by Marci Bolden
She’d just put the kettle on the stove and turned the flame to high when Mary came into the kitchen. Mary leaned against the doorjamb with a dramatic sigh and shook her head slowly.
“Something on your mind, Mary?” Carol asked. She didn’t have to ask, really. Mary would have told her all about her concerns even if Carol hadn’t asked.
“This is too much.”
She focused on getting two mugs from the cabinet, intentionally avoiding picking Tobias’s favorite Cardinals mug. “It hasn’t been easy.”
“Carol—”
“Mary.” Turning, she faced the woman. “He’s dying. Katie’s father is dying. Despite all the problems in our past, he is her father, and he has no one else in this world.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“His. Believe me, he knows it.” She returned her attention to adding honey and tea bags to the mugs. “You and Tobias have been pushing me for years to make peace with him.”
“Not like this.” Crossing the kitchen, she stopped next to her. “You’re torturing yourself.”
“No.”
“Yes. You think I didn’t hear it in your voice? You think I can’t see it in your eyes? You’re putting yourself through hell. And for what? A man who let your baby girl—”
“Don’t.” She closed her eyes, knowing she’d unintentionally snapped. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bark, but… Yes, this has been tough and, yes, I am exhausted. But you were right. Tobias was right. Even John was right. It’s time to face Katie’s death.” Carrying the mugs to the stove, she waited for the telltale whistle from the kettle.
Mary joined her. “There is a difference between grieving and punishing yourself. That man should be in a hospital.”
“He knows that. He doesn’t want—”
“To hell with what he wants. I’m talking about you. You’ve seen enough death in your life. You shouldn’t have to be there for his. It isn’t right that he’s asking you to do this. It hasn’t even been a year since you lost your husband, Carol.”
“I don’t want to fight about this. Please.” She scoffed. “If I wanted a fight, we would have visited my mother.”
Mary brushed her hand over Carol’s hair. “We’re not fighting, baby. I’m worried about you. With damn good reason.”
The kettle whistled, giving Carol a reason to ignore Mary’s comment. She filled the cups and carried them to the table. Sinking into a chair, she dipped the tea bag a few times before dropping the tab to let the leaves steep. “It’s my fault, too,” she whispered. Swallowing hard, she lifted her gaze to Mary. “Katie’s death. It’s my fault, too.”
Mary narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together. “Don’t you let that man screw with your mind.”
“I knew he was a drunk. I pretended he could control it. That he could somehow be responsible when he needed to be.”
“Is this what he’s been telling you?”
“Mary, I left my six-year-old daughter alone with an alcoholic, knowing that he couldn’t stay sober long enough for me to get home to her. I knew that he started drinking the moment he put her to bed. Every night. I knew this, and I still left her with him.” She blinked, stopping her tears before they could fall. “All this hatred and anger I’ve been clinging to, it’s not only at John.”
Mary shook her head hard. For the last twenty-one years, whenever John came up—which wasn’t often—Carol had been more than happy to tell her mother-in-law how horrible the man had been.
Carol’s lips quivered. “I should have left him. I could have left him. I chose to stay. I chose to trust him with my daughter. That was my choice. My mistake. One that cost Katie her life.”
Mary gripped Carol’s hands. “You are no more to blame for that girl’s death than you are for Tobias’s. Do you hear me?”
“But it’s the truth. Mary…”
“Stop this nonsense,” Mary nearly yelled. “Right now.” Pointing her finger to the ceiling, indicating the second floor, she clenched her jaw tight. “Is this what he’s doing to you? Making you believe you could have saved Katie? Twisting your guilt? Because I will kick that boy’s ass. I don’t care if he’s got both feet in the grave.”
Carol didn’t mean to giggle, but the sound slipped out before she could stop it. “I love you. God, how I love you. But he doesn’t blame me. He accepts the role he played. I realized this on my own. We were both to blame. He was irresponsible in his drinking, and I was irresponsible in letting him keep her. Everything between us was a fight toward the end, and I didn’t want the fight. I didn’t want the inconvenience of forcing him into rehab, so I screamed and yelled about everything else and ignored that he had a real problem. My denial killed Katie as much as his alcoholism.”
Mary sat back, clenching her jaw and shaking her head. “Don’t you carry this guilt for the next twenty-four years of your life. You’ve held on to this pain long enough.”
“I’m realizing that, too. I hate to say this, but I don’t think I could have reached this point if I hadn’t lost Tobias. Losing him—” She cleared her throat when her voice broke. “He always stopped me from hitting bottom with Katie, but I bottomed out emotionally when I lost him. I shut down.”
“I know you did.”
“If John hadn’t shown up, I would have spent the rest of my life on autopilot—work a lot, eat a little, sleep even less. Rinse and repeat. Facing this has been like falling into a pit of broken glass, but all this is necessary. I have to process the grief I’ve bottled up. Painful as it is.” She dipped her tea bag again. “He still owns the house where she died. He never moved.”
“Don’t you go back there,” Mary warned with a stern whisper. “Don’t you do that to yourself.”
“I told him I wouldn’t. Damned if that place isn’t calling out to me, though.” She focused on squeezing the excess tea from the bag and setting it aside on a napkin. “I never told you but, I…I went to where Tobias was hit.”
