We never got to see the snow fall together. Kevin was gone that first winter and died before the next one arrived.
Reaching into my center console, I pull out the key I keep in there. It's on a tiny silver ring with a bedazzled "P" attached to it. Justine's the only person who's ever seen it and when she asked what it stood for, I lied and told her it was one of those white elephant gifts from a holiday party.
You know, the gifts people bring that have little to no value or meaning and swap with co-workers. Sometimes you get good stuff, but most of the time, it's cheap shit. Candles or gift cards. I think one year I got a scarf that ended up at the bottom of my closet.
Thankfully she bought it. My lies, to everyone other than Harry, have become convincing.
Sliding the key in the lock, I slowly push the door open to find the house as empty as when I left. Sure, the furniture we bought is still here. The pictures and knickknacks are still on the walls. But there's a feeling of emptiness that washes over me every time I walk across the threshold. The same threshold Kevin insisted on carrying me over even though we had been married for seven months at the time.
The first thing I notice is our wedding picture on the table in the entryway. It wasn't there the last time I visited. In fact, I'm pretty sure I hid all of our pictures in a drawer in the kitchen before I left. Not because I didn't want to look at them but because they were all I could look at, and they made me cry.
"It's still my favorite," Harry says from behind me.
The bastard followed me. Either that or he knew I'd come here.
"Stalk much?" I half joke as I turn to face him.
"Only a little."
"What are you doing here?"
"I fired the hired help a while ago. Came to mow the lawn."
He what? Who's been cashing the checks I've been sending all this time?
"Seriously?"
"You were just throwing your money away paying someone else. Plus, they did a shitty job if you ask me. I tried to call and let you know, but you wouldn't answer your phone."
He always knows when to throw things in my face. Things I can't or won't respond to.
"I'm only here to grab a few things. I won't be long. You can do whatever you need to do," I say, stepping into the kitchen and heading to the drawer I stashed the rest of the photos in.
"They're not in there," Harry calls from his place in the hall. When I open the drawer, I find his words to be accurate.
"Where are they?"
"All around you," he replies, appearing from around the corner. "I hung them back up. Figured if you were coming back to see me, it meant you probably were thinking of selling this place. I stopped over before breakfast."
One step ahead of me all the time. Only thing is that I never plan to sell this place. It wasn't just mine.
"Sure, okay. I want the one in the silver frame of the day he came home. We were at the airport. He's in his uniform still."
"The one where he's kissing you?"
"Yeah, that one," I say, looking around to see if I can spot it on the walls anywhere.
I don't see it, but I see a million other memories we made in the eleven months we were married. In the nineteen months we spent together.
"It's in the bedroom," Harry finally offers when he notices I'm starting to hyperventilate.
Making my way down the short hall to where the bedroom I shared with my husband is, I pass even more memories on my way. Harry's lined the hall with candid pictures in frames and collages. I barely recognize the happy girl in the photos. A huge smile on her face as her equally happy husband dips her at their wedding reception.
The girl that's laughing as she wipes whipped cream off her face in one picture.
And painting the porch for the house she's currently standing in in another. Bright white paint in her hair and on her clothes after a paint fight in the front yard. Her husband, who's behind the camera, was also covered in paint. His bare chest with stripes down it, the reason the paint war was started.
"Memory lane is hard to travel sometimes. It hurts to remember the good and the bad. What you need to focus on is the love you two shared and let everything else go, Allison."
"What I need to do is get that picture and get out of here."
"And go where?"
"Home."
"This was your home. You're still holding on to it. There will come a time when you're ready to let it go, and when that time comes, I'll be here to help you pack up the good memories you want to take with you."
That's the thing about memories, though. You don't get to pick and choose which ones you take and which you leave behind. They're a package deal. So if I choose to remember Kevin, I not only remember our wedding day and the paint war I lost, I also remember the night the police showed up on my doorstep.
The night my life fell apart.
Chapter Nine
Driving back to the city gives me more time to think than I'd like. Not only about everything Harry said, but about what lies ahead of me.
For years, my plan has been the same.
Point the finger in the other direction and stay out of the limelight. No one will ask questions.
That's how the rumor mill got started in the first place. I figured if I could control what people were talking about, the gossip in the office, it wouldn't be about me. My secrets would be safe. My past would stay where it was. Where it belonged.
Now, my past is forcing its way into the present. The two are merging, and there's an uneasiness in the universe.
If Kevin were here, he'd tell me good things are ahead. He was always positive, spinning things the way he wanted. He looked past the darkness, the bumpy road, and saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The happiness that potential was at the end of the path we had to travel.
As much as I loved him, I never agreed with him.
My words slap me across the face.
Loved.
Past tense.
Because he's gone.
He's been gone. For five years.
He's never coming back.
I'm not going to wake up one day and he's going to magically be next to me in bed. It's a dream I've had a lot over the years. Most recently the first night Zane stayed at my apartment.
