I can only tend to my own and Heathcliff’s.
I glance down at him making silly faces back and forth with Ian. His six-year-old brain can’t wrap his mind around the finality of it all. His world is Batman, LEGO, and dairy-free ice cream bars. There’s no room for a world where his dad doesn’t come home at the end of every workday or make the world’s best quiches on weekend mornings.
After the funeral, I put Heathcliff to bed and sit alone in my backyard staring at fireflies lighting up amid my overgrown grass, and I realize I don’t know what to do. I have no idea how to grieve, how to mourn, and mostly—how to live without Philip.
Desperate for some widow guidance, I pull up my phone’s Google Images. I stare at an elderly Queen Victoria, cheeks saggy and pale as bread pudding. When Albert died, she made widowhood fucking performance art. She set the bar high for all widows to come.
If I were a Victorian widow, I’d wear black crinoline petticoats, dresses, and gloves. I’d look like a gothic wedding cake topper. I’d tie crepe sashes around vases and doorknobs, signifying that my house would be in mourning with me. Althoughghoulish, I’d wear remnants of Philip around my neck—hair in a brooch or locket. At the funeral home, I’d clipped a lock of Philip’s sandy blond hair and put it in a plastic Ziploc baggy. Now I’ll place the lock lovingly in a piece of jewelry. If I were a Victorian, I’d not “move on” quickly. I’d respectably wear my black. I’d never attend wild parties or show too much cleavage, and I’d most certainly keep men at arm’s length.
Hopefully, I can pull it off properly. I won’t be wearing crinoline or petticoats, tying sashes around every doorknob in the house. But I’ll be gesturing to it all—proper grief stationery, black clothes, keepsake jewelry.
In the wake of Mirabel’s text, I pack up my lackluster lunch and realize I don’t have the energy to keep office hours or attend another meeting. I pull out my stationery and pen a note.
Dear Patrick, please give my regards to Admin as I will be absent from the Strategic Growth Committee meeting this afternoon.
Sincerely, Lizzie
I leave the letter with Sandra. “Thank you, Dr. Wells.” But she barely looks up from the Fox News segment where a blowhard yells about feminists. Patrick and I tolerate it all because she makes to-die-for Christmas shortbread cookies and organizes semester schedules like nobody’s business.
As I drive back home from campus, I try to think through the widow brain fog. I’ll need to figure out how best to talk to Mirabel about that night. Henry sent me a kind text reminder earlier today about helping me with my legal paperwork. Important, as now I know anything can happen at any time, so Ineed to tie up loose ends. Oh, and the jet-black locket necklace I ordered from the antique jewelry store in Charleston should have been delivered and left on my porch. I hope I can figure out how to fit Philip’s lock of hair in it.
I approach my front door (Philip painted it red five years ago because I thought storybook houses always had red front doors). I see the small jewelry package. There’s also a lavender orchid, stem straight, blooms budding out like little hearts, a note attached:Thinking of you—Dad.
Fifteen Years Earlier
“Sorry, we don’t take credit card, only cash.”
I stare longingly at the overpriced cinnamon powder iced latte, my reward for turning in my monster-length research paper for the Brontë seminar.
Anddrat. The barista is Garrett. I failed him for copying shit from Wikipedia in my class last semester. He smiles smugly while I rifle through my worn faux-leather satchel for loose change.
“I’ll get it.”
Just behind me a guy about my age—good-looking, tanned, with blue eyes and thick sandy hair—pulls six bills from his wallet. Wikipedia Garrett reluctantly hands over the iced latte.
“Thanks,” I mutter, cheeks burning. “Really.”
I walk away with the cold drink, not wanting to look at the other ten people in line behind me. I pause and take a long sip through the straw.
“Hey...”
I jump, turn around, and it’s the cute guy who paid for my coffee. He smiles warmly. He has nice teeth and a small dimple on his lower chin.
“Aren’t you going to get a coffee?” I ask.
“Well, I sort of used my last change to buy yours.”
“Oh...”
“Philip,” he says, putting out his hand.
“Lizzie,” I reply, shaking his hand like we’re colleagues.
I’m not sure where this is going. He’s cute and I’m flattered. But I don’t date much. It’s not that I’munattractive.But my idea of a fun Friday night is sipping Malbec and readingMiddlemarch.Guys like this guy don’t usually flirt/buy coffees for book nerds like me. I’ve only had one boyfriend in grad school: Wes Harker. We dated last semester as he finished up his PhD thesis on Lord Byron. Unfortunately, he was a Byron wannabe. While seeing me, he slept with my thesis advisor and three fellow students in our Romantic Poets class—Jenna, Dana, and Scott. (Who knew academia was so scandalous?) I’m ashamed that I still dated him until we went with friends on a quick trip to Haworth, England, and I walked in on him having sex on a nineteenth-century icebox with Samantha. Who does that to an antique? He had to go. Seeing him in the act was the last straw. He broke my heart, and I spent Christmas vacation crying in my childhood bedroom in Indiana. I’d bawled my eyes out in my frilly canopy bed just under the shelf displaying my large show-choir trophy and rows of spelling bee ribbons.
“Ummm... I have class soon,” I say stupidly.
I glance down and notice his worn loafers and similarly worn bag. Definitely a student. But he’s wearing a semiprofessional button-down shirt, so likely a law student. Word on the street is that they’re just as poor as we humanities grad students, but they pretentiously try to dress like lawyers.
