Even I found it easy to agree when he put it like that. I didn’t want to accept that it could be so simple; my heart protested that he was wrong, but I couldn’t come up with an argument to prove it.
“So are you going to move in with us or not?” Abby looked seriously at Ben, apparently back to business.
Ben looked to me. He watched my frightened expression and measured my obvious panic. Then he ignored all of the hot mess that I was and turned back to my daughter and said, “One day.”
“Soon?” she said.
“If I get my way,” he told her.
It was a miracle that I got through the rest of dinner. I simmered with frustration and anger. I wanted to kick him out of my house and deal with him later. But for the sake of my kids, I struggled through the rest of the night.
Ben stuck around after dinner and helped put the kids to bed. He had to know I was pissed at him, but he didn’t seem to care. At least not enough to leave without me telling him he needed to.
I gave the kids extra-long hugs and kisses, escaping to their bedrooms so I could avoid Ben for as long as possible. He’d moved back downstairs after they brushed their teeth, so I had a few minutes before I needed to face him.
I went to Blake’s room last because it was closest to the stairs. I found him lying on his back with both hands tucked beneath his head. He was staring up at the ceiling deep in thought. It wasn’t until I sat down next to him, that he looked over at me.
“Do you really still love dad?” he asked quietly. His green eyes held tears that hadn’t fallen yet.
“Yes,” I promised him immediately. “More than anything else.”
“Is Ben really going to move in with us?”
“No!” I rushed to assure him. “No, he’s not. Ben is going to stay in his house and we are going to stay in ours.”
He tilted his head to look at me. Somehow he’d gone through third grade, turned nine, been an all-star on his soccer team and become the man of the house all over the last year. He wasn’t my little baby boy anymore. He had matured. He had become a kid that made me so very proud. He’d become a kid that would have made his dad proud.
“It would be okay with me, Mom. If he moved in.”
Blake’s words shook me to my very core. “He’s not, Blake. Please don’t worry about it. It’s not happening. He’s not going to move in.”
“Okay.” His gaze moved back to his ceiling and I could see the disappointment written all over his body.
Great.
I kissed his forehead and turned off his lamp. I stopped feeling angry with Ben. Instead, I felt something incredibly more difficult. The truth of what I needed to do.
The weight of my relationship with Ben pressed down on me and threatened to crush me. I missed Grady with a fierce ache that fractured my heart and soul. I couldn’t have both of these men.
I couldn’t have either of them.
I walked downstairs and found Ben lounging on the sectional. He was stretched out, flipping through the channels with one hand propped behind his head.
The image of him reminded me so strongly of Grady that my knees nearly buckled.
His eyes lifted to mine as soon as he saw me. A playful smile danced on his lips and his fingers twirled the remote casually.
This man should never have fallen in love with me. I was only going to destroy him.
“Hey, are you okay?” He sat up as I walked over. Tension seeped back into his shoulders and straightened his spine.
“No,” I told him honestly.
He jumped to his feet and closed the distance between us. “What’s wrong?”
I swallowed thickly and told him the truth, “I can’t do this anymore, Ben.”
“Do what anymore?”
“Us.”
“Liz…”
“I can’t,” I sobbed. “I can’t be with you. I can’t love you. We have to stop.”
“No, you have to stop.” His voice had turned to rough gravel, dragging across my heart. “How can you say that? After last night? After everything we’ve been through?”
“After everything I’ve been through, you mean!” I struggled to keep my voice low enough so I wouldn’t wake the kids. “I didn’t want this, Ben. I didn’t ask for you to come into my life and make me feel for you. I didn’t ask you to become a part of our lives and take over where my husband left off.”
“Liz, you know that I have never tried to take over Grady’s place or be what he was to you guys. I have never once asked you to ignore or forget him. That isn’t fair.”
I went on like he had never spoken, “And now my kids are asking you to move in with us! You can’t replace their daddy! You can’t just move in and fill this void that he left behind!”
“I have never once tried to do any of that!” he growled at me. “Stop making this into something that it’s not.”
“Then what is it?” I shouted at him. I shook my head and lowered my voice again, “What is it? What is this?”
“This is us, Liz,” he pleaded with me. “This is you and me. We’re figuring it out as we go. Neither of us expected this, but it happened. We need each other. We… We love each other.”
“So what?” I spat cruelly. “Where does that leave us? Where is this going?”
“Liz…”
“You can’t move in with us. So that’s off the table. I will not get married again. So that’s also off the table. We can’t ever be anything more than what we are right now and is that enough for you?”
“No.” His answer was so immediate and forceful that I jumped.
“See!”
“No, I don’t see. Why can’t we move in together, Liz? Why can’t we get married? What in the hell is stopping us?”
“Me!”
“Right!” He took a step closer to me and I felt the vibrations of his anger ripple around me. “You! But nothing else. Nothing else is standing in our way. So tell me, tell me right now, why you’re putting a stop to this.”