“Carol,” she whispered in a tone of disbelief.
“I stood there staring at the marks the police had put on the pavement. A line where the impact happened. One where the truck stopped. Another where he landed. I could see it playing out in my mind. I got so angry, Mary. All this rage boiled up and erupted. I got the tire iron out of my car and started beating it against the asphalt, screaming like a madwoman.”
Mary gasped and lifted her hand to her lips. “You didn’t.”
“The cops showed up and pulled their guns on me.”
“A rich white girl like you?”
Carol laughed quietly. “Yeah. Imagine that.” Her amusement faded. She still had a hard time believing that what she was about to share was the truth. It was. “They held me in the psych ward for evaluation for forty-eight hours.”
Mary’s face sagged as she finally seemed to understand the seriousness of her confession. “You never told me this.”
“I didn’t want you to worry. The counselor convinced the judge to drop the charges if I did three months of grief counseling. It didn’t help.” Her voice cracked again, and she covered her face.
As she had at Tobias’s funeral, Mary wrapped her arms around her and hugged her close as she sobbed.
Finally Carol leaned back. “I’m okay.”
“You haven’t been okay since he died, baby.”
“I’m working through it.”
“You’re working through it? Is that what all this is? What you’re doing is opening every single wound you’ve ever had and hoping you don’t bleed to death. Self-inflicted torture.”
“Not quite that drastic.”
“Mm-hmm.” Easing back in her chair, Mary pursed her lips together and lifted her brows. “You’re going to go to that house, aren’t you?”
Carol considered the question that had been whispering in the back of her mind for nearly two weeks. “I don’t want to. I think I have to. I don’t know how else to let the rest of this anger go.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No.”<
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“You need help taking care of John anyway.”
Taking Mary’s hands, Carol squeezed them tight. “Thank you. I mean it. Thank you, but no. She was my daughter. Our daughter. We’ve got to do this as her parents.”
Mary sank back. The frown on her face spoke volumes about how unhappy she was at Carol’s decision, but she didn’t continue to argue. “You come back here on your way home. I need to see with my own eyes that you’re okay.”
“I will.”
“Tobias would not approve of this.”
“Actually, I think he would have. If it was the catalyst to healing, I think he would have.”
Carol hadn’t been to Tobias’s grave since the day she and his family watched his headstone carefully set in place six months prior. Still, she knew exactly where to walk. She felt as if he were pulling her to him until she stopped in front of the monument with Denman stamped in large letters across the stone. Under their last name, Tobias James had been carved in smaller letters on the left, Carol Elizabeth on the right. Below Tobias’s name were the dates of his birth and death. Beneath the intertwined wedding bands that separated their names was their wedding date, July 2, 1999.
She had never considered her name before, but looking at Carol instead of Caroline struck her. She’d always felt that Caroline died with Katie. Now it seemed that, to some extent, Carol had died with Tobias.
John might have insisted she was strong, but she knew better. She’d grown up hiding from her parents, avoiding any kind of spotlight to keep their harsh judgments from her ears. Then she grew into the Caroline John wanted. The mommy Katie needed. When that was lost, she morphed into Carol—the serious, ambitious wife to serious, ambitious Tobias.
Here she was, a fifty-one-year-old woman whose only identity was as a childless mother and husbandless wife.
Easing to her knees, she placed a bouquet of white and blue delphiniums and purple salvias against the headstone and traced his name with her fingertips. The flowers were the same as he’d grown in their garden that had brought him so much pride.
“Hey, you,” she whispered. “It’s been a crazy year, huh?”
Sitting the rest of the way down, she crossed her legs and inhaled until she couldn’t hold any more air. Her exhale sounded loud to her ears, and she glanced around to make sure she hadn’t disturbed anyone. Sounds always seemed amplified in cemeteries. She was glad they hadn’t put Katie in one. She would have hated the quiet. Katie was never quiet.
Even as an infant she’d babble to herself constantly. She never could tolerate silence. John had been right about leaving her on a shelf for twenty-four years. That hadn’t been right. That wouldn’t have been what Katie would have wanted. She should have been front and center in the living space. Her urn should have been on display for all to see the way Katie had always drawn people to her.
She had a natural charisma she’d gotten from John. She was a people person. Not the introvert Carol had always been. No. Katie never should have been left sitting on a shelf. Carol was changing that; she was honoring Katie the right way now. That was all she could do. She guessed by finally facing her grief like he’d wanted her to, she was honoring Tobias, too.
Running her fingers over his name again, Carol replayed the year in her mind. Losing him, breaking down, turning her grief inward and burying herself in her work. And John. She never would have thought he’d show up in her life after all these years.
They certainly had come a long way in the last two weeks. Further than she would have ever thought possible.
“I guess you know about all that. You probably had a hand in it, didn’t you? Jerk.” She smiled. “You got tired of telling me to reach out to him, so you brought him to me. Not nice, Tobias. Not nice at all.”
