by Nella Tyler
“You’re doing a pretty good job for not knowing,” he said, and I smiled at the compliment.
“You’re the one doing most of the hard work. If not for you and the team, this shop would’ve closed shortly after BJ died.”
He didn’t argue the point, because we both knew it was true. I’d learned a lot, but the real heroes of this feel-good story were the mechanics. Still, I knew they respected me for how I’d poured myself into this business, always arriving early and staying late to learn as much as I could.
“I went to school to be a teacher. That’s what I wanted for my life. It’s what I still want, if I’m being honest.” I sat back in the chair that used to belong to my husband and stared hard at my head mechanic. I’d inherited so many strange things from BJ, the most important of them this shop that he’d loved so much and the loyal men working in it that I now counted as friends. “I feel like I owe it to BJ to keep his dream alive, but I also feel like I owe it to him to do what makes me happy.”
Jackson nodded. He was more of a listener than a talker, and I appreciated that. He was only in his mid-30s, but that silence made him seem very wise.
“I’ve been thinking about asking Brian Sr. if he wants to buy the shop.” Jackson’s dark eyes widened, but he didn’t open his mouth to interrupt. “I can’t teach and run this place. It’s a full-time job. But I also don’t want to put it in the hands of strangers.”
He rubbed a hand over the dark stubble on his chin and cheeks as he thought about what I’d said.
“Teaching is my dream. It’s all I wanted to do with my life from the time I was a little girl.”
“I can appreciate that,” Jackson said in his low, rumbling voice. “Will you at least give me a heads up if you decide you want to sell?”
I nodded. “Of course. I wouldn’t take a step like that without letting the team know and listening to their feedback.”
He nodded and thanked me before leaving my office and closing the door behind him.
I sighed, deflating in my chair as the air left me. Was it right to sell the shop? It felt like whatever way I chose, it wouldn’t be the correct one. There were no handbooks for how to correctly act like the grieving widow. I spent so much of my time second-guessing myself and holding my actions up to some imaginary scale of how I should be comporting myself in light of losing my husband and inheriting his business, the standards I set for myself so high, I’d never be able to live up to them. I loved BJ so much, but living in the house he built with his father and working in the business he started from the ground up was beginning to suffocate me. I wasn’t happy at home. I wasn’t happy at work. Something had to change, and not just a little, but drastically. Maybe I needed to talk to Brian Sr. about all of this to see what he thought. He often played the role of the much-needed voice of reason when I’d succeeded in working myself into a panicked frenzy.
I went home at the end of the workday, exhausted, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight with all the anxious thoughts in my head. I needed to do something to feel productive and like I had a handle on my life.
I walked through the house, just testing out the idea of how it would feel to leave this place that I’d shared with my husband. The more I looked around, the more certain I felt about what the next step needed to be, and that it had to happen tonight before I lost my nerve.
I went out to the garage and got several boxes and reusable shopping bags that I took inside and dropped onto the floor in the middle of the living room. I picked up a box and went into the bedroom. I looked around, breathing heavily as my heart thundered in my chest, not from the exertion, but from what I was about to do. I set the box on the end of my bed and then started to fill it with the things that had belonged to BJ. In all these months, I’d kept his clothes hanging in the closet next to mine, his toiletries in the bathroom, as though he would return one day to use them, and all the rest of his things sitting just as he’d left them in the house, cleaning and dusting around the shoes he’d left in the corner of the living room and the personalized mug I’d given him left on the counter next to the coffee machine. The entire house looked like BJ had only stepped out of it this morning and would be back any minute now. But he was never coming back, and leaving all this stuff in the house like this was only causing me physical and emotional pain. Getting rid of it was a step towards moving on, and it was something I had to do before I went on that date with Banks.
I started to pick up items around the room and put them in the box. A book on the nightstand. Car magazines. His shoes and clothes. His slippers. Pictures he’d had in his room from when he was a kid. All the odds and ends that he’d carried with him, all those things he’d cared about. There were a few items that I wanted to keep, but it couldn’t be everything. That wasn’t healthy. I understood that now.
By the time I was finished going through every room and closet in the house, I was sobbing, the tears streaming down my face, but I knew I’d done the right thing. The house seemed so empty without BJ’s things everywhere, but I still had the pictures of us, the memories we’d built together. The house was still his, too. I’d moved in with him six months after we started dating, but he’d been here for years. I felt like an outsider here without him. I didn’t know what to do about that.
Still crying, I moved the boxes and bags out to the garage that I never used, not wanting to tempt myself by leaving the stuff inside where I could easily rifle through it and talk myself into keeping more than I already had. I closed the door to the garage behind me and locked it, then went to the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on my face several times, washing away the tears and cooling my swollen eyes. I’d done the right thing, I reminded myself. This was healthy. This was what moving on felt like—painful but necessary.
