by Emily Belden
to work and chances are, there will be new problems for you
to solve. Problems you get to check off the list and move on
from. I wake up tomorrow and that urn is still my problem and still not going anywhere.”
“I’ve offered a solution for rehoming the urn,” he reminds
me. “You’ve ignored it.”
“Buying a crypt at some fancy place doesn’t just make my
problems go away. You can’t just solve them on the spot for
me.”
“Hey, I didn’t buy it. And I said you didn’t have to go with
that, remember?”
“Then why did you even put a hold on it in the first place?”
“Because for some reason, you seem stalled with this whole
urn thing. You’re a strong person. The strongest I know. And
it pains me to see you this way—stuck. I was just trying to do
something—anything, really—to show you moving forward
is actually a possibility here. And I’m not just talking about
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helping you with things with the urn either. What about your
meeting with Warren? How’d that go?”
“My meeting with Warren? Holmgren? How do you know
about that?”
“Warren’s kid was a patient of mine before he moved their
entire family up to San Fran. I knew he was in tech and saw
on Facebook he was in town for the weekend for Hamilton, so I called in a last-minute favor and he did me a solid by calling your work and pretending to have just happened upon you in a
magazine. I thought he could help you with your app thing.”
“My goodness, why are you trying to do everything for me?
I didn’t grow up like you and Decker, okay? I’m not used to
things just getting handed to me and I don’t want to start
that now. If you talk to your buddy again, do us both a favor
and tell him he doesn’t have to take on this charity case, will you? And also, I’m calling bullshit. I don’t think you think I’m strong at all. In fact, you clearly think the exact opposite. That I’m just a weak little girl who had a bad thing happen to her
and now she needs things delivered to her on a silver platter.
I mean, really, what are you compensating for?”
Brian walks away into his bedroom and a minute later re-
turns with the urn. He sets it down on the coffee table.
“You know, I finally figured you out, Charlotte Rosen.
You just want to look at a computer screen—or a wall with
a bunch of sticky notes on it—and go with whatever it spits
out, even if that means rewriting history. Even if that means
ignoring actual reality.”
“I’m quite in touch with reality, thankyouverymuch.” I put
the urn in my Birkin. “How else would I have been able to take
my own husband off life support if I didn’t understand reality?”
“You’ve got to stop routing back to that day. Not every-
thing is about that decision you made five years ago. This sure as hell isn’t.” He gestures to my Post-It bracket.
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“This is about preserving Decker’s memory.”
“This is about manipulating information to fit the narrative you want to hear. What if Gemma was in love with me? What if Decker had a kid and chose not to tell you about it? Life is messy. Life is complicated. I want you to be free of these nu-merical, mathematical shackles you put on everything. Real
relationships and real-life situations have an actual arc to them and sometimes chips fall where they may.”
I assess the web of sticky notes I’ve slathered on his wall like an oil spill. I hate to admit it, but I think Brian was right to get real with me just now. Sure, this relationship map looks
like it’s about Gemma, but it’s really about me. It’s about the way that I’ve set up rules—so many of them for so long. I’ve
put stakes in the ground and roped off restricted areas every
which way regarding how to move on, with whom, when,
where, and why. And I’ve done an excellent job—especially
this last week—convincing myself it was never Brian and
could never be Brian.
I start to peel off the stickers one by one and Brian steps
softly into my peripheral.
“Hey, don’t worry about those right now. Let’s sit down,”
he says.
We make our way over to his signature comfy couch. If
every therapist I have ever seen had a couch like this, I prob-
ably would have kept a weekly appointment.
“You’re right,” I say. “This is dumb.”
“It’s not, Charlotte. You’re passionate about the truth and
that’s a good thing. More people should be like you. So don’t
apologize. In fact, I should be the one apologizing. I didn’t
mean to infer that you didn’t care about my patient. I know
you do,” he says. “And I’m sorry for the soapbox about the way
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have freeballed like that. I guess that’s the problem with going with your gut sometimes, you know?”
I’m looking into his brown eyes, a little sleep crust in the
corner of them. All I can think in this moment is how good
it feels to sit next to someone so comfortable with taking ac-
countability and apologizing.
That and how he is my 95 percent match.
