry, envisioning a college-age Tom wearing the shirt while singing along in a crowded concert hall.

She blinks to erase the image and turns to her son. “How was practice?” Duncan likes nothing more than to talk about basketball and his cocaptain position on his middle school’s team.

“Coach made us run extra laps because—”

“Mama,” Phoebe interrupts, hopping from foot to foot and brandishing a manila envelope, her ponytail swaying with each jump. Her coat and boots are piled on the floor next to her backpack and favorite stuffed animal, Bear Bear. “I found it! I found the time capsule!”

For the past week, Diana’s kids have been pestering her to locate a family time capsule they assembled four years ago.

It was Duncan’s homework assignment, but Diana barely remembers it.

Duncan is clear they’re supposed to open it today, Leap Day, February 29, 2016, and he’s persuaded Phoebe to help him convince Diana to find it.

She’s looked everywhere—dressers, cabinets, the attic, even the bathroom linen closet—but without success.

Tom would have known where it was, which makes this simple request all the more difficult.

“Where was it?” Diana asks, waving her arms in circles to interrupt her thoughts and to release the remaining tension from her run.

“For homework,” Phoebe begins, “I have to write a paragraph about winter, and I don’t know how many z’s are in ‘blizzard.’ I think it’s three, but when I asked Duncan, he wouldn’t tell me.” Phoebe stares pointedly at her brother, aggravation etched across her face.

“Mom makes me look up words I can’t spell, so you have to do the same, Pheebs. It’s only fair,” Duncan says.

Phoebe shakes her head, and Diana stifles a laugh. Phoebe has figured out that her brother sometimes claims the need for sibling equality to disguise his reluctance to help her, and she is not on board with this approach.

“So I went into the office to get the dictionary,” Phoebe continues. “One shelf down from it was the time capsule, tucked behind the photo albums. Can we open it, Mama?”

Diana takes the envelope from her daughter. On the front, in red marker, is Time Capsule: Do not open until February 29, 2016. Her breath grows shallow, and the hair along her forearms rises. “Strange. I thought I checked there.”

In the eighteen months since Tom died, Diana has tried not to think too much about the past. That’s probably why she didn’t find the time capsule when she searched the office; she must not have wanted to go near those photo albums documenting their years together.

Now that Phoebe has found it, however, looking back is unavoidable.

“Mom?” Duncan asks. “You okay?”

Diana forces a smile. “Of course,” she lies. She needs more time to prepare, to reinforce the walls she’s built around her grief. She drops the time capsule onto the island. “Let me get dinner started first? I’m starving after my run.”

“But it’s Leap Day today, Mama. We have to open it today.” Phoebe’s face crumples, tears threatening.

“Don’t worry. We will.” Diana kisses Phoebe’s forehead. “You and Bear Bear start your homework while I figure out what we’re eating. You get to work, too, Duncan.”

Mollified by the prospect of food, Phoebe heads to the table, dragging Bear Bear by the ear, his furry bottom bouncing on the floor.

Bear Bear has been Phoebe’s great joy since her third birthday, when she opened a pink polka dot box from Diana’s parents to find him inside.

Diana still remembers Phoebe kissing his turquoise nose with delight, whispering, “Bear Bear.” If Diana doesn’t watch closely, Phoebe will smuggle him to school in her backpack, sticky with the remains of her breakfast.

Duncan grabs the laptop from the counter, where it sits on a pile of unopened mail, newspapers bound for the recycling bin, and notices from the kids’ schools that are probably important.

“Can I use the computer? I have to research the Supreme Court for history class.” Before, the computer was Tom’s, but now Diana and the kids share the device.

She keeps it in the kitchen, instead of across the house in what was Tom’s office.

Diana needs everyone to be close by, in the same room.

“Yes, but no video games.”

“Mom,” he groans. That one word has endless meanings, and in this instance, she knows Duncan hopes to convey his frustration with her rules.

He tells her all the time that none of his friends have parents as strict as her, but she won’t relent.

She’s extra cautious about everything related to her kids.

She’d be a different mother if Tom were still alive.

More lenient, probably. And not so insecure.

As Duncan passes by on his way to join Phoebe at the table, his hand lightly grazes Diana’s shoulder, and she smiles.

When he was little, Duncan would never leave a room without kissing or hugging her.

That stopped for a few months when he turned ten, much to Diana’s regret.

Then Tom died, and everything changed. Now, Duncan is always aware of where she is in the house, always touching her as he walks by, as if to ensure she’s still there.

“Mama, I forgot. Lakshmi sent home food for us,” Phoebe says. “She said it was Daddy’s favorite. I brought it home from my playdate with Mira. It’s by the back door.”

Lakshmi, Diana’s close friend and Mira’s mother, has cooked for Diana and her kids once a week for months now; it’s one of the ways she looks out for them.

Often the meals are the Indian dishes Lakshmi makes for her own family—dal, biryani, sambar—but sometimes, she cooks food that reminds her of Tom.

After putting away Phoebe’s coat and boots in the foyer closet, Diana brings Lakshmi’s dish into the kitchen, peeking under the foil to find homemade macaroni and cheese. Definitely Tom’s favorite, she thinks, placing the dish on the counter.

“I still don’t know how to spell ‘blizzard,’” Phoebe says, her voice vibrating up toward a full-fledged whine. “Can’t one of you tell me?”

“As we already discussed, you have to get the dictionary,” Diana says, opening the refrigerator to assess what else they have for dinner. She pushes aside the milk—still good, amazingly—and finds her mother’s fruit salad. A bag of baby carrots in the back of the crisper will work, too.

Phoebe sighs dramatically but gets up, stealing a carrot as she skips by.

Diana closes the refrigerator and eyes the time capsule. She should have let the kids open the envelope and get this over with. Whatever is inside—probably some old photographs—won’t be that upsetting, right?

Eager for a distraction, she checks her phone and finds texts from her family.

How far did you get on your run? her sister, Andrea, asks, her message peppered with sneaker emojis.

Don’t forget to replenish your electrolytes!

Diana’s mother’s text is no different in its sentiment: I hope you made time for that jog, sweetheart.

You’ll be grateful you prioritized your health and well-being.

To Diana’s sister and mother, exercise is a sign Diana hasn’t fallen back into the debilitating grief that eclipsed her after Tom’s death, a time when she couldn’t take care of Duncan and Phoebe, pay her bills, or remember to eat.

The darkest of those days are behind her, Diana believes, but she isn’t sure her family is ready to let go of being the ones who hold her together.

Phoebe returns to the kitchen, lugging the dictionary. “It’s one z, right, Mama?”

“Look it up, Phoebe,” Diana says, sticking her phone into her pocket. “Mac and cheese good with you for dinner, Duncan?”