She swallowed and exhaled harshly to keep from crying. “We’ve been taking Katie around the country, leaving her in all those places she wanted to see, and I thought… She would have loved you, Tobias. She would have absolutely adored you, and I know you loved her even though you never met her. She’d want to be here with you, too.” Reaching into her pocket, Carol pulled out the little container holding Katie’s ashes and held it tight. “You should have her here with you.”
After sprinkling Katie’s remains in the grass at the base of the headstone, she put the flowers over them to prevent them from blowing away. “I love you guys.” She kissed her fingertips, then put them to his name before pushing herself up and walking away.
When she got back to the house, John was eating brunch with Mary and Elijah. Despite Mary’s clear resentment of his intrusion into Carol’s grief process, she was being as kind to him as she would be to anyone sitting at her table.
He looked up, grinning through the smear of barbeque sauce on his face. “I’m trying to convince her to adopt me. My mom never cooked this good.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Carol said. “Frannie’s apple pie was pretty memorable.”
John’s smile widened. “It was the best.”
“Sit down. Let me fix you a plate,” Mary ordered.
Carol looked at her watch. “It’s barely ten in the morning. I’m not up for ribs.”
Elijah stopped chewing. “Good thing Tobias never heard you say that.”
“He would have divorced me.”
Mary kissed the top of Carol’s head. “That boy loved you more than anything. But, yes, he probably would have.” They laughed as Mary slid a plate of fresh-cut fruit and a cup of coffee in front of Carol. “I know my girl.”
“Thanks.”
“John says you’re getting back on the road today?” The concern on Elijah’s face was there for Carol to see.
“Yeah. Next stop Dayton.” She didn’t even try to sound upbeat as she said it. Dread had been crushing in around her heart for days. With the trip to Ohio imminent, she feared her heart would shatter under the pressure.
“I can go with you,” he offered.
She lifted her face to him, holding his stare. Mary had put him up to that. He wouldn’t have offered otherwise. Not that Elijah wouldn’t be there without hesitation if Carol ever needed him, but he had a job and was already taking the morning off to be sitting there.
“You’ve done enough already,” she assured him.
“I have vacation.”
“That I’m sure you’d rather spend with your family.”
“You’re my family,” he said unwaveringly.
“I know that. I meant Lara and the girls.” Reaching across the table, Carol waited until he took her hand. She squeezed his tight. “I’m fine. I’ve got this.”
“I want you to stop on your way home,” Mary said from behind her. “That’s not an option, young lady. I want you to stay for a few days. None of this passing-through business. You understand?”
Carol nodded. “Got it.”
Elijah gently tugged her hand, demanding her attention. “I can be there in six hours. One phone call, and I’ll drop everything.”
“I will call if I need you.”
He released her hand. “Tobias would be pissed if he knew you were doing this alone.”
She chuckled. “He’d be pissed that you’re eating his share of ribs.”
Lighter chatter filled the rest of the meal. Carol and John gave a brief rundown of all the places they’d seen in the last two weeks, talking as if it’d been a vacation rather than a memorial trip for their daughter. After the dishes were cleaned up and all Carol’s and John’s belongings were tucked into the RV, Elijah helped John toward the door, one measured step at a time.
“You staying with him until the end?” Mary asked.
Putting a top on the travel mug she’d filled with coffee, Carol shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen when we get to Dayton. Part of me wants to kick him out at the city limit and run as fast as I can, another part of me wants to finish this thing the right way.”
“What’s the right way?”
Facing Mary, she said, “Honestly? I have no idea. I gu
ess I’ll know when I get there. Thank you for letting us stay. I know it wasn’t easy with John’s health being what it is.”
“That was nothing. You”—she put her hand to Carol’s cheek—“are everything, and I’ll be here to do whatever you need me to do to help you.”
Carol hugged her tight. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”
“Don’t you let this thing pull you under. Elijah and I will be there in a heartbeat if you need us.”
“I know.” Exhaling, she looked out at the RV. “We’re stopping at the Arch and then getting on the road. We should be in Dayton by dinnertime.”
“Let me know you’re okay.”
“I will. I love you.”
“I love you, Carol. I’ll see you soon.”
Carol’s next stop was a big hug from her brother-in-law. He lifted her up and held her like he did his girls. They always squealed and protested, but Carol let the feel of his embrace fill her. She would never admit to anyone how much she needed a soul-squishing hug, but she did. Since Tobias wasn’t there to give her one, she’d accept Elijah’s and let it heal her a bit.
“Love you, sis,” he said with one more squeeze.
“Love you.” When her feet were on the grass, she looked up and smiled. “Kiss the girls for me.”
“Will do. You get through this and come home and let us take care of you, okay?”
“Yup. Mary already gave me my marching orders.”
He held her gaze. The determination in his eyes was reminiscent of Tobias. “I meant what I said. I’ll drop everything and come running if you need me.”
“I know.”
“Get outta here before the crowd beats you to the Arch.”
She accepted his kiss on the cheek, then climbed into the driver’s seat. “All right. One more stop. Are you ready?” she asked her passenger.
John looked out at the sunny sky. “Ready as I’ll ever be.” He seemed content to sit in silence as she drove the familiar route. She was content with his silence as well. Her emotions had been rubbed raw over the last two weeks. The quiet didn’t last, though.