For whatever reason Pierce’s driveway seemed like the place to be as the world around me ended. It didn’t happen in a volcano blast with falling lava, or a hurricane using waves to destroy the city around us. There wasn’t even a fire to take out Main Street. A simple phone call was all it took to change my life.
My world ended without a bang or a flash. I sat alone in my car dying by myself. No one understood my heartache in that moment, as if someone sliced open my chest, removed my heart, and chucked it in the ocean. I breathed normally at first but continued to drown in grief until I couldn’t breathe. Nothing was worth breathing for anymore.
Right in the middle of my worst despair, a knock on my driver’s side car window drew my attention to the side, and I looked up with red puffy eyes to see Pierce with an expression of concern staring back at me through the glass.
10
Pierce
Katy lifted her face from her steering wheel and my heart plummeted. Her eyes were red and puffy as if she’d cried for a week.
I didn’t hear her crappy Honda pull into my driveway as I sat in my office staring out at the ocean, but noticed the twinge in my heart. As if a piece of me broke and suffered a shock, I’d even put my hand over my heart and rubbed my chest. The feeling of dread grew until I walked through the house looking for something wrong. I didn’t find it until I checked out the front door and saw Katy’s car in the driveway.
I slowly opened her driver-side door and balanced myself on the balls of my feet getting to her level. “Katy, what happened?”
She choked over the words the first few times she tried to speak, but after a few deep breaths, she got a hold of herself. “Nanna died.”
Without waiting for her acceptance, I forced myself into her car and gathered her up in my arms. With one hand I unbuckled her seatbelt and unwrapped it from across her body. “Oh, babe, I’m so sorry.”
Her body went limp in mine and it took no effort for me to slide her from her car and carry her into the house. She looked at the couch in the living room, but I kept walking up the stairs until we hit my bedroom, and I laid her under the covers on my bed. Where she belonged.
“Petunia and Grace are in the car.”
“Petunia?”
She sniffled. “My plants.”
“Shh. It’s okay. I’ll grab them.”
Katy sobbed. At moments she would quieten, as if she’d reached calm, but then it always picked up again. I watched, wishing I knew how to ease her pain, and tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. I wanted more than anything to be able to do something else for her. But there was nothing. I couldn’t bring back her grandmother.
The only thing I offered Katy came from my presence and being here for her, even if she wouldn’t admit enjoying it. She rolled to her side, and I pulled my hand from underneath her body, escaping into the master bathroom as fast as possible and wetting a washcloth with cool water.
When I returned, she was using a hand to wipe away the tears, but it did no good because new ones replace them immediately. My heart felt like it’d been crushed by a bulldozer as I watched her cry out years of emotions for her grandmother. I sat on the bed beside her and folded the washcloth into thirds laying it over her forehead and eyes, the best possible way with her head scrunched up in my pillow.
She reached out for me, her fingers wrapping around the hem of my shirt and tugging. For only a second I allowed myself a flash of excitement that in her time of need Katy reached for me. Then she sobbed again and guilt ate away my happiness.
“I don’t know what to do without her,” Katy said around a sniffle.
I flipped over the washcloth and repositioned it on her head using my other hand to rub circles on her back. “Shhh. Take time and grieve. You don’t need the answers to life right now.”
She tugged at my shirt again, and as it always happened, I didn’t refuse Katy anything. I slipped off my shoes and climbed into bed behind her using my body as a safety cocoon. My arms wrapped around her middle, and she twisted her fingers around them, holding on tightly. Our bodies lay side by side, our shapes molded into one another, and nothing had ever felt more right in the world.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a few more minutes of tears when it sounded as if she was finally relaxed. “I didn’t mean to lay this on you. My grandmother wasn’t your biggest fan,” she said with almost a chuckle before another round of tears came.
What Katy didn’t understand was that she could lie in my bed and cry all day. I would always be there when she needed me. For her I’d make the Earth stop spinning.
I laughed sadly at her comment and squeezed her tighter. “That’s an understatement. Don’t you think?”
Ruth hated the Kensington family since my grandfather dumped her after their summer fling. Katy didn’t know parts of the story, and I never felt the need to throw them in her face or give her the truth. Maybe it was my fault for the way Katy treated me because I’d done nothing to fix the narrative she had about my family in her mind. I wanted her to learn to love me. The man I became, not my family name. Correcting her never felt important at the time.
Katy believed one thing about her grandmother, and forcing the truth upon her seemed like I would ruin her grandmother’s name. If Ruth never told Katy the truth, it wasn’t my place.
It’s possible that was the beginning of my errors. But I refused to regret it because somehow Katy and I still found ourselves together. Normally. In one fashion or another.
I had tons of stories over the years about how my father regretted the way my grandfather treated Ruth and did his best to help the Kadish family. The biggest story was how the Kensington family came to own Katy’s home.
The tourism economy took a hit that season and deep-sea fishermen felt it the hardest. I never remembered the details until my father told the story again when I asked him years later. The company Katy’s grandfather worked for closed up shop before the end of the fishing season and he hadn’t found work on another boat.
