by Amy Hatvany
“Oh. Okay.” The edges of Diane’s face softened, and I noticed that her eyes were red rimmed and swollen. She’s just lost her best friend, I reminded myself. She’s in pain, too. She sighed, then continued speaking. “I just saw you sitting out here and then the both of you trying to get into the house and I didn’t know what to think.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “How are they?”
“Pretty much in shock, I think,” I said. “Trying to understand what exactly happened.”
Diane cocked a single eyebrow. “Didn’t the doctors say anything to Victor?”
I wondered if Diane knew something we didn’t. “They told him about the pills by her nightstand—”
“What?” Melody exclaimed, and I realized I hadn’t known this when we’d talked last night, before Victor got home from the hospital.
“She took those for anxiety,” Diane said quickly. “The prescription could have just run out. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You’re right,” I said, resting my hand on Melody’s arm, hoping she’d realize I didn’t want to get into this particular discussion right now. I’d tell her about my concerns later, not in front of Diane. “It doesn’t. We’re hoping the doctors will figure out exactly what happened, but Victor decided it was better not to mention the bottle or the pills to the kids.”
Diane nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s best.” She paused. “Kelli told me you and Victor got engaged.”
“We did.”
She raised her eyebrows. “That was quick, wasn’t it? You two haven’t even been together a year yet.”
I opened my mouth to respond, feeling my cheeks get hot, but Melody spoke for me. “Um, actually they’ve been together over a year. Not that it’s really your business.” I shot my friend a warning look.
“Sorry.” Diane looked back and forth between Melody and me. “It’s just that Kelli was pretty upset when Victor just dropped the news on her like that.”
“I don’t think he dropped it on her,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice even. “He—we thought it would better if she knew before the kids. In case they had questions.”
She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Have you told the kids?” I shook my head, hoping we were on the tail end of this conversation, but then she spoke again. “Will there be a funeral?”
“Just a small gathering at our house, I think. Maybe on Thursday. Victor said she wanted to be cremated.”
“Well, let me know if I can do anything. She was a good friend to me.” Her eyes filled until she blinked the tears away, then she glanced up to the front door. “I could help you pack up the kids’ stuff, if you want. I know what they like, for the most part.”
I held up the notes Victor had given me. “I think we’re set. They made me a list.” I smiled at her, trying to imagine how I’d feel if Melody had died. My stomach flipped over at the thought. “But thank you. I appreciate it. And I’m really so very sorry for your loss.” I reached out and squeezed her arm this time.
“Thank you,” she said with obvious surprise. She nodded again, a slightly pinched look on her face, then gestured toward the tan house next door. “That’s me, if you change your mind.”
“Thanks,” Melody said, and we finally went our separate ways. We stepped through the doorway, and while I’d been to Kelli’s house several times, it felt foreign to me now. Empty and sad, as though it somehow sensed that she’d never be returning. The entryway was thick with the scent of vanilla—Victor had told me about Kelli’s tendency to overuse plug-in air fresheners, to the extent that he eventually developed allergies to them. Sunlight slid through the cracks in the drapes, highlighting the dust motes in the air.
“Well, this is slightly creepy,” Melody said, glancing around the living room, a small space littered with kids’ clothes, toys, and stacks of magazines. “Knowing she’s never coming back here.” She shuddered. “What do you think Victor will do with the house?”
“It was his mom’s, but I imagine he’ll still need to sell it.” I took a deep breath. “We should get to work. Victor said there should be suitcases in the hall closet.” We proceeded to our right, easily found several large black suitcases, and decided that each of us would pack up a child’s room. “Can you do Ava’s? I feel like she’ll be happier if it’s not me.” I explained what Ava had said to me the night before and Melody sighed.
“Poor kid. She’s angry and you’re an easy target. She can’t be mad at her mom for dying, so she’s mad at you for still being alive. I think if she didn’t care about you, she wouldn’t trust you with any of her feelings, so in a way, it’s a good sign for your relationship with her.”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” I said, the weight in my chest suddenly feeling a tiny bit lighter. “You should totally be a therapist; you know that, right?”
