The Widow's Watcher

by Eliza Maxwell

  “Audrey, look at me. Look at me, love. This isn’t Francie. This is Jenna Shaw.”

  But an old pain had Audrey in its grip. No words from Lars would ease the pressure.

  “It’s all my fault, Lars,” she said to her husband. There were tears forming in her eyes, as she stared first at him, then back at Jenna. They began to roll down her cheeks in silent rivers. “All my fault.”

  “No, love.” Lars rubbed his hands across hers. “No, it’s not your fault.”

  A poisonous fog began to cloud Jenna’s vision. Each time Lars said those words, the fog began to swirl, faster and more chaotic.

  “It’s not your fault,” he repeated, over and over.

  They were the same words Cassie whispered to Jenna each night, in that space just before sleep claimed her, when she had no defense, when she was incapable of screaming back at her daughter, “That’s a lie!”

  The words drilled into her. She wasn’t sleeping now.

  Jenna moved back to the chair and leaned close to Audrey again, stared until Audrey met her gaze. Jenna looked the other woman in the eye and spoke the words as if she were speaking into a mirror.

  “Of course it is.” Her voice was discordant, alien to her own ears.

  Lars turned and gaped at her, but Jenna had no time for him. No time for his lies.

  “You lost them. It was your job, the only job that mattered. You were their mother.”

  Jenna saw the pain blossom in Audrey’s dim eyes, expanding to fill the whole of her existence. Jenna didn’t care.

  “Do you think you’re off the hook, blameless somehow, because you were unhappy? Because you had your own issues to deal with?” Jenna gave a harsh laugh. “It doesn’t work that way, and none of the meaningless platitudes in the world can change that.”

  “Jenna,” Lars said, stern and shocked. She didn’t look at him. In that moment, he didn’t exist.

  “You failed,” she said, drilling the word home. “You failed in a million different ways leading up to that point, and then you failed one last time, on a scale so massive and irreparable it can never be fixed.”

  “Jenna, that’s enough,” Lars said, no longer keeping his voice low.

  “Maybe you tell yourself you didn’t mean for it to happen. Maybe you’d do anything in your power to change it. But you know what? It doesn’t fucking matter. Because you can’t.”

  “Jenna!” Lars shouted.

  The guard stood straighter at the door. The orderly was halfway across the room, his magazine tossed aside.

  It was too late. The damage was done. Audrey Jorgensen, already a broken woman, crumpled into a pile of guilt and regret as sobs shook her frail body.

  Jenna said nothing as they gathered Audrey to take her away. She watched, her jaw tight and her body trembling.

  She didn’t hear what Lars said to the orderly, or to Audrey before the door opened and she was shuffled into the unknown.

  But Jenna saw Lars standing with his hands hanging at his sides, helpless as they took his wife away. She heard, even after the heavy door closed behind them, the hollow cries of a mother who couldn’t find her children.

  They echoed inside of Jenna, joining a chorus of her own.

  29

  Lars and Jenna rode back to the cabin in stony silence. Jenna, aware of the line she’d stepped across, couldn’t bring herself to apologize. She’d been needlessly cruel, but nothing she’d said was untrue.

  She didn’t know who she was more upset with, Lars, Audrey, or herself.

  When they arrived at his home, Lars stepped out of the vehicle without a word. Unsure what to do now, Jenna watched him walk up the driveway to his front door. He opened it wide, then turned to look at her. She was still seated on the passenger side of his truck. He lifted his brows and made a gesture toward the interior of the house with his head.

  Are you coming in or not?

  Jenna sighed.

  She opened the car door and trudged up the driveway, her bag slung across her shoulder, to where he waited.

  Jenna spent the next hour staring at a crack in the ceiling above the bed in the spare bedroom, where she stretched out, fully clothed. The carved box lay on the bed beside her.

  Cassie was blessedly silent. She’s not speaking to me either.

  When Lars knocked on the doorframe, Jenna sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She half expected him to throw her out now, though if he were going to do that, why had he brought her back in the first place?

  “I could use a hand with dinner. If you’re not too busy,” he said drily.

  Jenna recognized an olive branch when she saw one.

  “Sure,” she mumbled, rising from the bed.

  Lars had turned on a radio in the kitchen, which was playing low in the background. The routine of being ordered about by the old man had become familiar.

  “No wine, but there’s beer, if you’d like one.”

  He handed her a mallet and two packets of dried egg noodles to pound on while he threw some unrecognizable things together in a large bowl.

  Eyeing the goopy mess as he poured it into a casserole dish, she decided a beer might be just the thing.

  “What are you making?” Jenna ventured to ask as she popped the top on a can.

  He reached past her and took the packages of pounded noodles, then sprinkled the contents over the lumpy concoction.

  “Hot dish.”

  He didn’t see the look of confusion pass over her face.

  “And what, exactly, is involved in hot dish?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.

  He shrugged his shoulders as he lifted the glass dish and transferred it to the waiting oven.

  “It’s hot,” he said. “It’s in a dish. What else is there to know?”

  Jenna’s brows lifted as she sipped the beer.

  “I guess that’s the basics covered, then,” she muttered.