I drank a glass of water to calm myself down even further. After so much crying, I felt slightly dehydrated. Now that BJ’s stuff was out of the house, I needed to figure out what to do with it. Removing it from the garage felt like such a daunting task. That would mean it was gone forever. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. At least not on my own.
I picked up the phone and called Brian Sr. It just felt like the right thing to do and I was busy following my gut today. It had never steered me wrong before, and I couldn’t trust my heart or my head recently, as they kept contradicting each other.
“Hi, Maggie,” he said, and I felt calmer just hearing his voice. I wondered if he’d ever know how much his being there had gotten me through the last year.
“I packed up all of BJ’s stuff,” I said, admitting it the way a guilty child might cop to some petty offense before throwing herself on the mercy of her parents. “I just had to. I don’t know what came over me today, but it was too hard having it around. Now I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Did you keep the things that mattered to you?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then I think you should donate the rest.”
I burst into tears again at the thought of strangers going through BJ’s things.
“Honey, I know this is hard,” Brian crooned as I struggled to regain control of myself. “There are some things I’d like to keep, too. What if I came over this weekend, picked up the boxes, and donated them for you? Would that help?”
I wiped the tears from my face, sniffling and swallowing. “I don’t think I can do it,” I said in a wavering voice.
“Then I’ll do it for you.”
I surrendered to the tears as Brian listened in supportive silence. This was right, I reminded myself. Moving on always hurt, but if I didn’t do it, I’d never be happy again.
As soon as I calmed down enough to be coherent, Brian Sr. and I made plans for him to come retrieve the boxes and bags I’d packed and take them away.
Banks
Friday
I left work at lunch, driving back to Danbury so I could swing by the barber shop for a quick haircut. Then I went home to shower and change into something more casual than a
three-piece suit, but nicer than jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. I settled on one of the cashmere sweaters Mom had bought for me while she was picking out clothes for Dad—this one dark green, which I was told did interesting things to my eyes—and a pair of khaki pants. I gave myself a once-over in the mirror after putting on some cologne. I liked what I saw and hoped Maggie would feel the same way. I gave Alice her dinner and a few hearty scratches behind the ears, then put on my leather jacket and went down to my car.
On the drive over to Maggie’s, I went over the night, wanting to make sure I’d planned everything perfectly. I’d wanted to take her into Manhattan—we could’ve seen a Broadway show and eaten at a place where the chef had earned two Michelin stars—but she told me in no uncertain terms that she hadn’t been into the city since BJ died and didn’t have any plans to do so in the near future. So, I found an alternative plan that I hoped would be just as impressive.
I pulled into Maggie’s driveway and went up to the door. I knocked and she answered a few seconds later, giggling and red-faced, wearing a sweater dress that complimented and enhanced every single one of her curves, along with tights and boots.
“I happened to be checking the window when you knocked,” she explained when I lifted my eyebrows. “That’s why I answered right away.”
“Ready to go?” I asked.
She nodded, taking a deep breath. She went back to grab her coat and purse and we walked down to the car together.
“Where are we going?” she asked after we were buckled in and backing out of her driveway.
“It’s a surprise.”
She tensed in her chair, enough for me to notice out of the corner of my eye.
“Don’t worry. It’s not the city. Those are your only clues.”
She laughed as she relaxed in her seat again. We chatted naturally as we drove out of Danbury. The drive to Hartford where I’d made all our plans would take a little over an hour. The time passed as easily as the conversation. I found myself relaxing a little more as the minutes went by. This may have counted as our first official date, but Maggie and I were by no means strangers. We’d known each other for years. We were together tonight under somewhat unusual circumstances, given our history and how we’d met, but it felt like less of a problem now that we were actually together.
We passed into the city and Maggie turned to me in the dark, her smile radiant.
“What’s in Hartford?”
“You’ll see,” I said, and pressed my lips together to keep from smiling myself.
“I never knew you were so annoying, Banks,” she replied.
I had to laugh at that. “There are all sorts of things you don’t know about me.”
We pulled into the theater, which I’d been to on several occasions with my parents over the years. The local troupe put on a number of impressive shows every year, but their specialty was their winter production, which was always Shakespeare. Last year, it had been King Lear. This year, it was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was my favorite Shakespearean play.
“We’re seeing a show,” Maggie said, sounding pleased. She was staring out of the window as we drove to the front entrance for valet parking.
“I hope you like Shakespeare,” I replied.
“Who doesn’t?”
I got out of the car as one of the valets opened the door for Maggie and helped her out onto the pavement. I gave him my key and a crisp $50 bill in exchange for a numbered slip of paper. Maggie came around the car, and we linked arms before walking into the theater in a steady stream of people.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Maggie whispered, as we walked past the poster displayed behind the glass at the small box office. It wasn’t a big theater, but it held a few hundred people and the productions were always top-notch.
I produced our tickets for the uniformed kid standing just inside the door and we crossed to the carpeted staircase where we’d be able to ascend to our seats in the balcony. We had a beautiful view of the stage from here, I was pleased to see.