She smiled, and we went our separate ways. Max’s room smelled exactly like the one at our house did—eau de musty sweat socks. His walls were painted a bright blue and were littered with Iron Man posters. He had an elaborate Lego city built in the corner and a gaming system hooked up to a small television at the foot of his race-car bed. I opened his dresser drawers, only to find bulging piles of unfolded and mismatched clothes—I’m sure being a single mom, Kelli chose to not make this a battle she waged with her son. I couldn’t say I blamed her.
Now I sifted through each of Max’s drawers, folding and packing as much as I could in the suitcase. I found his Iron Man costume in a wrinkled mound on the floor next to his bed—I wondered if he liked to sleep in it. I grabbed handfuls of underwear and a huge pile of mismatched socks and threw them in, too. His red flashlight was under the bed, something that I discovered only after crawling around and looking in every other nook and cranny of his room, including the back of his closet. I was still reaching for it, my butt in the air, when Melody spoke.
“I think I’ve got everything Ava wanted,” she said, and then, seeing me on the floor, asked, “What the hell are you doing under there?”
I jerked back, knocking my wrist on the bottom of the bed frame as I pulled out the flashlight and held it high for her to see. I stood up and sighed. “Boys are messy.”
She laughed, then paused. “Have you and Victor talked at all about what’s going to happen with the kids?”
“This morning, a little bit.” I told her what Victor had said and my promise to be there to support him.
She gave me a sidelong glance. “That’s a lot to take on, Grace.”
“I know,” I said, sighing and lifting my eyes back to hers. “But what am I supposed to do? Abandon them? I won’t do that. Not to mention the fact that I’m totally in love with Victor.” My voice shook with the threat of tears.
She nodded but didn’t appear entirely convinced. “Okay. Then I’ll help however I can. Take stepparenting classes with you. Or go to a support group.”
“Do they have support groups for women who are engaged to men whose ex-wives are dead and now have to help raise two kids?” I asked hopefully, only partially joking.
Melody laughed. “Probably not.” She reached up to tighten her ponytail. “So, what’s the deal with the pills?” I filled her in on what we knew—which wasn’t much. She dropped onto Max’s bed and let out a long breath. “Let me guess. You’re worried you and Victor getting engaged had something to do with her committing suicide?” She paused. “If she did, that is.”
I nodded. “My mom basically told me not to borrow trouble.”
“She’s right. You shouldn’t. You’ve got enough to deal with right now, my friend. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we?”
I nodded again but couldn’t let go of the worry that niggled at me. I was a big believer in going with my gut, and my gut was telling me there was more to this situation than I knew. My mother and Melody were right about one thing, though—there was nothing to be done about it until we knew for sure exactly how Kelli had died. I didn’t even want to consider what might have been going through her mind if he
r death wasn’t an accident—if she had swallowed those pills deliberately. I knew from Victor that over the years, her refusal to deal with her past made her emotionally unpredictable and maybe even a little unstable, but he’d never indicated she could be suicidal. If he’d suspected any possible danger, I had to believe he wouldn’t have let her take care of their children. He would have intervened.
“Is there anything else we should grab?” Melody said, interrupting my thoughts as she popped back up to her feet.
“I need to get a blue blanket from Kelli’s bed. It’s on Max’s list. Maybe you could get another suitcase and fill it up with some of Max’s toys and whatever else from Ava’s room she might like, so they’ll have some more familiar things around? They have some things at our house, but not very much.”