  He handed her a stack of plates. “Set the table.”

  Lars had apparently put aside his ire.

  She took the plates and began placing them around the kitchen table, wondering if there was a subtle way to ask what was on her mind.

  There wasn’t.

  “Why don’t you hate her?”

  Lars looked over from where he was pulling glasses from the cupboard and remained silent for a beat.

  “How much experience do you have with forgiveness, Jenna?” he finally asked.

  Her hands stilled, and she studied his back as he went about his business.

  “Is it really that simple for you?”

  “Simple?” He glanced over his shoulder with a look that showed her what he thought of that question.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Forgiveness is hard. It’s painful. It’s giving when you’ve nothing left to give, from places you can’t afford to lose anything else.” He turned and studied her, crossing his arms as he leaned back against the counter. “But it’s never simple.”

  Jenna struggled to wrap her mind around that.

  “But how?” she finally asked. “How can you forgive her?”

  He shook his head. “Forgiving Audrey was the easy part. Forgiving myself? That was a tough mountain to climb.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He sighed. “I know you don’t.”

  Lars moved to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer for himself. He popped the top and took a great swig before he looked her in the eye.

  “There was a reason Audrey left that day and took the kids,” he finally said. “Everyone assumed it was because she was unstable, and that was true. She had a long history of being unpredictable, was prone to mood swings, bouts of mania. No one—not me, not her mother, none of us—expected her to come so dangerously undone. But we should have.”

  “You couldn’t—”

  Lars shook his head. “Yes. We could have. We should have. We didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to see it. And I’ve had to find a way to live with that.”

  “That doesn�
��t mean you’re to blame,” Jenna insisted.

  “Blame.” Lars huffed. “What the hell good does blame do? Blaming Audrey doesn’t bring my kids back. It doesn’t heal my wife’s shattered mind. Blame is about as useless as a glass hammer.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And I pounded myself with that glass hammer until I was cut and nearly bleeding to death.”

  “But why?” she pressed.

  “Because I was leaving her, Jenna,” he said. “I was leaving, and I was taking the kids.”

  Jenna rocked back on her heels. Lars took another drink of the beer and set it on the counter.

  “What?” she asked. “But that wasn’t . . .”

  “It wasn’t in the newspapers? No, it wasn’t. That bit of information managed to slip by the press.”

  “But you . . . you loved her. You still love her! It’s all over your face when you look at her.”

  “Yes,” he sighed. “I do. I did, even then. And wouldn’t the world be a fine place if everything were so simple?”

  30

  1988

  “You can’t do this!” Audrey screamed from another room. There was a crash as something broke against the wall, then the sound of hysterical sobs.

  His hands stalled, but Lars forced himself to continue packing the bag open on the bed.

  They’d been at it for hours. First came the disbelief, then tears, which had become screams, then more tears.

  He’d sent the children outside. It wasn’t the first time they’d heard their parents argue. The thought brought him low.

  Lars could tell Owen had some inkling this time was different. Bigger.

  “Take them to play, son. Don’t bring them back in until I come to get you, okay,” he’d said as he shuffled his children out the door.

  “But Mom, is she . . . ?” Owen had glanced around his father to where his mother was sobbing into her hands, curled up on the sofa.

  “She’ll be all right. It’s going to be all right, I promise,” he’d said.

  That was exactly what he was trying to do, God help him. Make it all right.

  “Audrey, it’s for the best,” Lars said when his wife’s figure appeared in the doorway to their bedroom.

  Her breathing was heavy, her face ravaged by redness and tears.

  “Please, Lars, please don’t do this. Not like this,” she begged, motioning to the mess he’d made trying to pack what he thought she might need. “Don’t send me away like something you’re ashamed of. Don’t let the kids see it happen this way.”

  Tears were coursing down her cheeks, but her words were quieter. She was struggling to stay calm.

  “Audrey, honey, there’s no good way to do this. It’s not . . . it’s not good for the kids. The mood swings, the days you can’t get out of bed, the screaming fits . . . And the up days, Audrey, they’re almost worse. It scares them. Don’t you see that? It scares me. It’s not—”

  “I’ll do better.” She spoke in a rush, moving toward him and gripping him around the middle in a fierce hug. “I can do better. Please, Lars.”

  She laid her head against his chest and held him like a drowning woman clinging to a buoy on a storm-tossed sea. His hands hung loosely at his sides, filled with nightgowns and undergarments. He forced them to stay there, though they trembled to hold her. To protect her from this. From herself.

  “Don’t send me away,” she pleaded. “I’ll prove it to you.” She pulled her head back and searched his face while he stared at a spot on the wall above her head.

  “It’s too late, Audrey,” he said, exhausted from the effort to stay the course. “Your mother is already on her way.”

  “Lars,” she begged. “Think of the kids. They need their mother.”

  “Yes, they do,” he replied with a heat he’d believed was all used up. “They need their mother to be here! All of you. But you’re not, Audrey. Half the time, you’re lost in someplace I can’t reach you. The other half, you get these grandiose ideas, then drain the bank account. Either way, you leave and we can’t get you back, and they deserve better than that. I deserve better than that!”

