Page 3 of All The Broken Pieces: Vol. 1

Chapter 3

Zara died first. She passed away about a year before Zach. His twin. I met him because of her. A hint of a smile tugs at my lips but I force it down. Lock it away. She was my college roommate. My best friend. He was her devastatingly beautiful brother. Now they’re both ashes.

My throat has turned to chalk. I crack my knuckles and glance around the room. The students are perched on stools at slanted desks with their pencils and drawing pads. They murmur amongst themselves ignoring me, all except Eric who seems preoccupied with some teenage drama. The rest are engrossed in their art or secretly thumbing through their phone screens, thinking I don’t see. It’s the end of the year. If they turned everything in, I don’t ‘see’ a thing. And neither do they. I’m a widow. The childish rumors say I killed my husband on vacation and buried him at the bottom of the ocean.

I wish I never saw his body. But I did. That memory will haunt me until I take my last breath.

Facebook. Focus. I need to make the post before the bell rings. Before my peers wander in and notice my sweat and pallor has nothing to do with the weather. My finger hoovers over the mouse ready to click away from my feed, but those pictures…. I’m a junkie, wanting a hit—to see a picture of him. Just one more even though it’ll end with my heart in pieces and my cheeks covered in tears.

Regrets surges through me. I hate the way things ended with us. I feel like an angry ghost. Robbed of what could have been. We were on the brink of disaster, divorce imminent. Or we were on the precipice of something new. I’ll never know. That last fight was left unfinished. Unresolved.

It leaves me feeling agitated because I’m stuck walking a fence for the rest of my life. Was he going to leave me? I never thought we’d fall apart. No one did. It was the type of thing that started the size of a grain of sand. It got in there and grew, festered. Too many things unsaid and too many tears avoided. When we laughed, we laughed. But toward the end, when we fought, it was ugly. I didn’t recognize him anymore. At the time I blamed him, and still do—to some extent—but I wasn’t me anymore either. I became this placating version of me. Docile, whining, and filterless. I said everything I thought, good and bad. Most of it complaining. Yet, I linger here hoping to see an old picture of him because there are none at home. The past was erased, every photo of us destroyed. So, I perch on this stool, shoulders forward, wringing my fingers hoping for a glimpse of him. Like when we first met.

My stomach sinks and I straighten in my seat. I want to click away. I want to leave the page, but I can’t. Instead, I click on private message with a blue dot indicating that it’s new. When the screen loads, my face falls when I see who it’s from. That little blue dot is perched directly next to Zach’s face. It’s a message from him. And that blue dot means it’s unread.

The way my heart slams into my chest physically aches. This has happened before, the new PM with the blue dot. More than once. Both times it was a glitch. Cruel technological fails. The steel cage I built around my heart—the same cage that saved me and let my soul wither—cracks. In that split-second hope fills my body and my grief falls away. Forgotten. I slap the key, clicking the private message, only to realize it is old. The note was written before he died.

Let’s try to work things out. Me & you in the Caymans. Just us. No distractions. What do you say?

The steel cage around my heart fractures. The crevice deepens and I swear I can hear metal torquing. Eyes shining, I want to scream, but I swallow it and manage to keep that plastic smile on my face. I will not break. There is no one to piece me back together if I do…