In a cloudy haze, I thought he was Kevin for a moment. Until I reached over and my hand landed on hard muscle.
Kevin was tall and lean. He had muscles that were defined, but to see them, he had to flex. He had hair on his chest and a trail that ran from his belly button beneath his underwear.
Zane is the opposite. A few inches shorter but his muscles are large and bulging. The only hair on his body is on his legs. I'm fairly certain he manscapes. The majority of his upper body is covered in tattoos, so even if he had hair, you wouldn't notice.
How is it the two men who have worked their way into my heart, despite my best efforts, are complete opposites? Zane has a foul mouth and likes to talk dirty. Behind closed doors, he's sweet and gentle. Kevin kept it clean in public and kinky in private.
As I pull up in front of Megan's house, I send her a text to make sure she's home before I get out of the comforts of the air conditioning.
ME: You home?
MEGAN: Yeah. Gotta pick up Amara in a little over an hour. What's up?
ME: I'm about to knock on your door.
Tossing my phone in my purse, I make my way up the sidewalk, and Megan opens the door just as I step on her porch.
"Why aren't you at work?"
"I took a personal day," I reply as she pulls me in for a hug. "You know, to deal with my shit."
Megan squeezes me tighter before releasing me and ushering me into the house. When she reaches for her phone, I stop her.
"Who are you calling?"
"I'm going to text Ryder and ask him to pick up Amara so we can talk."
"Don't tell him you're with me."
"Not that he would care, but I'll leave that detail out."
Megan shoots Ryder a text, reaches in t
he fridge for a bottle of white wine, and pours us each a glass.
"So..." she begins, but I can tell by the look on her face she's not really sure what to say.
Did you deal with your shit?
Do you need help dealing with your shit?
"Do you remember the first time we met?" I finally ask.
"Yeah. It was at a Dixon event. Why?"
"Remember how you wanted to hook me up with Tyler that night? You were pretty drunk, so was I, but you insisted that I should date and marry Tyler so we could be sisters."
"I totally forgot about that. Don't tell Angela. I mean, he hadn't even met her yet, but still." Megan laughs.
That was an interesting night. It was the first time I'd seen any of my bosses outside the office. I was nervous as hell, and then Megan walked over and started talking to me. We were outnumbered, two of only five women in the room.
"Do you remember why I told you no?"
"Um, weren't you dating someone? No, wait. You'd just gotten out of a relationship, right?"
"Yeah."
"Is that was this is about? Some guy you dated years ago?" Megan's confusion is obvious. There's no reason someone I dated would have this much impact on my life years later.
"Something like that."
"Ally, I'm not sure where this is headed, but I want you to know that whatever’s going on, I'll support you and help any way I can. I'm not going anywhere."
"I know. That's why I came here. No one else knows about my life before I moved here. Before I started working at Dixon. That's why no one understands me. But you do. In some mysterious way, you get me. Even without knowing everything. And you accept me for who I am."
"You're starting to worry me."
"I was married before I moved here. That's the relationship I was just getting out of."
Megan's mouth drops open slightly, forming an O but no sound comes out. I expected this to shock her. I've worked really hard to keep my past a secret from everyone, even those closest to me. I never thought this day would come. I didn't want it to. I wanted to keep that part of my life separate from everything else.
Taking advantage of her stunned silence, I start from the beginning and tell her everything.
How we met at a bar. How he hustled me at a game of pool and because I lost, I had to go on a date with him. How one date turned into moving in together after three months, getting married, and starting a life together.
Kevin. I tell her all about him. About the life we built together in the short time we were married. About his first tour in Iraq. The emotions that ran through me on a daily basis. The way my mind would wander. The what if moments. And the night he came home.
There are tears streaming down my face. They've been falling since the moment I said his name. Still, I push on. I have to keep going or I'll never tell her how our story ends.
"He wasn't supposed to have a second tour. His contract was almost up, and his unit wasn't next to deploy. Still, they called, and he had to go. I was angry. Not at him but at the universe. I felt it owed me for taking my husband away again. Don't get me wrong. I was proud of him for serving our country. It just felt like he spent more time fighting than he did at home, loving.
"A few days after he left, he called to tell me that their assignment had been canceled. He was coming home. So that night on his way home, he stopped for gas and ice cream. When he walked into the station, he was attacked from behind. They hit him on the back of the head and tried to knock him out, but he fought back.
"His attacker had a gun and ended up killing the clerk and Kevin. Only one person survived, a six-year-old little girl who he tied up and blindfolded. I was in a dark place for a long time. I still am. I blame myself for his death. I may not have pulled the trigger, but I was the one that wanted ice cream. He wouldn't have been there if I hadn't asked him to stop.
"So, I moved here. Tried to put that life behind me. Swallowed the pain and silenced the memories. Until today. Today I went back home. I'm not sure what I thought would happen. I knew I wouldn't find closure. I won't have that until I let Kevin go. But my father-in-law suggested talking about him. Telling someone everything that happened. He seems to think it will bring me the peace I need to move on. And I chose you."
