Chapter One
Adam
The woman next to me in first class wore dark sunglasses, a Packers sweatshirt, leggings, and mismatched tennis shoes. The mismatched shoes, one white and one navy, should have been a warning that something was seriously wrong and definitely a clue to change my seat ASAP.
Her blond hair was askew in a way that seemed to indicate a bird had gotten stuck and flapped its wings hard on the exit. The first thing she did was reach over me, breaching my personal space, to flag down the flight attendant for a drink.
Was she high? On drugs? By the way she kept swiping at her eyes, she appeared to be seriously upset, but her Anne Hathaway à laPrincess Diariessunglasses obscured the full story.
The flight attendant brought her a Bloody Mary with a celery stick jutting out of the glass. She took a sip and choked, which made me turn quickly from the medical journal I was trying to read.
I was an ER doctor from a busy Chicago hospital, trained for emergencies. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t sitting next to one.
“Sorry,” she said, patting her chest until the spasm stopped and then sucking down the rest like she was pre-gaming for a frat party. “I don’t usually drink.”
Sure, you don’t, was what I thought, but I gave a polite smile and a quick nod and went back to my reading. Before I left, my mom had handed me a sack of food, which I was still holding, sort of like I was still in grade school even though I was thirty-five years old. Unfortunately, the bag she’d chosen featured Santa bending over to set a giant bow-tied present under a Christmas tree. And the sack wasbig. Did she think there was no food in Turks and Caicos?
Apparently, my aunts had been power cooking Mediterranean food this morning, and I could tell from a quick whiff or two that inside were homemade spinach pies, cheese pies, and also probably baklava. Their well-wishes for a nice trip. I shoved the bag under the seat in front of me.
“I’m glad you’re going,” my mother had said as she kissed me goodbye, “but I wish you weren’t going by yourself. Remember, no reading medical journals or listening to those educational podcasts, and don’t sleep with any strange women just because you’re lonely.” Final advice from a lifelong social worker on the brink of retirement.
“Thanks, Ma.” I’d kissed her on the cheek and taken the bag, even though it was embarrassingly large and also…the Santa. And did I mention that it was ninety degrees in mid-June?
I heard sucking sounds as my seatmate hit the bottom of her glass, which was suddenly being waved in front of me. “May I please have another?” she asked the flight attendant, who, in first class, was only an arm’s length away.
“This is my first time in first class,” the woman said, apparently to me. “How about you?”
I was afraid to make eye contact. I had my own stuff going on, and being functional over the past two years had taken every ounce of effort I could muster. “Yeah, me too,” I said without turning to face her.
This was adding up to trouble. And I was here specifically to avoid that. To have a peaceful, quiet week not working, the opposite of what I’d done almost constantly since my wife died two years ago.
Two years! How was that possible? It seemed like yesterday in some ways, yet in others, our entire relationship was all a dream. Much to my chagrin, I was forgetting—the sound of Liv’s voice, the way her hair used to fall forward, and she’d reach up to tuck it back behind her ear, the outlines of her precious face that I once knew so well. I felt like someone hanging off the edge of a cliff, clutching desperately at anything—rocks, branches, handfuls of dirt—anything not to forget.
“Why are you here?” my seatmate asked, the liquor clearly loosening her tongue.
“I—um, haven’t had a vacation for a while.” And I wanted the privacy and space. Which I clearly wasn’t going to get with her next to me.
“I signed us up for first class even though Tyler said it was a waste. But I told him that it was our honeymoon, so why not? I’m usually frugal, but I mean,honeymoon.Come on.”
Do not turn your head, my inner self warned.Do.Not.Turn.Your.Head.I made it a point not to get involved with women in general. Women on the edge were a hard no.
“I should’ve known from the way he was so predicable—no surprises, you know? Predictable isn’t good—it’s boring. And he was so careful about money.” She dropped her voice. “Did you know that I have my own Amazon Prime account, so he wouldn’tget on my case about buying too many pairs of underwear? ‘Do you really need all of those pens?’ he asked me once.” She smacked her head. “How could I have been sooooo stupid?”
If I hadn’t put two and two together before, I did now, even without seeing the big rhinestoneBridespelled out in scrolly letters on her bright white sweatshirt. Her hair was in some kind of fancy updo. Well, apparently it used to be, because half of it wasn’t, and there were a couple of random pearl pins holding that sad half up. Her earrings were dangling drop pearls—in our wedding pictures, Liv was wearing nearly identical ones.
I’d gone a whole fifteen minutes without thinking of her. I blew out a breath and tried to distract myself from the ever-present ache in my chest. While Liv used to accuse me of having a savior complex, I wasn’t about to swoop in and indulge it today. Because today would have been our five-year wedding anniversary.
Except she’d been gone for the last two. During the last few months of her life, she’d been obsessed with my getting to Turks and Caicos.
She’d visited there before we were married and once afterward with her friends. She made me promise to go on this anniversary. Even though we’d never been there together, and she knew she’d never make it back there herself.
I think she sensed what a train wreck I’d be and believed the trip would be good for me.
My best buds knew that I wasn’t going to handle this well, so they’d bought me this nonrefundable ticket and told me specifically not to come back until I got laid. I promised no such thing, but they practically forced me to go—even called me an Uber to make sure I didn’t back out.
I was about to Venmo them their ticket money back when something weird happened. I’d scrawled my Venmo password on a sticky note and stuck it somewhere—I know, dumb move—and was rummaging through my desk drawer when I found an old postcard. It was from the year before Liv died, from what turned out to be her final girls’ trip.
I don’t usually keep old things around, but I do of Liv’s. Photos, grocery lists in her handwriting, a bit of yarn she’d half-crocheted into a granny square. Little pieces of her I haven’t had the heart to let go of. The postcard was one of those things. The front showcased the aquamarine waters and the long stretch of pure white sand of Grace Bay Beach.
