When the sun goes down, I’m ready to call it a day. I turn to Verna and drop a few hints.
“It’s been a long day,” I say. “I’m ready to fall into bed.”
A rowdy burst of laughter erupts from the kitchen.
Verna chuckles. “Oh, listen to those boys out there. I’m glad they’re having a good time.”
A good time. Sure. Let’s party all night instead of remembering the man who was just lowered into the ground.
Zack, still dressed in his navy blazer and gray dress slacks, sits forward, rests his elbows on his knees, and weaves his fingers together, squeezing them tight. A muscle twitches at his jaw, and he gives me a look.
I know exactly what he’s thinking—that this is a blatant show of disrespect for his father on the day of his funeral.
Winston, who is lying on the floor next to Zack, sits up and stares at me as if he can read my mind. His mouth falls open, and he begins to pant.
I nod at my son, and we share an unspoken communication. Then I turn to Verna. “I think it’s probably time to say good night.”
She blinks a few times. “Oh. Yes. I see.” Setting her china teacup on the saucer with a noisy clink, she rises to her feet.
It’s clear that I’ve offended her, but I don’t care because Lester has been offending the entire household all afternoon with his heavy drinking and disrespect for the solemnity of the occasion. Not once has he mentioned Alan or expressed any grief or words of condolence. I don’t understand why he even came. Did he think this would be a rip-roaring good time?
From the kitchen, Lester shouts the f-word in a string of angry complaints about another sports team. His deep, booming profanity causes a jolt in my body. Carla glances uneasily at her girls, who snuggle close to her on the sofa. Her youngest daughter buries her face in Carla’s lap.
Zack exhales sharply. “That’s it. Party’s over.” He stands up and leaves the room. My heart races, and I leap to my feet to follow him.
Winston follows too.
“Hey, Gramps,” Zack says. “I think it’s time we call it a night. We’re all pretty tired.”
“What do you mean, tired?” Lester shouts back at him. “The party’s just getting started, boy. Go back to the living room with the ladies. Sip some tea and talk about . . .” He waves his hand dismissively through the air, wiggling his thick, stubby fingers. “Frilly things.”
After everything we’ve all been through over the past few days, my patience is stretched to the limit, and Lester’s cruel words directed at my son spark a mother’s fury in me. I move fully into the kitchen to stand beside Zack. “Lester. It’s been a hard day. The party’s over.”
Winston senses my anger and takes a stance between Lester and me, his front legs set wide apart, like a fierce guardian.
“What . . . ? Are you going to sic your crippled dog on me?” Lester asks.
“If I have to,” I reply, feeling my cheeks burn. “Please, just go. Zack’s right. We’re all beat.”
He glares at me for a few tense seconds, and I’m aware of Braden pushing away from the counter, removing his hands from his pockets while Bruce just stands there, watching in silence.
“Abbie’s right,” Braden says. “We should call it a night. What time is your flight tomorrow?” he asks Lester, in an obvious effort to calm rising tempers by changing the subject. I pray it will work, because I swear I’m about to lose it.
“We ain’t flying out tomorrow,” Lester replies. He drains the whiskey from his glass in a single gulp and slams it onto the countertop. “We fly on Thursday. But we won’t be staying in this waster of a town. We’ll be checking out first thing in the morning and going back to the casino, because we know when we’re not welcome.”
I’m fighting hard to stay calm and maintain my cool, but I feel my blood pressure rising and all my muscles tightening.
Lester staggers heavily toward me. Winston blocks him and begins to bark. I grab hold of Winston’s collar to restrain him and move out of the way so that Lester can leave the kitchen and get the hell out of my house, but as he passes, he bodychecks Zack into the wall and says, “You’re a little wuss. Just like your father.”
A blaze of fury explodes in my blood, and all I see is red.
“Hey!” I shout, shoving Lester hard in return so he falls backward into the refrigerator. Braden moves quickly to help Zack regain his balance and get between Lester and me, and I wonder if I’m nuts to get into a physical scuffle with a man twice my size.
By now, Winston is barking madly, and it’s chaos in the kitchen, but I don’t care. I can’t rein in my emotions anymore. The floodgates break open, and every last sour bit of my bile toward this man comes pouring out in a torrent of rage.
“How dare you speak to my son like that! You should be ashamed of yourself! And now that Alan’s gone, I’ll say what he always thought but was too polite to say to your face: you were a terrible father, and he couldn’t stand to be around you. That’s why he moved across the country—to get away from you. You’re a mean, despicable bully, and I want you out of my house right now. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
Lester says nothing. He simply stares at me in shock, then storms out of the kitchen to the foyer. “Come on, Verna. We’re leaving. Get your coat.”
She scrambles from the sofa while my mother watches all of this with her mouth agape.
Carla’s daughters begin to cry. She hugs them close.
No one says a word while Lester, Verna, and Bruce pull on their coats and walk out the door. As soon as they’re gone, I rush forward, slam the door behind them, and lock it.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to Zack, turning quickly. “I can’t believe that just happened. I totally lost it.”
I realize my hands are shaking.
