What if I lose contact with Parker? What if circumstances change and Maggie moves her away?Maggie and Fraser agreed that neither would take jobs in other cities until Parker was at least eighteen, even though both parents’ professional skills were so eminently transferable. But now Maggie is free.What legal rights will I have? Any?
I take another sip, rack my brain, and think back to the custody battles we used to handle at the firm. Had I known I’d need this information in the future, after I’d fallen for, almost married, and lost the client I was flirting with over penguins, perhaps I’d have paid more attention.
Draining the glass alarmingly quickly, I pull on pyjamas, brush past the wedding dress I can’t look at on a hanger in the doorway, and pad downstairs to face the others, head spinning. My friends are crowded around the kitchen bench in a worried huddle, having some sort of emergency congress in hushed tones. They stop talking when I appear in the doorway, empty glass in hand.
Clair flicks on the kettle.
I glance at the wine bottle, and April, reading my mind, twists the screw top and splashes liquid liberally into the glass, as if placating me this way has been medically ordered.
Not enough grapes exist to make the gallons of wine required to anaesthetise this crisis. We migrate to the living room and Clair, already in all black, with matching long black hair and a red streak, plonks the bottle on the coffee table while we let the situation simmer in stunned silence.
‘Right. We’re going to help you through every step of this,’ April declares, pushing up her sleeves, ready to start work on my calamity, reiterating the catchphrase they laid out in the hospital foyer. Rach nods but can’t seem to trust herself to speak.
‘This cataclysm will be conquered by your friendship circle plus tea and chocolate and sauvignon blanc,’ Clair says, as if it is remotely possible to scale it using any of these items.
‘I can’t just drink this away,’ I argue, weakly, taking another sip, as Rach places a large glass of water in front of me. ‘I don’t think that’s how it works.’ Iwishit were. It would be so much easier if I could just be sloshed for the foreseeable … if I could let a torrent of alcohol carry me through this, surfing the pain right through to the end, wherever I wash up. I’ve only ever drunk out ofwant. Notneed. ‘I should stop here, before I end up in rehab …’
‘Don’t be so dramatic, Auds! You’ve had two glasses. Not two bottles!’ Jess says.
I feel like I couldeasilypolish off two bottles. The two glasses, mixed with trauma and grief, appear to have set off some new chemical reaction in my brain.
Surely it’s okay to numb this agony just for one night? Tomorrow, I will attack grief with exercise and early nights and mindfulness and sufficient hydration. Maybe I’ll do this so well, I’ll be the poster girl for healthy grieving.
I have to be.
Or I suspect losing Fraser is going to kill me.
It’s probably an hour and a half later when I realise, in horror, that Rachael told Maggie I would call Fraser’s family. It would have been a helpful promise to have remembered before the shock really hit and we ran out of wine and April switched us to Baileys. I should have accepted Maggie’s offer to do it. They love her.
I am in no state to arrive on their doorstep, so I call his parents’ landline. I don’t know anyone else who still has one.In any case, it rings out several times before I quit. Relieved. I can face them tomorrow.
‘I don’t want to do this,’ I mumble. My friends think I’m talking about doing my life without Fraser, so there’s a fresh and enthusiastic round ofYou won’t be alone, we’ll be beside you, Audrey. But really it’s that I’m texting Josh.
Can you come over? It’s impotent.
The message whooshes off. ‘Fuck!I wrote “impotent”!’ I say, through blurred vision.
‘Who’s impotent?’ April inquires, pouring more liquid into her glass.
‘Josh.’
‘Josh isimpotent?’ Jess repeats, heartily. ‘That explains a lot—’
‘No, it’s autocorrect.God!’
I-m-p-o-r-t-a-n-t.
He’s seen the message. No response. I can’t just text straight out that his brother died. But he’s not going to reply unless I drop some sort of attention-grabbing bombshell:
It’s about Fraser.
Still nothing.
The wedding is off.
‘You know, if Josh hadn’t done what he did, you wouldn’t have been on that Zoom and missed those calls, and you’d have arrived at the school before Fraser and he would still be alive, so really it’s all Josh’s fault,’ Clair rambles—an observation I’m sure she’ll regret voicing aloud in the morning.
In my intoxicated state, I don’t want to start piecing together whose fault this is, particularly as somewhere in the spinning inside my brain is an awful thought that Clair’s logic could equally apply to me, somehow.If I’d fixed this years ago …
