The Days Without You: A Story of Love, Loss, and Grief

by Skylar Wilson

  On Monday, after having lunch at her usual spot—a tiny sandwich shop down the block where the woman behind the counter always called her “sugar”—Kylie sat staring blankly at the computer monitor. Her mind was uneasy, restless, and swirling with thoughts. At the forefront was her mother, Sarah Lewis. Sarah had an appointment today with the doctor to examine the lump in her breast she had discovered, and the anxiety Kylie felt over it was far worse than Sarah’s concern.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she had said, followed by, “Your Nana had one, too, and it was fine. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, sweet pea.”

  But how could she not worry about it!

  The small desk in front of her gave home to a large, slightly ancient desktop computer and keyboard, in front of which Kylie spent most of her workday. Her small team of the start-up magazine spent their day researching local stories to report, such as a new restaurant downtown or articles like 10 Tips to Look Prettier in 5 Minutes—an assignment Kylie hadn’t particularly been pleased over. Being the most recent junior writer meant receiving the pile of unwanted jobs. Other articles were written for and posted to the magazine’s website daily, so, she figured, at least she remained busy most days.

  She had, too, a view of downtown through the large wall of windows from the third-floor office, which she would stare at throughout the day. The late afternoon sun was already beginning to set behind the old brick and stucco buildings, and the light caressed the steeples reaching high above the skyline to cast long shadows along rooftops as the horizon quickly faded into deeper hues. The whole picture was a beautifully stark contrast to the office’s somewhat bland interior: off-white walls adorned with several printouts of past magazine covers, worn and mismatched carpet tiles, and a general hum of noise—ringing phones, fingers tapping on keyboards, some happy and some agitated voices.

  With a yawn, Kylie leaned back in the creaky, upholstered rolling chair, stretching her arms out in front of her. Half an hour remained in the workday, but perhaps she could sneak out early. Peeking over the cubicle wall, she noted that the editor-in-chief’s office blinds were closed. Good—that meant Amanda had either left for the day or did not want to be bothered. Ducking back down behind her padded cubicle walls, Kylie saved her work and reached for the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.

  “Oh, Kylie!”

  Maggie, the content supervisor, seemed to appear from nowhere in particular as she beamed and approached Kylie’s desk, leaning against the edge and prominently brushing her hair behind her ear with her left hand. A three-carat diamond sparkled under the fluorescent lights.

  “Did you finish that last job I sent you?” she asked. Her gaze was expectant, but Kylie guessed she wasn’t particularly interested in discussing work.

  “Yeah, I submitted it to you about an hour ago,” said Kylie, holding back the tartness on her tongue.

  “Oh. Well. Good.”

  A pause.

  Kylie forced a smile. “Congrats, by the way. On your engagement. You must be excited.”

  “Thank you! I am so excited. I couldn’t believe it when he popped the question. We’re thinking maybe November or December, but we haven’t set a date yet. Anyway, I’ll go proof that job before I leave.”

  She merely nodded at Maggie with a half-hearted smile, watching her flounce back to her own cubicle. Finally. She just wanted to sneak out early.

  Gathering her purse and slipping on her gray coat, she crept past the row of cubicles and toward the heavy door leading to the stairwell, grateful for the dirty carpet as it muted the click of the flats on her feet.

  “Kylie!”

  She froze. Oh no, she moaned under her breath. That familiar, greasy voice sent a shudder through her. Bruce, whose desk sat only two away from the salvation of the musty stairwell, poked his head out and smoothed a cowlick. Kylie gritted her teeth. Slick was a good name for Bruce, she thought, eyeing his dark hair thick with gel and flexing her fingers before they stiffened into a fist. What she wouldn’t give to slap him for the things he’d said!

  “Haven’t seen you all day,” he said with a small smirk. “You smell lovely. New perfume?”

  Her tone flattened. “No.”

  He stood and, draping his arm over the cubicle wall, leaned in closer, so close that Kylie smelled his overly musky cologne. Lord have mercy, does he bathe in it? She choked down a cough.

  “How about going out for a few drinks tonight?” He reached out to brush his fingers along the length of her arm. She jerked away, out of reach.

  This again, seriously? How many times had she declined his offers and propositions? The mere idea of going out with him sickened her.

  “No,” said Kylie, fidgeting impatiently and uncomfortably with the buckle on the face of her bag.

  Bruce leaned closer. She stepped back.

  “In case you change your mind, I’ll give you my number and you can call me if—”

  “No thanks.” She pulled her jacket tighter about her and, without another glance, added, “I have to be somewhere.”

  Dashing past the last two desks, she darted into the freedom of the stairwell, her mother on her mind.

  Some days, downtown traffic proved more challenging, between the horse-drawn carriage tours, bicycle taxis, and narrow one-way streets. Even Kylie’s small hatchback seemed cramped on the streets today.

  Skipping the stop at her apartment on the outskirts of downtown, Kylie drove straight to West Ashley, a suburb where her mother still lived in the house Kylie grew up in—a small, blue colonial with red shutters and pansies lining the front sidewalk. She parked in the driveway and shook her head at the bright red and green Christmas wreath still hanging on the front door. Her mother had promised three times already this month to take it down.

  Without knocking, she allowed herself in.

  “Hi, Mama,” she called, kicking off her shoes by the door and hanging her jacket on the banister of the stairs.

  “Hi, sweet pea. I’m in the kitchen,” called her mother, Sarah Lewis, in return. “Don’t hang your coat on the banister.”