“You did great,” Zack says.
“He’s always been like that,” I try to explain. “Mean and crude. He’s a monster, and he likes to hurt people because he thinks so little of himself. Your dad always said so. He needs to belittle others to build himself up.”
“I know,” Zack says. “And I’m not a wuss. Neither was Dad.”
“Of course you’re not. Your grandfather’s a jerk, and we’re never going to see him again. I’m so sorry I invited him here. I was stupid, thinking he’d be a nicer person today, just this once. I wanted to give him a chance, but he’s still as rotten to the core as he ever was.”
Zack shakes his head in disbelief. “I don’t blame Dad for leaving home when he did. And if I ever see Lester again . . .” He gives me a dark look. “Let’s just hope I don’t.”
All I can do is nod my head and pull him into my embrace.
I’m not normally a vengeful person, but in that moment, I wish terrible things on my father-in-law. If this had been his funeral today, I would hope that he’d be rotting in hell tonight and for the rest of eternity.
That night, it’s not easy to relax and go to sleep. I toss and turn for hours, keeping Winston awake too, because he’s curled up at the foot of my bed.
I spend quite a bit of time thinking about our altercation with Lester and all the unspeakable things he said. How was it possible that Alan turned out to be such a good father with a man like that as a role model for parenthood? How did Alan rise above it?
I roll onto my side and stare at the curtains over the window, thinking about how much I’m going to miss Alan’s tenderness and how loving he was as a husband—the complete opposite of Lester. When I was pregnant with Zack, I suffered terrible morning sickness, but bless his sweet heart . . . Alan got out of bed at dawn each day to bring me crackers to eat before I rose.
I remember once when I was sick, he stood outside the bathroom door, knocking gently and asking if I was okay and if I needed anything. Eventually he came in, picked me up off the bathroom floor, and carried me back to bed. He set me down, pulled the covers up to my shoulders, kissed me on the forehead, and called one of my colleagues to get him to cover for me in the OR that day.
&nb
sp; Months later, my difficult pregnancy came to a head when Alan was forced to watch helplessly as I fell unconscious in the delivery room and nearly bled to death in front of his eyes. I suppose he wasn’t accustomed to feeling helpless in situations like that, but this was different. I was his wife, and he wasn’t permitted into the OR when they rushed me away. He waited hours while the doctors fought to save my life, and it was a close call. I was very lucky.
I remember waking up in the recovery room. He was there at my side, weeping.
“I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you,” he said.
“You won’t lose me.”
“You don’t know that, Abbie. Anything can happen. I was so scared when they took you away.”
I promised him that day that I would never leave him, and he held on to me desperately.
The memory causes my eyes to fill with tears, and I cry softly in the darkness. Winston lifts his head, moves closer, and licks the salty teardrops from my cheeks. It tickles, and I can’t help but laugh at the sensation. I stroke his neck, and he settles back down at the foot of the bed.
As I recover myself, my thoughts of Alan merge into another lane. Soon, I’m thinking about the accident, and I find myself going over every word of my telephone conversation with Paula Sheridan in the hospital. I think about her hasty departure from the funeral home before anyone else arrived, and how she stood on the hilltop at the cemetery, watching Alan’s burial from a distance.
My stomach does a series of flips and cartwheels because I hate being in the dark. I need to understand what’s been going on.
Tossing the covers aside, I rise from bed and pad downstairs to grab my purse from the bench in the foyer. While Winston watches me from the top of the stairs, I rifle through the contents, finally locating Alan’s cell phone at the bottom. I try to switch it on, but the battery’s dead, so I carry it upstairs and plug it into the wall with the cord I’ve been using to charge my own phone.
It’s torture to wait for his phone to power up, so I climb onto the bed with my back against the pillows, hugging my knees to my chest, tapping the pad of my thumb against my thigh, and feeling a twinge of guilt over what I’m about to do—snoop through his phone contacts and messages when he’s not here to explain himself. Winston jumps up as well and waits patiently beside me with his chin on his front paws, the big plastic cone like a clown collar around his neck.
At last I hear the familiar chime from Alan’s phone. I pick it up and search through his contacts, but Paula’s name isn’t listed anywhere, and there are no emails under her name either. All I have is the number she called from when I was at the hospital. I look it up, and it’s not the number for Handy Hardware, but that doesn’t tell me much. She may have been using her own phone to make calls to customers. I check the call history, and there are no other calls from that number, except for one earlier in the day. If there was ever any other communication between them, Alan deleted everything.
Suddenly I feel paranoid and ridiculous. Get a grip, Abbie. Why would Alan be deleting texts and emails from the owner of the hardware store? Because you actually think there was something going on between them? Seriously?
It’s nearly four in the morning, and I know there will be no answers tonight, but I can’t go on like this. I need to understand why Paula attended Alan’s funeral. If she has some secret connection to him, she might be the one person who knows why he was drinking that night and driving in the opposite direction from where he was supposed to be going. I take a few deep breaths, then begin to type a text message to her from Alan’s phone.
Hi Paula. This is Abbie MacIntyre. I noticed you at the funeral home the other night and again at the cemetery today. Could we get together for a coffee and talk?