  His wife of eleven years stepped back. She dropped her arms and stared hard at him as her quicksilver moods shifted.

  “This is about her, isn’t it?”

  Lars sighed and turned to the bag. He stuffed the clothing inside.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is about us. About you. It doesn’t have to be permanent, Audrey. Just until you get some help. Your mother made plans for you to see a doctor while you’re home and—”

  “This is my home,” she cried. “These are my kids, not hers! You’re my husband, not hers!”

  “Audrey, stop it!” he yelled. He turned to face her, saw the way she stepped back from him. He never raised his voice, and the look in her eyes when he did twisted his guts.

  “Audrey.” He placed his palms on her cheeks. The wetness of her tears lay between their skin. “Audrey, I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment I met you, and I’ve never stopped.”

  She met his gaze, and the devastation there tore him apart.

  “Then please, Lars. Please, I’m begging you, if you’ve ever loved me, give me one more chance. I can do it,” she said. “I can do better. You have to believe me. One more chance.”

  “Audrey.” Her name was a sigh, a wish, a final touchstone of wasted hope.

  “One week,” she said, sensing his regret. His weakness. Using it against him. “Give me a week, and I’ll prove it to you. I will. This time will be different.”

  He gave in and held her against him, a fellow survivor in the rough seas swirling around them.

  It wouldn’t be different.

  Not this time. Not ever.

  But he was going to drown right alongside her.

  31

  “It was too much. Just too much. She was getting worse month by month, and I . . .”

  He raised his hands and let them fall. “I gave up on her.”

  Jenna was saved from responding by a knock on the door. Lars took a deep breath and stood straighter, a man recovering from a daze.

  “Come in,” he shouted and busied himself with moving dishes to the sink.

  Owen opened the door, and he and his daughter came into the cabin on a flurry of crisp wind.

  “Hey, Grandpa.” Hannah rushed over and gave Lars a peck on the cheek. She was all smiles and brought a sparkle of energy into the place that only youth can.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Lars said, his whole being focused now on this conundrum of a girl. “Don’t you look pretty.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Gramps, you’re not supposed to call a girl pretty.”

  He raised his gaze to Owen over Hannah’s head, but his son just shrugged.

  “And why’s that, hon?” Lars asked.

  “Because beauty is arbitrary.” She twirled to the refrigerator. “It’s a subjective social construct designed to pit women against one another in pursuit of male attention.” She cracked open a can of soda.

  “Pop,” Cassie whispered, amused. “They call it pop around here.”

  Hannah took a deep drink and smiled at her grandfather. “Which in turn, distracts women from their own self-actualization.”

  “Heaven forbid,” Lars said in all seriousness. “Am I allowed to say you look brilliant today, or will that distract you from actualizing yourself?”

  Hannah thought it over. “I can live with that.”

  The girl grabbed an apple from the bowl on the counter and headed out of the kitchen. “Homework,” she threw over her shoulder.

  The two men watched her go with similar looks of bemused affection.

  Hannah skidded to a stop when she saw Jenna. “You’re still here.”

  Jenna gave her a small smile. “Looks that way.”

  The girl tilted her head and asked, “Why?”

  “Hannah,” Owen said sharply, but neither Jenna nor Hannah acknowledged the rebuke.

  “A fair question,” Jenna said. “Would
you believe me if I told you I’m still trying to figure that out?”

  Hannah lifted a single sardonic brow. “It’s not the best answer I’ve ever heard.”

  Jenna conceded the point with a shrug. “But it’s truthful,” she said.

  Hannah studied her for a moment. “All right, but maybe you should put a little more effort into it.”

  “Hannah June, that’s enough.” Lars was quiet, but stern. “Jenna’s my guest, and that’s all you need to know to keep a civil tongue.”

  Hannah kept silent at her grandfather’s words, but she never broke eye contact, and Jenna got the clear sense Hannah was reserving judgment, despite the instruction.

  “You’ve got to have a certain level of respect for that,” Cassie said.

  “Duly noted,” Jenna told the girl.

  Hannah crunched into the apple and inclined her head as she sauntered past Jenna. Just so they understood each other.

  “Jenna, I’m sorry,” Owen began once his daughter had settled herself on the sofa with her homework and her headphones.

  “No need to apologize,” Jenna said. I have a teenager of my own, she almost said.

  Had. I had a teenager of my own.

  “Are you expecting someone else?” Jenna asked Lars, steering the subject to safer topics. His story had distracted her, and she’d realized a bit late she’d set the table with more than two places. Now, she noticed there was still one unaccounted for.

  “Can’t slip anything past you,” came Lars’s deadpan reply.

  He didn’t volunteer anything else, and she refrained from asking more.

  With a raised brow at his father’s conversational skills, Owen turned to Jenna.

  “I at least owe you an apology for the holdup on the part for your van, Jenna. I promise you, I’m doing my best to get it here.”

  She waved off his apology. It wasn’t like Owen had any motive to purposely delay Jenna’s departure. At least, she didn’t think he did.

  Lars, on the other hand . . . Jenna had begun to realize he was laboring under the misconception that he would change her plans—both immediate and long term—if he managed to toss enough distractions into her path.