“Because I can’t do this anymore!” I cried. The tears of the day finally fell as my world came crashing down around me for the second time in my life. “I cannot be with you when I miss him so much my body aches from it! I cannot be with you and make a life with you when all I want is for him to come back. I can’t be intimate with you when it’s his hands I imagine touching me, when it’s his body I dream about. I cannot be with you when I will never stop loving him.” I closed my eyes to rid myself of the image of Ben’s broken expression and defeated posture. I couldn’t stand that image of him. My confident, defiant, authoritative neighbor had been crushed because of me. I did that. I destroyed the second man that I loved. “I can’t love you when I love him like this.”
“You mean that?” he rasped. “You’re done trying?”
“I’m done. I have to be done.” I opened my eyes and blinked through the tears. I watched him accept my words, I watched them sink in.
“You don’t have to do this, Liz. We could work through this together. I could share this pain with you and we could get through it.”
I shook my head and delivered the final blow, “You can’t help me, Ben. This is my pain. This is my grief. There is nothing you can do but let me be.”
He nodded once before gathering his things and leaving. I watched the door close behind him and felt the avalanche of grief cascade over me. My dam of sorrow and sadness ripped open again and I felt the agony of losing someone I loved all over again.
I stumbled to the couch and did not get up for the rest of the night. I couldn’t face my bed again, not after the night I had with Ben. I couldn’t face Grady’s empty side of the bed and come to terms with what I had done.
I curled up on my couch, in the place that Ben had just occupied and I cried myself sick. I stayed there until there were no more tears to cry, until the depression I had been in wrapped its skeletal claws around me and carried me into the grave it had been slowly preparing for me.
My husband was the one that died, not me. But it
didn’t feel that way tonight.
Not without Ben to help me wade through the pain. Not without this new love to soften the harsh, unforgiving blows.
We had been so active this summer, but after that night, I stopped moving. I lay on that couch for days. My kids ran around me and Emma came over to help take care of them, but other than that I stayed planted.
Never once did I go up to my room or look at my bed again without feeling intensely sick to my stomach. Never once did I pass by Ben’s house that I didn’t burn with new grief and heartache.
I didn’t just stop trying.
I stopped living.
Stage Five: Acceptance
Grady is dead. Grady is not coming back.
These are truths I have come to terms with.
It has taken some time, more than a year, but I have finally reached the stage where I can accept this heartbreaking truth.
It took me a long time to get here and I learned a lot about myself along the way. There were times when I didn’t believe I would ever reach this point. There were times I was convinced I would die first, times when I knew that this grief would kill me.
There were times when I wanted it to.
But, despite my heartache and difficulties, I miraculously made it to the other side.
That doesn’t mean that everything is fantastic now. It doesn’t mean that I feel great all of the time and that life is easy. It really doesn’t mean that I have completely moved on and am okay with what happened to Grady.
I am not. And I still miss him fiercely. Daily. Hourly. Minute by goddamn minute.
I miss his touch, his smile, his laugh. I miss the smell of him wrapped up in our sheets. I miss the sight of him walking through the door after a long day at work. I miss his presence at the dinner table and the way he made each one of our children feel special and so loved.
I miss him. I miss him so very much.
But I have learned to live without him. I have learned to accept that he is gone. And I have come to terms with his absence.
Grief does not get easier. This is something I learned over this process. It does not get easier but it lessens in intensity.
As I move away from Grady’s death, I think about him less, I miss him… less. But when I do think about him, the ache is still there, the heartbreak is always just as strong.
Maybe that doesn’t make sense if you’ve never lost someone, but I’m not sure I will ever be able to think of Grady and our short time together without weeping. I am not sure I will ever watch our children grow without him there to experience it without hating his absence. I am not sure I will ever not miss him.
And that is the truth of losing someone you love. It always hurts. Always.
The same is true for Ben.
I lost him too. And the longer I try to live without him the deeper I realize my feelings for him go. I cannot take this pain. I cannot add his loss to Grady’s and breathe through the day. It is too much.
Grady had to go. The world, his illness and fate decided that there was no other choice.
But I am the one that banished Ben and I am afraid I will have to deal with these consequences for the rest of my miserable life.
I miss Grady.
But I miss Ben too.
And Ben’s absence is something I refuse to accept.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Mom! I have a science project!” Abby called from the mudroom where she knelt digging through her backpack after school.
I had already set Blake up with his massive amount of homework at the island and Lucy had flashcards to work on. She hadn’t stopped talking since we walked in the door, not-so-patiently waiting for me to finish with Blake.
When did fourth grade math get so hard? And why wasn’t I smart enough for these story problems?
“What kind of science project, Abigail?” I had already decided that if her project took any more time than ten minutes, I was going to have to sell her on EBay.
Maybe I could use the money I made to pay a math tutor to help Blake finish elementary school.
Her bouncing red head popped into the kitchen and she held up an instruction sheet dated a week ago. I mentally went to the Craigslist browser. I could probably find an immediate buyer.
“I have to do a thing. On a vertebrate.”
“What is a thing?”
“What is a vertabit?” Jace echoed.
“I diaphragm.”
