“Twenty-eight inches.”
Good. This was good. There was prep work to do for the storm. I could spend today focusing on that instead of my diagnosis or the stricken look of heartbreak on Ella’s face when she’d left.
“I’m gonna eat real quick,” I told my parents. “And then, Dad, did you want to help me stack some more bags of pellets near the stove in the basement? After that, Mom, we could use your help to salt the porch steps and the walkway so they don’t freeze, then haul in some more wood for the fireplaces and check on the generator. We lose power up here a lot.”
Mom nodded in response.
“Sure thing,” Dad answered. He looked excited. This would be their first snowstorm since my rookie year in the USFL. They’d come out to watch me lose my first playoff game and had to reschedule their flight home after we’d been pummeled by heavy snow and winds the next day.
I went to the freezer and pulled it open. There was enough tupperware stacked inside of it to feed a football team.
“Try the lasagna,” Mom said from behind me. “Top shelf.”
I pulled it free and set it on the island. I’d lost weight. My muscle tone was deteriorating as my body cannibalized itself. I needed these calories, but since coming home from Boston, food held little appeal and tasted like ash on my tongue.
I heated the container up and tucked into the lasagna. Maybe it was the fact that Ella had made this and it was all that was left of her in my house, or maybe I was finally starting to come out of the depressive fugue I’d been in, but for the first time since my diagnosis, food tasted…well, not good, but like food again. There was the sharpness of the cheese, the tang of salt, the sweetness of the tomatoes, and the subtle bite of spices. I cleared my plate and then reheated a second serving. If I was going to be on my feet all day, I needed the fuel.
I turned to Dad when I was done. “You ready?”
“Let’s do this,” he said with a grin.
Chapter 25: Ella
Two weeks had passed since Ben and I…broke up? Was that the right term? Since we amicably split? Consciously uncoupled? Willingly diverged? Whatever the phrase was, I was not handling it well.
Business had slowed to a crawl. We’d been hit by one storm after another, deep winter digging its claws into us. It was so bad we made national news. A meme was circulating that showed a picture of a state plow on the highway. The snowbank next to it towered over the vehicle, an impenetrable wall of winter that looked like it could hold back an army of white walkers. Beneath it, some enterprising person had written,“Meanwhile, in Aroostook County…”
The storms left me cut off from my friends and family. The lack of daily human interaction, which I’d gotten used to since Ben had come into my life, only served to highlight how much I needed social engagement. And with nothing to distract me from my misery, I was having trouble just forcing myself out of bed.
Complicating matters was the fact that anytime the dogs did something cute, I wanted to send Ben pictures. When something came on TV that reminded me of a conversation we had, I wanted to call him. When my loneliness and heartache and worry were at their worst, Iwanted to drive to his house and beg him to let me in. The only thing that stopped me was his own need for time apart.
The one bright spot was Jacob’s coming home party. I cried when he walked through the door, at first out of relief to have him back, but then I had to excuse myself to him and Sophia’s upstairs bathroom, so no one worried when I broke down sobbing.
Jane came to find me several minutes later, knocking softly on the door until I finally let her in. She sat with me on the cold tile floor, our backs against the tub as we talked.
“He has CTE, doesn’t he?” she asked.
I didn’t hesitate to answer. I knew she would take the information to her grave. “The doctors think so. There’s this new test that lights up the tau proteins, and they found them in his brain.”
I didn’t have to explain tau proteins or PET scans to her, because she’d done so much research for her NYT article that the medical jargon surrounding brain injuries had become as familiar to her as it was to me.
“I’m so sorry, Ella,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Is that all you’re upset about?”
I shook my head. “We’re taking a break. He needs time to grieve and to start the recovery process. And I need time to think about whether or not I’m strong enough to be with someone with a chronic brain disease.”
Jane passed me her glass of wine. “You need this more than I do.”
“Thank you.” I took a big swig of it.
“You love him, don’t you?”
“I think so,” I answered, my voice small.
“You wouldn’t be this upset if you didn’t.”