“Great idea,” she said, and headed back down the hall while I made my way into Kelli’s bedroom. The door was open, and when I stepped inside, I saw Kelli’s girly personality spread all over the room in its powder-blue walls, yellow floral curtains, and white lace throw pillows. Every inch of space on the top of her dresser was covered in beauty products, and she had a tall jewelry case set next to the maple-hued vanity with its huge, circular mirror. Her closet door was open, too, as though she had dressed in haste and forgotten to close it. I wondered what her last thoughts were. Maybe she was thinking of watching a Friday-night DVD at home with the kids and what she might get accomplished while they were with us for the rest of the weekend. I must have been in my office when she took her last breath, when she’d crawled into bed after dropping the kids off at school. I was sitting at my desk, reviewing those client files, no idea that everything was about to change. My throat thickened at the realization that I would never know when my life would come to an end. How suddenly everything might be lost.
I coughed and pushed back my tears, trying to focus on the task at hand. My eyes moved further around the room and noticed the floor around the white wicker hamper in the corner was littered with lacy bits of underwear. A stack of books rested on the nightstand next to her unmade bed. There was no empty pill bottle; Diane must have given it to the medics who took her friend to the hospital so the doctors would know what she might have taken.
Curious to see what Kelli had been reading, I stepped over and looked at the book on top of the stack. Healing After Loss, the title proclaimed in bright red letters. How to Let Go of the Pain and Reclaim Your Life. She’d lost her relationship with her parents; she’d lost Victor. Was there something else?
As far as I had witnessed, Kelli and Victor’s post-divorce relationship seemed mostly amicable. They had their moments of tension over the extra expenses around the kids that child support didn’t cover, or when Victor had to switch around which weekend he could see them because of a commitment at the restaurant, but overall, they seemed to get along. But I hadn’t been around the two of them together very much, so I didn’t know for sure. Seeing this book on Kelli’s nightstand now, three years after he’d moved out, I wondered if she regretted asking him to leave. I wondered if there were important things about their marriage that I didn’t know.
I shook my head, as though my mind was an Etch A Sketch and I could simply erase my thoughts. Glancing over to the bed, I saw the fuzzy blue blanket I was sure Max meant for me to bring to him, and after grabbing it, I noticed several photo albums over on the bookshelves. I decided to bring the kids a stack of those, too, thinking it might comfort the kids to have pictures of their mom. Impulsively, I took a few of Kelli’s sweaters out of her dresser for Ava to wear, too. Even if they didn’t fit her, it still might feel like her mother’s arms were around her.
Just as I was about to leave the room, I noticed another book lying on Kelli’s bed. It must have been beneath the blanket. The cover was a deep burgundy and stood out against her white lace sheet like a square of spilled blood. Hesitating just a breath before setting what I already carried down on the floor, I stepped back over to her bed and picked up the book.
It was a hard, smooth cover, larger than a novel or textbook. I flipped it over in my hands, not surprised to see San Luis Obispo Saints, 1993 in italics across the top. A yearbook. I turned the pages to find Kelli, starting with the freshman class. There she was: Kelli Reed. The picture was black and white, but I recognized her long, straight hair and closed-lipped smile. She’d been extremely pretty, even at what I guessed was fourteen. A little gawky maybe, but I could see the curve of her chest—not fake, it turned out, as this photo seemed to prove. Ava had mentioned that her mother had been a cheerleader in high school, but as I fanned through a few more pages looking for an image of the cheerleading squad, she was nowhere to be found in the pictures. I wondered if she just hadn’t been on the team her first year. I looked at the front two pages of the book, and then the back, but they were totally blank. No signatures. No “You are 2 Good 2 B 4gotten” or “Science lab sucked!” Why would she have a yearbook but not ask anyone to sign it? Maybe she hadn’t been popular enough, or maybe she was too shy. But even with all the time I spent taking care of Sam when I was in high school, at the end of the year I still had my classmates at least sign their names in my yearbook.
I glanced at the bookshelves again, thinking the other three yearbooks might be there and I could bring them along with the photo albums for Max and Ava to look through. But I didn’t see any book spines similar to the one I held. Why had she been looking at this before she died?
