I go ahead and call Dad back. It’s only five o’clock his time.
As soon as he answers, I hear rattling in the kitchen. A timer.
“Dad, are you still baking lasagnas?”
“I’m very close to getting it right.”
Lucy stretches on the bed, her body warm against my side.
A lump rises in my throat. Dad’s serial-baking lasagnas. I freaked out and ran from August’s apartment this afternoon. Is this what grief does to us? Does it just make us obsessive and crazy?
“Maybe you should get out a bit more. Ian says you’re giving Match.com a go. Any luck?”
“No. Ian set me up with Beverly—you know, the divorced painter who lives down our street.”
“Beverly Lamott? She’s pretty!”
“She can’t cook.”
“She’s a brilliant painter.”
“I don’t care about that.”
Silence.
“Well, I think about you a lot, Dad. I just know how lonely this can be.”
“It’s very lonely.” Then the fire alarm squeals, piercing my ear even through the phone.
“Sorry, Lizzie. But I have to go. This is the third time I’ve set it off.”
I tell him I love him and hang up, worried.
I stare into the rumpled bedcovers wondering if losing our soulmates weirdly doomed Dad and me. We had such unique love for our partners and now we’re broken and lost.
No. We have to come out on the other side.
Wehaveto.
I walk downstairs, where Ms. Fernsby sits at the kitchen island browsing through a magazine. She sips tea, gray hair wrapped up in curlers.
“Gosh... what time is it?”
“Ah, not that late, luv. Only 9:00.”
I groan, insisting that she stay seated as I make a cold roast beef sandwich and pour a glass of milk.
As I sit down across from her, she glances up, “Do you want to talk about it?”
I shake my head. “Not really. No, wait. I guess, in a way, I do.”
“Then go right ahead.” She takes another sip of her tea.
“Can love ruin us?”
She cocks her head.
“I mean, if we find love, like I had with Philip, and then we lose it, does that make us broken?”
