Now, she was here, back atThe Millbrook Gazette.
“Natalie? I have to head back up to the hospital before visiting hours are through,” Elena said. “But would you like to get a drink maybe tonight?”
Natalie looked both overjoyed and confused. “Of course,” she said. “I’m sure you have many questions about your mother.”
“I do,” Elena said. “But it’s more than that.”
She was beginning to think Natalie was right. They needed to start publishing again. They couldn’t letThe Millbrook Gazettefalter for more than a couple of days. It was as good as dissing her mother’s life’s work. It wouldn’t be right.
Chapter Five
The Monday morning after Thanksgiving, James arrived at the community center a good half hour before his first grief therapy group session, leaving himself enough time to set up the chairs and the boxes of donuts on the side table. On the speaker, he played T. Rex, a favorite band of his from the seventies, and was surprised to find himself dancing as he crafted a circle with the chairs in the center of the room. The lyrics flowed through him. He was actually singing. By the time the first members of the group arrived, he’d already polished off half a caramel-cream donut.
What had gotten into him?
In the three years since his life had fallen apart, James hadn’t found many reasons to dance. It hadn’t even occurred to him, often, to put on music. He wondered if it had something to do with the snow falling outside or the Christmas lights strung through downtown. Or was it something else?
It was true that he’d run into Elena Vasquez yesterday afternoon. He’d been on a walk through his neighborhood, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and his headphones playing a podcast in his ears. He hadn’t realized she was in front ofhim until they nearly ran into one another. His blood pressure spiked, and he removed his headphones and said, “Elena! Hi!”
Elena had had a light about her that he hadn’t seen on Friday, when they’d first met.
“Mom’s coming home tomorrow,” she’d told him.
“That’s wonderful,” James said. “I’d love to come by and say hello.”
“Swing by around seven, maybe?” Elena had suggested. “I’m sure she’d love to see you. She probably likes you more than me.” She laughed.
“That’s impossible,” James had said. “But I’d love to come. Carmen was incredibly kind to me when I needed community the most. I’d love to help, if I can.”
So perhaps there was a reason for James Murphy’s dance through the community center, one that had everything to do with the beautiful smile of a woman who probably didn’t belong here, who’d probably retreat to New York City the minute she set her mother back up again.
Oh well. It felt wonderful to feel like someone saw him again. He hadn’t realized how invisible he’d felt.
During the grief therapy session that morning, James asked everyone to share how their post-Thanksgiving weekends had gone. Steven spoke first, explaining that he’d had a sort of breakthrough on Saturday morning. “I went to the farmers’ market and ran into a few people I knew before everything happened,” he said. In his case, “everything” was losing his wife to cancer. “We laughed and shared baked goods and strolled through downtown. For a little while, I completely forgot about how sad I was. And then I felt guilty because I’d spent so much time without my grief.”
James knew this feeling well. The minute you let the grief drift away, you needed to draw it closer to you. It was like griefbecame your only friend, something you could rely on during your darkest hours. But it was a friend apt to kill you.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” James said when Steven faltered. “You don’t have to feel guilty for not grieving all the time. Maybe we can find a way to acknowledge grief, to step away from it, and come back to it when we need it again. Maybe we can think of it as separate from ourselves.”
Steven nodded tentatively, as though he wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge that grief was so separate from him. “It was a beautiful Saturday, though,” he said after a moment. “Maybe that’s what I needed after all this time.”
A few others piped in with their own stories from the weekend. Some of them echoed what Steven had said, whereas others had been consumed with sorrow, missing the people they’d lost during another holiday without them.
James listened. He answered questions. He tried his best to dig them out of the darkness.
He knew it wasn’t always successful. But he knew that going to these meetings, talking, and listening was far better than stewing at home.
After the meeting, James sat around with some of the group members, ate another donut, drank some coffee, and talked about simple things like basketball games and the weather. Although he was the town’s crisis management and grief support specialist, it often felt strange that everyone knew the shape of his grief, the sorrow he’d undergone. It sometimes felt like he was half naked in front of them.
Of course, James hadn’t gotten into this career because of his own private tragedy. He’d gone to university to be a social worker and therapist and, before the accident, had worked on numerous cases. Now that he could speak about grief with a far more personal perspective, he felt that he could help more people. He was believable; they saw themselves in him. Hesupposed that was the slightest of silver linings, although he never wanted to think of what happened to him in any positive light.
That afternoon, James tried his hand at baking a pie. Tirelessly, he rolled out a pie crust, stirred apples with cinnamon and sugar, and watched through the oven’s window as the apple pie browned and crisped. As it cooled on the wire rack, he sat at the kitchen table and inhaled the marvelous smell. Once upon a time, when his ex-wife Bethany had baked in this very kitchen, he’d swooped through on his way somewhere else, taste-testing dough and kissing her. His smile waned, and he put his hands on the table and reminded himself to breathe.
He wondered what his ex-wife was doing right now. Did she think of him as often as he thought of her? Was she going to her own grief therapy sessions? Did she have many friends?
At seven on the dot, James pressed the doorbell to Carmen’s place and adjusted the pie tin in his gloved hands. Nearly a full minute later, Elena came to the door, wearing a pained expression. She looked at him like she couldn’t believe he was there. And then, James realized that she’d forgotten she’d invited him! His smile dropped. He nearly dropped the pie, too.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh, James! Hi! Come in.”