Last night, in the midst of all my research, I ran him through
my algorithm. Not to trace him back to Gemma, but to see
where the two of us would land. That’s when I saw we would
make a near perfect couple. I don’t know if I can—or should—
ever do anything about that. Why? For starters, it feels like
we just got into a fight and we’re in that tiptoe peacemaking
phase. Secondly, he may not have yet stated his direct opin-
ion on the Decker-Gemma bombshell, but Brian sure made
it clear that he and Gemma had some type of a thing. And finally, Brian said it himself and I happen to agree: maybe I’d
be better off divorcing myself from numbers and percentages
for a while. Clearly, it’s gotten to me.
I look at him for a moment more and before he can look
away or say another word, I kiss him—this time on the lips,
this time on purpose.
A second or two passes and he springs back, blinking his
eyes hard like he’s waking up from a dream. A second or two
passes and he’s still speechless. The guy who has always known
what to say to me and when.
I grab the urn while he’s still sitting shocked on the sofa and let myself out. For as quickly as I made the decision, I flood
my own mind with doubt. That’s the problem with going
with your gut sometimes.
Back home, I lay in bed with Leno curled between my
legs. Casey isn’t home but she was. At least that’s what the
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note on the fridge that says “Sups annoyed with you. Need
to talk” tells me.
It’s the start of my second week off from The Influencer
&nb
sp; Firm and I feel no closer, no more at peace with things since
Decker’s urn came back. In moments like this, I dig for ther-
apy advice and beg for it to come to the surface. Right now,
the mantra that rises is, “Let it crumble.”
I’ve caused a defect in every relationship that could possibly
offer me support or solutions in this situation. With Casey, I
kept her at arm’s length on purpose. With my parents, I re-
fused to move home or even visit semifrequently. With Mon-
ica and Zareen, I was all business. And with Brian, I sent him
mixed messages followed by bolting the one time the two of
us needed to talk most. If relationships were binary things—1
or 0—I have always picked 0.
Like branches on a tree, I’ve snapped them all off one by
one. And now what’s left is a naked stump. I didn’t set out to
do this, and it is no one’s fault except my own.
I go to pull up the schedule for a grief group, but I get
stalled seeing that the internet browser on my phone is still
on the page I left off in my research from last night: the pic-
ture on Facebook of Brian dressed up as Superman for Hal-
loween with the adorable Clark Kent kid standing by his side.
I’ve seen this photo before. But right now, recognition hits
me like a crack of lightning. Brian isn’t the only person in this picture that I’ve seen before.
I enlarge the photo, expanding it to full-size on my screen,
and zoom in on the caption, which I’ve actually never read. It
says, Trick or treating with my best little buddy, Aiden.
This isn’t just some patient. This is Aiden. This is Gemma’s
son. And it’s also the same kid from Debbie’s pool party last
week. The one who charged into the house, like he knew his
way around the place, and requested a pool noodle.
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The revelation that Brian knows hits like a dodgeball hurled
straight to the stomach. He claimed he knew Gemma, but I
didn’t think he stil knew her. It takes away any appetite I may have had and replaces it with a sickening emptiness instead. I
look again at the photo. Now I know what Brian was com-
pensating for—and who he was covering for.
I screen shot the photo and get ready to fire the smoking
gun off to Brian. How could he not mention this? He saw me
struggling to piece this all together and this whole time he
knew? All this time and I was never worth the truth?
Let it crumble rises once again to the forefront of my thoughts and I set the phone down on my nightstand, taking a few deep
breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth. I’ve
finally figured out who the “they” were that Gemma referred
to. I thought it was just two people. Debbie and Kurt. But it
was Brian too.
I’m so mad, I begin to cry. Hysterically. I cry the way I’ve
wanted to cry since the urn came back, but was too afraid to
be heard. I don’t care anymore, though. I’m so mad, and even
more so because I’m not entirely sure at whom. The picture
confirms what I didn’t want to believe: people who I thought
were in my corner this whole time were working together to
keep a huge secret from me for years.
All because of Decker. Decker who had a kid and kept it
from me. This is his secret mess that others have been cleaning up and hiding from his wife. But are you even allowed to
be mad at someone who isn’t alive anymore?
I wipe my nose on my forearm and head over to my laptop.
The homepage of my algorithm is pulled up. The cursor is
blinking at me, taunting me. I’m only a few keystrokes away
from exporting the results of a “Decker-and-Charlotte-stats.
xls” report. A part of me is curious to know what percent
match we truly were.
