“Hi,” he says in a much softer voice.
“Hi,” I reply, repeating his words again.
Another long pause
“Listen, I’m sorry I haven’t–”
“I should have called sooner–”
We both start and stop abruptly, pausing again while we each wait for the other to keep going. When I realize it’s going to have to be me, I continue.
“I should have called sooner, but I didn’t know how and just…can you come over, please?”
“Everything okay?”
“If I say no, will you get here faster?”
He heaves a deep sigh, and I can vividly picture him pinching the bridge of his nose. I press my lips together, fighting the urge to laugh.
I haven’t laughed in weeks. It feels...wrong.
“No, Jack, nothing is wrong. Will you come anyway?”
Another long pause.
“You know I will. Of course I will. I’ll be there soon.”
“Thank you, Jack Robbit.”
“Don’t call me that.”
The line goes dead, and I finally let myself laugh out loud. It’s nice to have a conversation that feels normal, one where someone still treats me like Abby, B.W. (before widowhood),even just for a moment. And me, Jack, and Aaron were three peas in a pod before…well, before.
I haven’t seen Jack much since the funeral. I haven’t seen much of anyone, really.
I’m drowning. In grief, in sorrow, in anger, in the horrible reality that the world didn’t stop spinning when Aaron died. Losing my husband is horrendous enough on its own, but realizing that I still have to live the rest of my life after all of this? It’s unbearable.
I was slowly coming up for air again before finding out about Little One. Those two pink lines fast-tracked my rise out of the ocean of pain and loss I’d grown accustomed to. And once I broke that surface, isolating myself from the world, pretending it didn’t exist, felt even more suffocating than the grief.
I underestimated how exhausting it would be to re-enter the world. Small talk makes me want to scream–with peace and love, I don’t give a shit about your dentist appointment, or your third grader’s spelling bee, or some “article you read” that was almost certainly just a Facebook comment. But deeper conversations are their own unique kind of hell. My emotions are a fragile house of cards right now–one wrong comment at the wrong time is going to send me tumbling back to the ground.
Ellie and Griffin have been my saving grace. They’re supportive, and kind, and don’t push me. But they also don’t let me lock myself away. Ellie has made it her personal mission to make sure I see sunlight at least once a day, and Griffin moved the hammock from their backyard to mine so I can get fresh air without the fear of running into anyone.
David has also, surprisingly, been an angel. Maybe it’s from growing up with a horde of sisters, but for a thirty-year-old toddler, he’s been emotionally attentive in a way I didnotsee coming. He never forces conversation; he simply listens whenever I do decide I want to talk.
But anytime I think about the fifth member of our cohort, my stomach drops like a lead anchor. There’s been something about reaching out to Jack that has felt impossible. Maybe it’s because I can’t bullshit him–he knows me too well. Or the fact that when I lost my husband, he lost his best friend.
The guilt about that has been eating me alive. The three of us were best friends, and when one of us left, I cut Jack off from the other one as well. I didn’t do it consciously, but I also can’t stomach what it’s probably been doing to him.
And I miss my best friends so much it hurts. Both of them.
Or maybe I haven’t reached out because of everything that happened that awful, horrific, earth-shattering night.
Maybe it’s all three. And maybe I’m not ready to talk about it yet. Maybe neither of us is. All I know is that while I may not have a choice about Aaron’s absence, I do have a choice about Jack’s.
And I don’t want to choose it anymore.
Chapter 3
