That riled her. She sat up in bed and frowned at him. He could see it clearly in the muted glow of all the electronics in his room. “Oh, I’m not good for you, huh?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Where would you be without me?”
“We’ll see.”
Her face registered shock. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
He stood up and rummaged around for his clothes. “Actually, Rox, I’m not kidding. We should have done this a long time ago.”
Her mouth dropped open.
His shorts on, he went to her pile of clothes on the other side of the bed and tossed them next to her. “There you go. Get dressed, I’m taking you home.”
She looked at the clothes, then back at him. “Are you serious?”
He nodded. “Yeah, Rox. As a heart attack.”
“Fuck”—she picked up the clothes—“you.” She frantically scrambled into them, steam practically pumping out of her ears as she did. “You are a huge fucking asshole.”
“I know.” And he did. In more ways than even she could ever count.
“Don’t expect me to take you back when you come crawling!”
“Roxy,” he said, his voice low and serious, “I’m not coming back.”
Despite her bold words, her face registered shock and devastation. She’d wanted, clearly, for him to panic at the idea of things being Actually Over. She didn’t expect him to really walk away, she’d never expected him to really walk away. They’d long ago set a firm precedent of her whining, him capitulating, and them limping on. Not forward, precisely, but at least marching in place, as opposed to turning left or right and moving forward.
Now he was turning left or right, he didn’t care which, to move forward.
“Jamie!” She was suddenly flooded with tears. The bold threats of three moments ago were gone and they were on to begging. “Please think about this!”
He shook his head resolutely. Kind of like a three-year-old who refused to eat broccoli. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
“But…” She didn’t have a follow-up.
Neither did he. It was obvious that so much was wrong that nothing could ever be right.
“You need to go,” he said. “I have to leave early and I need my sleep.”
“So that’s it? You’re just … done?” She was building up a steam of anger again.
“That’s it,” he confirmed.
She took three steps toward the door then turned back to him. “If I leave this house, I’m never, ever coming back.”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
Her face crumpled again, but this time he could see it was anger, not heartache. She was pretending to cry, but there were no tears.
“Goodbye, then, Jamie,” she announced. “It was … fun.”
He gave a single nod this time—an insult, he knew. “Goodbye.”
And she turned and left. He stayed absolutely still until, just a few seconds later, he heard the front door slam downstairs and then heard her car start outside. He’d forgotten she’d driven here, or he wouldn’t have offered to drive her home. That would have been a nightmare in and of itself, especially behind the wheel of a car.
When a couple of minutes had passed after she left, he finally moved. And, to his surprise, he felt a genuine freedom. He’d let go of a huge stress. There was no regret or second-guessing whatsoever. Just relief.
Nothing but relief.
It wasn’t much, he realized. He should have done it a long time ago, so he couldn’t claim this as any grand accomplishment that people should laud him for, but nevertheless, it was done. And he couldn’t see a circumstance under which Roxy would be willing to swallow her pride so much that she’d come back begging. All the times in the past, she had held the cards, usually because of emotional or circumstantial ransom, but now … nope.
He was done.
And it felt good.
Not great. Great was hopefully still in his future. He had a lot more things to do—and a lot more things to undo—but this was a start.
And he’d take it.
Chapter Thirteen
Willa
I woke with the sun in the morning and got dressed. It was a bitch without water, but I managed to be at least presentable. Enough to go to the big-box stores anyway. And McDonald’s.
I love McDonald’s breakfast. The sausage, egg, and cheese McGriddles are manna from heaven as far as I’m concerned. Ditto the greasy, crispy, un-diet-y hash browns. And the coffee is better than any I’ve ever made, which isn’t really saying much, since I am particularly ungifted at making coffee. At any rate, after using their bathroom, I got my usual, a large coffee with four creams. The hell with being skinny, I needed to stop being hungry. I was half convinced now that everything that had happened yesterday was the result of hunger. Plus McDonald’s always smells like vacation to me, so I considered it aromatherapy.
That was the closest I was going to get to therapy this week.
Home Depot was the first stop after that. There was something comforting about its big feel, the familiarity of the layout, and the smell. How is it that all Home Depots smell the same? I guess it’s the wood, paint, and steel. I like it, and I particularly liked it today after the night I’d had.
Today I felt sane. Or somewhat sane.
I picked up some neutral paints, moving boxes, and switch plates to replace a few that I’d noticed were cracked. What else did I need? Light bulbs were always going out, so I picked up some of those too, as well as some plants to spruce up the outside.
The idea of gardening made me groan. Maybe if Jamie came I could persuade him to do it. I hated working outside with the heat beating down on me. I could lie on the beach layered in oil and sweat my ass off in the middle of August with no problem, but working outside was a drag.
I dragged the heavy wagon of goods out to my car and loaded it all into the trunk. Next stop: Walmart. This was a task I never felt like doing, thanks to the crowds and long lines, but it was a necessary evil. I pulled into the parking lot and looked at the wading pools and sandboxes out front. A pang of melancholy pierced my heart. It hadn’t been so long ago I was picking those up for Jamie. One time we’d gotten a kiddie pool and it hadn’t fit in the car, so we’d put it on the car’s roof and both kept one hand out the window, holding on to it. That was a much harder task than we’d anticipated, even going an obnoxious thirty miles per hour in a fifty zone. Fortunately, it was only a few miles.