“You done, Grace?” Melody called out, interrupting my thoughts. “I filled another suitcase and it weighs about six hundred pounds. I need help getting it out to the car.”
Suddenly, the yearbook didn’t matter. Tears stung the back of my throat when I considered stepping back into the house with Victor and the kids. The hollow grief in their eyes, the already weary expression on Victor’s face. The story I’d written in my head of the kind of life I thought we would live had vanished. Now there were endless blank pages ahead, waiting to be filled. I suddenly felt the urge to hand everything over to Melody and let her deliver it all. However much I loved Victor and worried for Max and Ava, I wasn’t sure I could go through this without losing myself completely. I wanted to be the type of selfless woman who faced this kind of drama head-on, but I wasn’t sure I had it in me. I thought about my cramped but wonderfully peaceful condo and imagined myself within its walls again, surrounded by all my things. No real stress, no huge emotional disasters to clean up. And no Victor, either, I reminded myself. No companionship. No acceptance. No love.
“Coming,” I responded, holding the albums and blanket close to my chest, looking around Kelli’s room one last time. There was no question I would have to face this. Victor needed me. It didn’t matter whether I felt ready or not.
Kelli
In the romance novels Kelli liked to read, the men were always handsome. They might be hard to reach at first—they might be in denial about how much they wanted to fall in love—but after they’d met and finally made love to the heroine, they always crumbled and admitted how they felt.
For two weeks after Kelli had lain down in the front seat of Jason’s truck, she kept waiting for him to crumble. She saw him in the hallways; she smiled at him in algebra. But he barely spoke a word to her. When she tried to talk with him, he looked at his friends and snickered. He moved his seat away from hers when she passed him a note. My parents grounded me for a month, it said. But it was worth it. Hot tears flooded her eyes when she saw him toss the note around to his buddies. She didn’t understand how he could do that when he loved her.
“He doesn’t love you, Kel,” Nancy told her as they stood next to each other in the bathroom, fixing their hair before heading to their next class. “He used you to get laid.”
Kelli blushed. “He did not. He told me he loved me.”
Nancy turned and frowned at her. “Please. Boys will say anything to get in your pants.”
Kelli blamed herself. Maybe she didn’t play hard-to-get long enough. She should have made him wait. She
should have made him take her on a real date. The only place her parents would let her go was the library, so for the next few weeks, she went there after school and scoured back issues of Cosmo for articles about what to do to win Jason over. Want to make him jealous? one article said. Flirt with his friends and he’ll realize how much he cares.
Perfect, Kelli thought. The following day, she approached Jason and his friends Rory and Mike at their table in the lunchroom. “Hi, Mike,” Kelli said, purposely not looking at Jason. She knew she looked pretty—she’d borrowed a tight blue sweater from Nancy and a pair of Levi’s that had been pegged at the ankles. Every curve on her body showed.
Mike, another tall boy who wasn’t quite as handsome as Jason, smiled at her. “Hey, Kelli. What’s up?”
“Not much,” she said, lifting her shoulder and pushing out her chest. “I was thinking . . . do you maybe want to study together later? I could use some help with algebra.”
Mike glanced over to Jason with a strange smirk on his face. “Sure,” he said. “I’ve heard you are lots of fun to, uh, ‘study’ with.” Mike made invisible quote marks in the air, and seeing this, all three boys burst into laughter.
Kelli felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She didn’t know what to do. Her eyes burned with tears, and she looked over to Jason. “You told them?” she whispered. Her voice fractured as she spoke.
Jason lifted his jaw and shrugged. “Yeah, well, you’re a church girl, right? You should have known better.” They all laughed again and Kelli raced out of the lunchroom. She hid in the bathroom for the rest of the afternoon, crying.
When she got home, her father was standing in the living room, waiting for her. She stopped short, unused to seeing him before the bank closed at six o’clock. She knew her eyes were red, so she dropped her gaze to the floor, hoping he wouldn’t notice. “Where’s Mama?” she asked.