“Gram,” I corrected quickly. “You have to make a diorama.”
“Whatevs.” She read over the sheet of paper. “And I have to write a report.”
I took the instructions from her. “And color a picture. What is wrong with your school? This is too much work! You all have too much work! I’ve decided, starting tomorrow, we’re going to homeschool.”
Blake snickered, “Wouldn’t you have to do all of the work then?”
“Since you’re so smart, maybe you could teach it.” He tapped his pencil on his psychotic math homework. I let out a squeak of frustration. “Okay, we’re going to need to divide and conquer. Abby, your vertebrate is a monkey. Don’t argue with me. Lucy, go get Mr. Puddles.”
This instruction caused an uprising from the savages. “Abby, I don’t care if you want to take Mr. Puddles or not! That’s the only model I can think of to use. Lucy, you have to share with your sister! She will bring him back! Jace, get off the table!”
I wanted to curl up into the fetal position on the floor, but that wouldn’t help solve any of these problems. I settled the kids down by working myself up and shouting at them- always an effective tool. They went off to their corners of the house to retrieve a shoebox, a skinny, bendy monkey figurine that Lucy had nicknamed Mr. Puddles after she dropped him in one, and I went to the computer to do a Google search on printable monkey pictures.
“Blake, I’ll be right back! Just do what you can!”
“I figured it out!” he shouted back.
It seemed to take forever for the monkey pictures to print. My computer was slow and then my printer wouldn’t connect wirelessly. By the time I had something for Abby to use, my kids could probably all curse with the best of them.
With the pictures printed and held victoriously in my hands, I walked out of the den and dropped them all over the entryway floor.
Ben stood in the doorway, looking slightly panicked and more than a little bit confused.
“What are you doing here?” I felt utterly breathless as I took him in. If possible he looked more gorgeous than ever. And up close his handsome face made my heart flutter and my stomach fizz. I had been watching him at a distance for two months now. I would watch him check the mail or mow his yard. I would look to see if his car was around on the weekends or if he had a date.
Of course, I never knew if he had a date or not. But I liked to speculate. Sometimes I would make Emma come over just so we could speculate together.
He had let his five o’clock shadow become a gruff beard that suited him. He had thick-framed glasses on that I had never seen before and his clothes were more rumpled than I could remember them ever being.
All in all, he looked like a mess.
Not that my limp ponytail and sweatpants were any better.
It was just shocking to see him so… disheveled.
“I got a text.” He held up his phone so I could see the screen. “You said it was an emergency.”
“I didn’t text you.”
His eyebrow quirked. “Liz, I was in a meeting. I raced over here. I was rude to a client.”
“Ben, I’m so sorry. I… It wasn’t me.”
“It was me,” the small voice came from the kitchen doorway. Blake looked ashen. “I didn’t know you were busy. I’m sorry.”
Ben looked from me to Blake and then back again. “Why did you text me, Blake? What did you need?”
“I need help with my homework and mom is busy. She’s really busy and she keeps cussing. I just wanted to make it easy for her.”
Ben’s gaze swung back
to mine, “You keep cussing?”
I felt betrayed by my oldest child. “PG-13 words! Nothing worse than that.”
Ben and Blake both gave me disbelieving looks.
“Did I ruin your job?” Blake asked with a slight tremble in his voice.
Ben’s expression broke and a grin finally made an appearance on his face. “No, no you didn’t ruin it. I was only rude to my client because he was a jerk to me. I’ll make it up to him tomorrow. He’ll get over it. If you need help with your homework, I can help you. Then we’ll both help make dinner so your mom stops cussing.”
“I wasn’t really cussing!”
“That’s awesome! Thanks, Ben!”
Blake disappeared into the kitchen while I swooped down to gather the scattered pictures. “You don’t have to stay, Ben. I have this handled.”
“I’m sure that you do, Liz, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to stay.”
I steeled my nerves and met his hopeful gaze. “You would?”
“I’ve missed these kids,” he admitted on a long sigh. “A lot. I’ve thought about coming over here at least a hundred times to see them, but I didn’t want to make things worse.”
“Oh.”
“Ben!” Lucy squealed from the staircase. She jumped down four steps so she could run into his arms. “Ben! Ben! Ben!”
Abby followed and Jace raced over too. They attacked him with hugs, screaming his name and jumping up and down.
“Are you going to eat supper with us?” Abby asked excitedly.
“I’m going to make it for you,” he told her which brought on a whole new level of screaming.
“Okay, settle down! Get off Ben or he isn’t going to come back!” I tried to pry my kids off of him, but they wouldn’t have it.
“You mean, he gets to come back?” Lucy wrapped her arms around me as a thank you hug for lifting Ben’s exile.
Oh, gosh. What had I done?
“If he wants to,” I told her.
She looked up at me with bright green eyes and said, “He does! I know he does!”
I patted her head and smiled down at her. I didn’t think he did, but I couldn’t tell her that. “Go help Abby find the crayons.” Jace galloped after her.
The Five Stages of Falling in Love Page 25