Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 108905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
“I didn’t think you did.” It felt safe to smile now, like we could take our devastation faces off in private. But we kept them handy, like sunglasses we’d just pushed onto our heads. “Let’s get changed first, though. Because these shoes are killing me.”
“Yes, and I feel as though funerals follow you home on your clothes,” he said as we went to the bedroom. “Every time I look at my cufflinks, I remember that I was just at my daughter’s funeral. I might just throw this pair in the bin.”
I toed off my pumps and wriggled my stockinged feet against the carpet. “It would be a shame to see them go. But it’s up to you.”
“Oh, Sophie. Please stop,” he said softly.
My heart leapt to my throat. I’d done something wrong, said something, when all I’d wanted was to be supportive and—
“You needn’t be so cautious with me,” he went on. “I’m not going to burst into hysterics if you tell me not to throw away my cufflinks. You’ve been walking on eggshells with me for days, now.”
“I was trying to be respectful of your feelings and your… I don’t know, I just don’t want to hurt you more,” I sputtered.
“Believe me when I tell you that nothing you could do or say would ever hurt me more than the death of my child is hurting me, now.” He stated it so plainly that it was more fact than recrimination. “Besides, what good has all of that solicitous concern done for you?”
If he was referring to my long-built up meltdown at the crematorium chapel… “You have a point.”
“I want things to be normal, again,” he said with a frustrated sigh. “Or, I want them to be the normal that they’ll become.”
“You want to rush straight to the new normal,” I reframed it for him. “But you’re kind of forgetting that stuff like this takes transition. You can’t just take off that suit and finish being shaken by this. And we’ve got a baby now—”
Holy shit. Holy shit, we had a baby now.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “And aren’t you looking forward to a time when that sentence won’t send you into clinical shock?”
“I’m not in shock,” I protested. Yeah, I couldn’t feel my face, but I wasn’t in shock.
“You’re as pale as my shirt,” he said, pinching the garment outward in demonstration as he worked the buttons.
“Be that as it may,” I replied with a roll of my eyes, “I’m worried that you’re going to try to force yourself to feel all better, and it’s going to blow up in your face.”
Probably not the best turn of phrase, considering my suicide fears. At least, I knew the only guns Neil owned were for hunting weird fat birds in Iceland, and those were locked up at his brother’s house.
Neil looked down at his hands as he finished with his buttons. “Sophie… I’m not going to force myself to feel better about this. I will never feel better about this.”
That swelling pain under my ribs flared to life, again. Neil wasn’t trying to make things “normal” so he could ignore the grieving process. He was trying to incorporate his grief into his life, because it would always be there.
The lump in my throat made it difficult to speak. “I don’t have any idea what you must be going through. I’m never going to have any idea. So, if I’m doing something wrong, or I’m not helpful… I want to be. I just don’t know how.”
“I don’t know how to do this, either,” he admitted. “I suppose, just like everything else, we’ll have to muddle through together.”
He opened his arms to me, and we held each other, not for the last time that day.
* * * *
I was sleeping like a bear in January when soft humming crackled over the baby monitor. Although Olivia had been living with us for less than a week, the broadcast frequency of the monitor somehow triggered my brain into full wakefulness. I felt across the bed. As I could have predicted, Neil was already up.
Although I still didn’t have a maternal bone in my body—and I’d begun to suspect that I never would—I wasn’t going to let Neil bear the brunt of caring for Olivia.
I yawned as I stumbled from the room, rubbing my bare arms. It wasn’t cold in the apartment, but my skin was still warm from sleep. Soft light spilled from the door to Emma’s room, and I stopped, a hand on the frame, to look in.
Neil stood in front of the window, looking out at the skyline on the other side of the park. He held Olivia against his shoulder, gently bouncing her while he murmured a soft lullaby.
My heart ached at the thought of him once holding Emma like this. He’d put her picture on the dresser, the “we’re expecting” photo she’d sent out to announce the pregnancy. In it, Michael stood behind her, his arms wrapped protectively around her stomach.