“Probably not as much as I love you.” I giggle.
* * *
The phone ringingwoke me with a start. It’s the landline. I gather my robe around me and yawn my way downstairs.
I’m interrupted by a knock on the door. “Geez.” What the hell could be the emergency? I open the door, and the Fire Chief and Grady’s dad stand there, hats off.
“Mrs. Brooks…Shelby,”
“Yes,” I blink once, but there’s a tugging in my chest and belly, and I don’t want to hear another word. I think that if they remain silent, nothing can change.
The phone continues to shrill in the background, and my ears feel blocked.
“Sorry to wake you,” Grady’s father tells me.
“Ma’am,” the Fire Chief says, and I don’t remember his fucking name.
“It’s Shelby,” I correct him through gritted teeth.
“We regret to inform you…”
I think that a person dies a couple of times before they are actually buried because this was the first time I died. It was like my own heartbeat stilled for some time. I can’t hear anything else the man is saying. I know those words; I have been well versed in protocol when a firefighter dies.
I listen to the landline and the scanner and focus on the flashing lights behind them. Anything to distract me from the words I know will change my life as I know it.
I shut the door while he’s speaking, and I sit on the couch, pull a blanket over me, and turn on the news. There’s a fire at the warehouse, the reporter rambles, and then a picture of Drew and Grady come up on the screen. They’re smiling. They’re fine. They’re alive. Everyone is wrong. The words that flash at the bottom of the screen,one dead, one injured, they’re lies. Drew would never leave me; he would never leave his son.
* * *
The funeral is a lavish affair,the kind that will put a royal wedding to shame. I wonder how I got here, from kissing Drew in the kitchen to the knock on the door to lying on the couch. It’s an ugly day, and gray clouds above threaten rain. They taunt me. It’s funeral weather.
My grandmother died many years ago, my parents and their new families could not make it today. All I have are the friends standing with me, looking down into a hole in the ground where the remains of my husband will be placed. I am not sure I feel anything, to be honest. People touch my hand and my arm, but my skin is numb like it is after surgery.
I have this small portion of skin on my stomach, numb to the touch since I had my appendix out. I’d pinch it to prove to Drew I wasn’t lying, and he’d squeeze it too.
I let out a laugh at that. People look at me sympathetically.The mad widow. The poor, poor girl.
The Malone’s have been great to me, but they still have their son, he’s in hospital with third-degree burns, but he is breathing at least. I can’t help but wonder why it wasn’t the other way around, Drew recovering in hospital and Grady in the ground. It is an awful, wicked thought, but it is as solid as the ground I stand upon.
I hold Brody’s little hand in mine. He looks adorable in that suit. He doesn’t understand much, just that his daddy is in heaven now and that he won’t be able to see him again, but he’ll feel his presence all around him. I wonder why we feed children these lies. I haven’tfeltDrew anywhere. I lay in bed, hoping he’d move a curtain, flicker a light, do something. He didn’t. He is gone, wherever the dead go to die.
Later that day, the mourners thankfully leave, and it’s just Brody and me. The Malone’s are in the kitchen or the living room. They won’t leave; one of them will stay to watch over poor Shelby and her broken heart. I wrap myself around my son’s small body in his single bed as tears slip from my eyes onto his pillow. He snores a little, like his dad. I close my eyes and drift off, hoping that this will all be a dream when I wake again.
PRESENT
It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t. No matter how many times I went to bed and woke up hoping, it was all true. Drew was gone, and I had to pick up the pieces.
I did. It took some time; people say I bounced back pretty fast. I didn’t have much of a choice. I wasn't rich enough to mourn forever.
The numbness turned to disbelief. Then there was the rage and blame phase I am not so proud of. I may have boxed his clothing and thought about burning it all. But my common sense kicked in, and I hauled it back upstairs and into his cupboard.
I have died before, so losing Ember, a relationship that’s barely started, can never be compared to that. But fuck, does it hurt.
It hurts that I let myself fall for a man I barely knew.
It hurts a whole lot.
Chapter 21