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The thought of running a script I’m so familiar with against
a person who I was already in a relationship with has never
crossed my mind. Not until everything I knew about him
imploded before my very eyes. Of course I’ve worked with
the algorithm enough times that I can sit here and make a
fairly educated guess where the two of us would shake out,
but frankly, I could see it going both ways. We married each
other, therefore we could—and probably should—be a 100
percent match. Then again, Decker was a guy who got a girl
pregnant and never told anyone. But does it matter now any-
way? He’s already dead, it’s not like divorce is an option.
I look over at the urn just sitting across from me on my
nightstand. I thought I’d feel lighter having cracked the case, but instead I feel like I’m in the throes of some sort of weird emotional hangover. My husband’s ashes needing to be rehomed was complicated enough. But now, the urn’s return
has managed to unearth things I think a lot people thought
were done and dusted. And at this point, Brian and Debbie
have no idea that I. Know. Everything.
Perhaps I should circle back to confronting Brian, the au-
thor of the twenty-two—make that twenty-three—frantic text
messages sitting in my inbox, but after letting things crumble, I’ve decided I’ve got nothing to say to him right now.
So instead, I lean into the emotional wave I’m on and let it
take me somewhere I haven’t been in ages.
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21
“Hi. I’m Lucy,” says a Martha-Stewart-looking middle-aged
blonde woman who stands up from her chair
“Hi Lucy,” the room responds in unison.
I treat going to grief group like a visit to the gynecologist:
an uncomfortable hour wherein you know you are doing
something good for your health, so you just suck it up and
make a personal agreement to reward yourself with a giant
ice cream after—and not the fat-free frozen yogurt kind but
a double scoop of malted cookie dough from Salt & Straw. In a chocolate-dipped waffle cone.
The first available drop-in grief group being held this morn-
ing is in a meeting room in a Los Angeles Public Library
branch off Laurel Canyon Drive. I’ve never been to this exact
meeting, it’s women-only. Most of the attendees here appear
to be a bit older than me, but I’m used to that being the case.
I sit quietly, respectfully, and listen to Lucy’s story in preparation for any words of comfort to grab on to. The kind I so
desperately need right now.
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“I lost my husband of twenty-three years when he was killed
last November in a workplace explosion,” announces Lucy.
The room lets out a series of gasps and a few members start
to tear. They must be newbies. Sure it’s gnarly to picture, but a workplace explosion doesn’t shock me. It just tells me there’s another person in the room to whom I can tell what happened
to my husband and she won’t be horrified either.
“I saw
a therapist this week for my grief. My husband’s death
anniversary is next month and so summers are always really
tough for me. His death anniversary is even harder than our
wedding anniversary. Does anyone else tend to ride the death anniversary train like I do?”
Several people raise their hands. I raise mine, too. The
sound of the air-conditioning kicks on. The room needed a
little white noise.
“Anyhow, my therapist explained something about grief
last week in a way that really resonated with me. It’s amazing
how you can read every book on the subject, scroll through
every online forum, and keep coming to these groups, yet still
be able to learn something new about how to process our fa-
vorite emotion.”
A whir of low-volume laughs breaks up her somber intro-
duction.
“So I thought I’d share it with you all in case anyone else
might find what I learned helpful.”
Lucy pulls out a sheet of yellow paper from a legal pad with
the stages of grief written in a circle: anger, hurt, confusion, etc. It looks as if each of these words is a number on a clock.
“You’re probably all very familiar with each of these. For
years, I tried to work through them one at a time and con-
quer each individually.” Lucy taps her pen from one emotion
to the next, like it’s the ticking second hand.
“But that’s not how it works. It starts right here in the
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middle of it all, in what the therapist called No Man’s Land,
where you don’t really feel any of these. You just feel numb.”
She makes a dot in the middle of all the words and begins to
draw a circle that fans out like a spiral, bigger and bigger with each loop of her pen. “Then, it starts to get real.”
Her pen strikes through the middle of every word. She ex-
plains that grief is about bouncing around from emotion to
emotion with no real rhyme or reason. Some days, you’ll be
overcome with anger, others it will be more about the denial.
There’s no method to the madness.
“Grief isn’t like a storm you can track. You never know
what will trigger it or how severe it will be. For me, when I’m driving in my car and I’m all alone and in the quiet, BOOM. It
hits me there. And also, much like a tornado touching down,