Those days were long gone now.
I took a bracing breath. There was no room for those thoughts, I reminded myself for the hundredth time. Besides, working would keep me busy, and that would keep my mind off of everything that had happened. Or that hadn’t happened. Hard to say at this point.
The store was crowded, as usual. I went straight to the pharmacy area and picked out toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap (which I’d totally forgotten), drinking water, and ibuprofen. Then on to the cleaning aisle, where I got an armload of different products for everything from cleaning the sinks and toilets to refurbishing the leather sofa. I’d been told by the Realtor that it was better to leave some furniture in the house so people could picture a life there, but to remove anything bulky and all personal items.
The question was, what was I going to do with all the personal items? I wasn’t sure I wanted them at home with me. Everything had a memory attached, and when you’re trying to move on, memories are not very helpful. Hence the moving boxes. I would box everything up, maybe keep one for things I wanted to save, and have Purple Heart pick up the rest.
Goodbye past, hello future.
Right.
I rolled my eyes at myself, knowing how damn successful I’d been at abandoning the past so far, but pressed on and went to the area that had trash bags. I’d need a lot of those. Thinking that should do it for now, I headed for the registers but a big square stand of beach souvenirs stopped me. Magnets with crabs, sandy beaches, lighthouses (there were no ligh
thouses in Ocean City), and quippy sayings like Son of a Beach and Sandyman at Work crowded the display. There were also candles with plastic seagulls glued to the sides and plaques with the footprints-in-the-sand story. It seemed to me that maybe it would be a good idea to make the house a little more beachy and a little less homey. The way it was now, it could have been the house in Potomac, or any suburb of D.C. That wasn’t the market for a beach house.
So I grabbed some candles, a few magnets, including one that had a road sign for Route 50 (the main way in from Potomac), and a hand soap bottle with 1950s “bathing beauties” on it for the downstairs bathroom.
Loaded with supplies that would last me awhile, I went slowly through the checkout, and back to my car. By the time I was finished putting everything in, the trunk was packed full and my energy was flagging. It had been a pain to shop, but now I had to go back and unpack all this stuff, take it into the house, and then use it.
I drove back at a leisurely pace, enjoying sitting down in the plush car seat as opposed to doing hard labor. But clouds were building in the distance and creeping slowly over the shore. It looked like rain. Time to face the music and get everything inside before the downpour.
* * *
I hauled everything in to the kitchen. Then stood back to assess. Where to start? Perhaps by hiring people to do everything for me? If only. A handyman and a maid would have come in very handy right now, but my budget didn’t allow for that, so I was on my own.
I had just unwrapped a sponge and picked up the all-purpose cleaner when my phone rang.
Thank God.
It was Kristin. “How’s it going today?”
What a relief it was to hear her voice. “If I told you,” I said, “you’d think I was crazy.”
“Girl, I already think you’re crazy.” She gave a good-natured laugh. “You’re not going to be changing my mind about that anytime soon.”
“What a relief.”
“Come on, tell me: What gives?”
“Okay.” I sat down at the kitchen table, surrounded by all my purchases. There was a lot of work to do, but it was worth taking a break for a moment and talking to my best friend. “I’ve just had … the strangest feeling in here sometimes.”
“That seems normal. I mean, given the circumstances.”
“No, I mean … beyond normal. I don’t just mean the occasional dark or sad thought. I get plenty of those too, but”—in for a penny, in for a pound—“I swear sometimes I feel like Ben’s here.”
“Well, of course!”
“No, I mean here.”
There was a long pause while I knew she calculated what I’d said, and while I calculated the wisdom of having admitted such a thing to a concerned friend who inevitably would worry about me and feel too far away to help. So I decided to negate it. “Wait, I don’t want to sound too wacky, I think it’s just because there is so much stuff of ours here, and so much of his that it feels very present. I guess it is very present.”
“Yes.” She sounded relieved. “Naturally. Nothing crazy about that! Boy, for a minute I thought you were suggesting it was something like—oh, forget it, I think I’m the one who’s crazy.”
Something like a ghost, she’d been about to say. But she stopped herself because she didn’t want to upset me with the idea of my house being haunted when my husband had died here, and because it sounded nuts.
I sighed. There was no way I could tell her the rest. She was so damn practical that she probably would find a way to have me sent away for a nice “rest” in order to recuperate.
“Do you have Dolly with you?”
“Always.”
“What about her? Did she … sense anything?”
I thought about Dolly’s strange behavior since we’d arrived. Had she sensed anything? It seemed like she’d done nothing but sense things. But that was something Kristin would have to see for herself. Me saying it would only seem like I was trying to back up my own story. “She’s been a little wonky too. But she’s mostly herself. Good old guard dog.” Though what could a dog—or anyone—do about a ghost?
“That’s good. She would totally react if something were off.”
“Right.”