I press “Send,” then slide back under the covers, hug the pillow against my cheek, and wait for morning.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Alan’s phone chimes at 7:00 a.m.
Winston lifts his head, stands up on the bed, and wags his tail. I wonder if he associates the distinctive notification tone with Alan and hopes that he’s coming home.
Still groggy and bleary-eyed from sleep—because I haven’t gotten much of it over the past few nights—I reach clumsily for the phone and swipe the screen.
To my relief, a text has come in, and it’s from Paula.
I immediately tap the little yellow-and-white icon.
Hi, Abbie. I’m so sorry for your loss. I know it must be difficult, but I don’t think I can be of much help. The best thing you can do right now is take time to grieve. I wish you all the best.
I shake my head in disbelief. “I beg your pardon?”
I can’t help but feel indignant because Paula’s text reads like the biggest brush-off of the century.
I glance at Winston, whose tongue is hanging out while he pants. I think he’s expecting me to tell him that Daddy will be home at any minute. A lump forms in my throat.
“I’m sorry. He’s not coming home today.”
Winston lies down again, and I sense his melancholy. I try not to sink into an even deeper pit of despair.
Returning my attention to Paula’s text, I decide that I simply can’t let it go. I begin to type a reply.
Hi again. Believe me, I am grieving, but I also need to understand the details around my husband’s death. Could we please get together for coffee this morning?
Moments pass, slow as cold molasses. Eventually, I force myself to set the phone on the bedside table and scratch behind Winston’s ears. Otherwise I’ll go mad.
It’s a challenge to get my fingers under the plastic cone, but Winston seems especially grateful for the attention. He bows his head and nuzzles my hand, demanding a more aggressive scratch, like Alan used to give him.
I try my best, but I know it’s not the same. It’ll never be the same.
The phone chimes. I scramble to reach for it.
I’m sorry, Abbie. I really don’t think there’s anything I can do for you. I knew your husband from the store, and I felt an affinity because I remember you from high school, but I don’t know anything more than that. Who knows why things happen the way they do? Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason. Again, my deepest condolences. Please take care of yourself. And the next time we bump into each other, I hope it’s under better circumstances.
I finish reading and feel a surge of anger from deep in my core because all my instincts are telling me that she’s hiding something. I toss the phone onto the bed, then sit forward and scratch behind Winston’s ears again until my temper cools.
“Maybe I’m just having a hard time accepting this,” I say to Winston. “Or maybe the accident knocked my brain out of whack.”
I realize that I never returned for a follow-up checkup with Dr. Sanders, and that’s something I definitely need to do.
I set up an appointment to see Dr. Sanders that morning. He asks me all the usual questions to assess a head injury, examines the abrasion on my scalp, and concludes that I’m doing fine, all things considered. He asks how I’ve been feeling overall. I confess that I’ve been excessively fatigued at times and that I find it difficult to stay awake but I can’t get a good night’s sleep either.
He says that’s to be expected, given what I’ve been through. He advises me to get as much rest as I need and not to feel guilty about taking a short nap in the afternoon if that helps.
I thank him, leave the hospital, and return to my mother’s car, where I get into the driver’s seat and grip the steering wheel with both hands. I stare straight ahead like a robot, barely blinking, because my cuts and bruises may be healing, but I’m a widow now—a widow who can’t escape the feeling that her husband may have been keeping secrets.
A sickening knot of dread forms in my belly as I contemplate this new reality, full of doubts about our relationship. And it’s not just that. He’s gone now. From this day forward, there will be nothing but an empty pillow beside me when I wake in the mornings. Alan won’t be around to book family
vacations for us or fix the internet when the Wi-Fi kicks me off. I’m a complete numbskull when it comes to technology. He was always there to take care of those things and so many others.
And what about growing old? I’d always imagined we’d take care of each other when the aging process began and the inevitable health problems descended upon us—like hearing loss and not being able to see the tiny print on the pill bottles in the cupboard. Knowing us, we would have joked about it and made fun of each other. Just like my mom, we would never have surrendered our sense of humor.
But now, I’ll have to read the pill bottles myself and always keep a magnifying glass handy. There will be no one to make fun of me and make me laugh when I’m eighty and can’t find my teeth.
Suddenly I burst into tears, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve had complete privacy to sob openly, without constraint, where no one can hear me. The flood is torrential—a massive tsunami of grief and rage. I scream and cry and pound the steering wheel over and over.
Why, Alan? Why were you on the road that night, and what in the world were you up to?
Five minutes later, I’m driving to the hardware store because I’ve made up my mind to talk to Paula. I can’t begin to move forward until I do, and I need for her to understand that.
I drive all the way across town, thinking nonstop about what I’ll say to her when I arrive. My blood is fired with adrenaline because this time I’m determined not to take no for an answer. I’m going to demand that she explain why she snuck into the funeral home before the wake began and why she was skulking around the cemetery during the burial.
When I reach the store, I pull into the parking lot, find a spot, and shut off the engine.
A Curve in the Road Page 9