Megan's tear-stained face mimics my own. The pain I felt, that I still feel, was in every word I spoke. So was the love I had for Kevin. For the life we were building together.
And then she says the three words I was preparing for.
"I'm so sorry."
Of course she is. Because that's what people always say when someone dies.
Sorry for your loss.
The one thing I'm not prepared for is how her words make me feel. In the past, I grew to resent those words. To hate the way they sounded. It didn't matter who was saying them or what the circumstances were. They grated on my nerve.
Somehow, right now, Megan's condolences make my heart feel lighter. As if the burden I've been carrying around for five years is starting to lift.
"Thank you," I say, wiping at my eyes.
"I wish you would have told me. I know I couldn't have helped, but at least you would have had someone to talk to."
"That's just it," I start. "I didn't want to talk about what happened. I didn't want to think about Kevin. I didn't want people to feel sorry for me because my husband was killed. There was enough pity for me back home. I came here to get away from that, to start fresh. A place where no one knew my past and I was in charge of the present and the future.
"I could be whoever I wanted to be. I didn't have to be the Parker widow anymore. People wouldn't relate everything I did, every decision I made, to the fact that my husband died. Hell, I haven't even sold our house yet because I was afraid people would have an opinion on that. So it sits there, empty yet filled with all the memories we made."
Megan nods, downs the rest of her wine, and immediately pours herself another glass.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"You have to promise not to get pissed off."
Anytime someone says something like that, whatever comes next is bound to piss you off. You can't preface something and expect people not to have the reaction you know they're going to have. It's almost like a warning that you're going to be angry.
Still, I nod. Not because I'm curious but because she's going to ask anyway. Maybe not today, but eventually. We might as well get it out of the way now.
"You went home today. Talked with your father-in-law. He told you to talk to me. Said it would help you move past everything. But I have to be honest with you, I don't think you need to move past this, Ally. I told you to deal with your shit, I know, but when I said that, I didn't realize how big of a deal this was. Moving past the loss of your husband is never going to happen. Sure, you should probably learn to deal with how it's made you feel all these years, but don't forget what happened. Accept it, let go of your anger, and be the person you want to be. Scars and all."
She has a valid point. I'll never forget Kevin, or that night, but acceptance is a hard thing to do. It means more than just admitting my husband died. It's selling our home. Putting our memories in a box and making new memories to put up on the wall.
"That wasn't a question," I finally say as my mind starts to run a million miles a minute with all the things moving on will mean for me.
"I know. I wanted you to process that first."
"So ask because I have a feeling Ryder and Amara are going to walk through the door any minute and our conversation will be over."
"Fine. Does this have anything to do with how you feel about Zane?"
Zane. I've been avoiding his calls for the last twenty-four hours, yet he's still attempting to get in contact with me. It was to the point I had to turn my phone off for most of the day.
I couldn't tell him where I was going. Why I wasn't at work. That would lead to more questions I wouldn't want to answer and a conversation that might end with one of us getting hurt.
"Yeah, it does. It has everything to do with Zane," I confess in a moment of weakness. My confession surprises not only Megan but me as well.
Because when it comes down to it, there's no way for me to be happy, to let Zane in, or to admit my feelings for him until I find a way to deal with my shit.
So it's time to start dealing.
Chapter Ten
As anticipated, Ryder and Amara showed up, successfully ending our conversation. When Ryder caught sight of me, he asked Megan to help Amara change, a clear sign he wanted to talk to me. Alone.
"So what's going on with you?" he asks as we take a seat in the living room.
"Nothing, why?"
Ryder raises his eyebrow in suspicion, clearing his throat before he continues.
"You cheeks are stained with tears. So are Megan's. It's four in the afternoon, and it looks like the two of you have polished off a bottle of wine. And don't get me started on the rest of the way you look. It's depressing, really."
Looking down at the t-shirt and jeans I put on this morning, I grimace. At the office or otherwise, I'm usually well put together. If I wear jeans, I usually pair them with a blouse and a pair of heels. T-shirts are generally reserved for the gym or crawling into bed at night.
What he doesn't know is that this is the last t-shirt I bought for Kevin. The one thing of his I've kept with me all these years. His scent has long faded away, but I still wear it from time to time. When I want to think about him. When the need to feel close to him is overwhelming.
Days like today.
"I had a few personal things I needed to take care of, but I'm done now. I stopped over to see Megan on my way back home. I'm fine, really."
"You've been acting different for the last few weeks. Can I attribute that to whatever you had going on today? Or is that something else?"
Has it been that noticeable?
"Don't get me wrong," Ryder continues when I don't respond. "You've seemed happier lately. More grounded but a little distracted. My guess would be that you met someone."
Rumors: Allison & Zane Page 6