“Surprise,” I said, smiling at Maggie, who was already beaming.
“How did you know this was my favorite Shakespearean play?” she asked.
I took that as a sign of wonderful things to come, because I hadn’t known. I only picked it because I loved it so much. Another star aligning that seemed to say what we were doing was right.
“I’ll never tell,” was all I said.
Shortly after, the lights went down in the theater, and the show began.
Halfway through the show, Maggie reached for my hand. The troupe was amazing and the sets were gorgeously crafted, but holding her hand was the high point of the night for me, only made better when I slipped my hand out from hers and dropped an arm around her shoulders. She snuggled into me, her eyes on the show and a light smile on her face that stayed fixed in place from the start of the show until the end. I found myself watching her more than I was watching the action on the stage.
After it ended, we went by the coat check, outfitted ourselves for the cold weather, and left the theater. We managed to be one of the first in line at the valet station, and climbed back into the Mustang as soon as it arrived.
“Are you in the mood to eat?” I asked, looking over at her. I didn’t wait for her answer to start driving away. “I know a place.”
“Yes, I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since this morning.”
I drove over to the Bistro, a quiet little restaurant that I’d been to a handful of times. They weren’t particularly busy, but I’d called ahead and made a reservation anyway. The hostess checked my name on her ledger and then seated us immediately. The atmosphere was relaxed and casual, with low light and expensive art on the walls. We sat at a table with a small candle flickering between us, grinning like teenagers.
“So what do you think of the night so far?” I asked her.
“It’s pretty damned magical,” she replied. “Good job.”
We ordered drinks—red wine for Maggie and a glass of iced tea for me, since I had to drive more than an hour to get us back to Danbury—and three of the appetizers, wanting to keep things light. She promised dessert once we got back to her place, if I was up for it.
The food arrived quickly, and we munched while we talked.
“Are you happy with your life, Banks?” she asked, seemingly out of nowhere, her eyes very dark as they surveyed my face. She’d seemed especially pensive tonight at times.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have a lot of things I’d like to accomplish, but I’m happy with where I am.”
She took a bite of the fried calamari we’d ordered, appearing deep in thought.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Not really. But I’m getting there.” She smiled at my stricken expression. “I’ve learned so much more about myself in the last year than I ever really wanted to know. Introspection can be crippling, but it’s necessary. I think I’m on the right track. That’s something, right?”
I smiled. “Yeah, that’s something.”
We finished our drinks and appetizers and left after paying our check. The night sky was clear and peppered with stars. It was freezing out, but beautiful. We climbed into the car and I started the engine to get the heat going.
“I wish it wasn’t dropping below 20 degrees every night or I’d suggest finding an open field to lie down in and do some stargazing. I used to do it all the time as a kid.”
“That would be nice,” Maggie said dreamily. “But let’s wait until the spring.”
We got back onto the highway that would take us home. We were only 20 minutes into the drive when Maggie lost the battle with consciousness, her head falling against the window as she slept. I knew she’d been having trouble getting enough sleep, so I didn’t wake her. I just turned the music on a low volume and let my thoughts about the Alfa Romeo and my impending trip to Italy keep me occupied while I drove.
Maggie woke as soon as I pulled into her driveway.
She giggled sleep
ily as she looked at me in the dark.
“Welcome home,” I whispered.
“Thank you for tonight,” she said, not sounding sleepy at all.
I leaned to kiss her on the cheek. She smelled sweet, like caramel or sugar. “It was my pleasure.”
Her eyes widened in the dark. “Don’t you want to come in?” I hesitated and she added, “Remember? For dessert?”
“Of course,” I said, and we stepped out of the warm car and into the freezing night air.
Maggie
The Same Friday
I left Banks seated on the couch while I went into the kitchen to start the electric kettle and cut a few of the brownies I’d made for the guys in the shop the other day. I’d fallen all the way off the wagon after the nonstop carb fest Thanksgiving had proven to be, and decided it was stupid to try to diet over the holidays anyway. I’d get back to my plan of losing a few pounds after the New Year.
I poured the boiling water into my china tea kettle, dousing the two teabags completely.
While that was steeping, I went to my bedroom and changed out of the tights and sweater dress I’d worn out and about, choosing instead a pair of flannel pajama pants and a long sleeved nightshirt to wear for the rest of the night. Sometimes a woman had to choose comfort over style. Banks had seen me wearing a lot worse and was still here.
I went back to the kitchen, poured our tea, and put both mugs along with a plate of the freshly-cut brownies onto a serving tray and brought them back out to where Banks was relaxing on the couch. I hadn’t boxed up our wedding canvas, but I had moved it to the dining room where I could cherish it without allowing it to take center stage in my life.
“The house looks different,” Banks said. His gray eyes stayed on my face for a moment before turning to the plate of brownies. He took one along with a napkin and didn’t waste any time taking a huge bite.