It was a strange thing not to be able to tell my best friend what was really going on with me, but it would have been more upsetting for her to hear everything and worry about me from afar. And of course she’d worry. A week or more ago, if she’d said something to me about seeing dead people, I’d have been totally alarmed.
“I’ve got to run,” I lied. “The plumber’s here.”
“Call me later,” she said. “This afternoon.”
“Okay.”
“Promise.”
She was looking for a reason to not worry. “I promise. Look, don’t worry about me, everything’s fine here.”
“Be that as it may, I’m going to try to come down there this weekend. I’m staying with you, chicken, I got it all figured out.”
“That would be great.” I tried to temper my voice so she wouldn’t hear how desperate I was for the company. “I’ll put you straight to work.”
“Hey, I’m ready!”
“I’ve got to go,” I repeated, sadly. “Talk to you in a bit.”
Chapter Fourteen
Willa
After heaving a heavy sigh, I went to the Walmart/Home Depot haul and decided to put things where they belonged. Cleaning supplies under the sink, toiletries in the bathroom, magnets on the refrigerator (where, alone, they looked kind of pitiful, a sad attempt at cheer). It was when I took the paint into the family room that I saw him yet again.
No sense in drawing out the suspense: it was Ben. But still not the Ben I had last known. This time he looked to be in his late twenties. He was wearing a sweater I’d given him for Christmas. A rag wool sweater that I think he hated but I loved it and he wore it because I had given it to him. But, listen, if I didn’t give him warm clothes, he was the kind of guy who’d go out and shovel snow in shorts, so even though he didn’t love the sweater, I didn’t feel too bad about keeping him warm.
Dolly bristled and began to growl at him.
“Come here, buddy,” he was saying, seemingly without any awareness of the dog, and I knew right away that he was talking to Jamie. He’d always called him that, my buddy.
I could have sworn I heard the faintest echo of a child’s laugh, but I didn’t see anything except Ben, walking purposefully through the room with his eyes on something in front of him.
“Whoa, slow down, there, pardner.” He reached down and picked up what could have been a child—his motion was that of picking up a child, but there was nothing there. Nothing in his arms but air. And yet I knew, just from that, the size, the weight, like a bag of rice from Costco. The way it set on your hip, and the little hands, usually sticky, reaching for your face.
“You can’t run off like that,” he went on to the child that wasn’t there. “You know how your mom worries about everything.” He gave an affectionate tap to a nose that wasn’t there.
I knew the gesture; I’d seen him do it a thousand times. But still it gave me shivers.
Dolly was on full alert, ears perked, eyes fastened on the same thing I was seeing, and her hackles up. She didn’t move forward or away, just waited and watched with what looked like the same caution and skepticism I was feeling.
“Yeah?” Ben called suddenly, looking over his shoulder to the threshold between the family room and the kitchen. “Hell, yes, it smells amazing. You’re a culinary magician. The fryer is ready; I just need to get a bunch of peanut oil. Jamie and I can run out. Need anything?”
Thanksgiving, then. He was talking about Thanksgiving. He always liked to fry the turkey. It was the thing the men did, stood around a vat of molten oil, risking their lives and our house, in the name of having a big fried bird, which, if you ask me, wasn’t quite as good as a roasted one.
But they enjoyed it so much, I never said anything. It was no skin off my nose, as they say. As long as litt
le Jamie didn’t get too close to the danger, it was good for him to see his dad’s bonding time with his pals.
And to learn that men cooked.
“Sure,” Ben went on, his voice softening somewhat, and I realized that whomever he was talking to had moved closer.
I also realized he was talking to me. Old me. Or, rather, young me. It was confusing. A version of me that was apparently standing three yards away and I couldn’t see her. Not only could I now see dead people, but apparently I could only see dead people.
That would make for a very inconvenient superpower, constantly following the dead around, and knocking into the living. Sorry, I didn’t see you there, I was talking to my great-great-great-grandmother …
“Ben?” I said, wondering if there was some magic by which I could make him hear me now.
He laughed and looked very fondly at the kitchen entry. “You’re a pisser, you know that?” One of his favorite sayings.
I walked over to “me.” There was nothing there, of course, no change in temperature or pressure, but I did smell a whiff of the Lauren perfume I used to wear. They didn’t make it anymore, so there was no reasonable explanation for smelling it now, but I did.
Other than that, there was absolutely no sense of anyone there.
I kept my eyes on Ben and slowly made my way over toward him as he continued to talk to phantom me. It was an echo, I thought. A visual echo of a scene from long ago, but if that was what was happening, why couldn’t I see all of us? Why didn’t we all echo instead of only the one who was gone?
Dolly joined me, walking at my heels. I don’t know what she would have done if there had been any sudden movement or acknowledgment, but I suspected it would involve urine and a floor cleanup.
From both of us.
The closer I got to him, the more out of focus he became. It happened quickly, and by the time I got to him he was a watercolored hologram of color without features. I reached out to feel the air and, indeed, it was cold. In fact, it was dramatically cold compared to the rest of the room. If the whole room was that temperature I’d be shivering in a down coat.
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