  Grumbling beneath her breath, she moved her jacket to a coat closet down the hall. The hallway itself was still lined with floral, now with a slight yellow tinge, wallpaper that had been the same as long as Kylie could remember. The smell of bubbling coffee and burnt cookies welcomed her as she stepped into the kitchen. Stained oak cupboards were also the same, although her mother had managed to keep them in almost pristine condition.

  Sarah’s sturdy frame bent over the sink as she furiously scrubbed a metal pan with baked-on, nearly black cookie crumbles. Kylie kissed her cheek before crunching on a cookie from the pile beside the stove.

  “Eat that over a napkin or over the sink,” said Sarah, setting the now clean pan in a drying rack and moving to the refrigerator to take out a container of creamer.

  Kylie did so, standing in front of the sink and looking out the small curtained window. Her mother sorted through a small pile of mail, and her hands paused at one particular letter; Kylie glimpsed the front, which was handwritten in scrawled letters. Perhaps, Kylie thought as she crunched on the cookie, it was from her mother’s estranged sister—Kylie’s Aunt Ruby—but the handwriting looked more masculine in her opinion. A bit half-scrawl, half-cursive.

  The coffee pot bubbled and churned as it finished brewing, and Sarah quickly tucked away the mail in the corner drawer.

  They fixed their coffee with French Vanilla creamer and sugar—an extra scoop of sugar to Kylie’s—and Kylie followed her mother into the living room, passing the far wall lined with family photographs that captured their still-whole family. The room itself bore the same ancient wallpaper as the hallway, although the furniture had been replaced in the last few years for a more updated look after the previous sofa had grown too tired. On the fireplace mantel stood a row of Kylie’s school pictures, starting with her senior portrait and traveling back in time to kindergarten, and in every photograph, she had worn the same goo
fy smile. At the very end was the Lewis family portrait; Sarah, her naturally mousy hair not yet dyed to its current deep chestnut color, and Daniel standing tall as they held six-year-old Kylie’s shoulders. Kylie looked very much like a perfect mix of her parents; with her father she shared the same dark sandy hair, the same slightly crooked nose, and the same curve in the set of their uneven lips. From her mother she had received a round, nearly heart-shaped face and fiercely blue eyes, as well as a small cowlick at one temple.

  Kylie straightened the frame and sank into the end of the sofa.

  “Tell me what’s new,” said Sarah as she sat beside her daughter. One hand fiddled with the gold chain of her necklace, rhythmically sliding the diamond pendant back and forth.

  She shrugged. “Oh, not much.” She bit the inside of her cheek as the concert came to mind. To tell her that Cat had persuaded her into going would be a victory for her mother; she frequently insisted that Kylie needed to get out more, to be more social. The more her mother persisted, the more Kylie urged that she’d rather stay home or surf. “How did your appointment go?” she added, too quickly.

  Discerning, Sarah eyed her. “How was work?”

  “Fine, just another Monday,” she answered, grumbling.

  “Has Bruce been bothering you again?”

  “No.” Kylie glanced at her mother before looking down into her mug. Her long bangs fell in her eyes, and she brushed them away. “Yes,” she conceded.

  Sarah’s tone hardened. “You need to stand up to him, or at least tell Amanda.” Her brow knitted together. “You can’t let him keep harassing you. You shouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior.”

  Kylie’s jaw tightened. “It’s nothing. How did your appointment go? What did the doctor say about the lump?”

  Sarah paused. Kylie frowned. A thousand different reasons for her mother’s reluctance to tell her something flew through Kylie’s mind, and she vacillated between all the ideas. They’ve already determined it’s cancer. It’s got to be cancer. She’s dying in three weeks. No, maybe it’s better news. Her mother hardly ever waited to tell her anything; surprises were few in Kylie’s life growing up, including birthday gifts.

  “What is it?”

  Sarah’s face contorted as if she were in pain. “Well, they sent me for a mammogram and an ultrasound.”

  “And…?”

  “And they want to do a biopsy on Thursday.” She heaved a breath, her chest rising and falling. “They found several smaller lumps other than the one I found.”

  “Mama. Why didn’t you call me as soon as you found out?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to worry. You panic over the little things. It might be nothing. Might be benign.”

  Kylie rolled her shoulders in irritation. The fact that her mother may or may not have cancer was something that shouldn’t be kept secret, she thought. Definitely not something to be kept from your daughter. Bitter, Kylie drank deeply from her mug to avoid speaking.

  “How’s Cat doing, by the way? Did y’all have your date the other night?”

  “She’s fine, and yes.”

  Sarah raised one brow.

  No avoiding bringing up the concert now. Kylie sighed and launched into the explanation of being coerced into attending the concert, how Cat’s brother had gotten them tickets, losing her phone and having to buy a new one, but refrained from mentioning Adam.

  “That’s wonderful! You don’t get out enough. You’re too young to be a homebody.”

  “I’m plenty old enough to be a homebody if I want,” she retorted.

  But her mother patted Kylie’s knee. “I’m serious. Live your life. Don’t coop yourself up at home.”

  Well, what did she have to lose?

  The overhead lights were swelteringly hot as they beat down on the stage of Old Time Joe’s, a bar not far from Grits. Beads of sweat rolled down Adam’s temples and plastered his hair to his skull. The pounding of Shawn’s drums and Benny’s guitar blaring from the amps filled the room. His entire being, down to his bones, reverberated with every note and chord, and the cheers from the crowded room fueled his adrenaline. The exhilaration of the stage had always been better than anything Adam had ever known.

  Adam leaned into the microphone. “Thanks for coming to check us out,” he said, looking from face to face. “Again, we’re One Night Young. I’m Adam; that’s Benny on guitar, Ollie on bass guitar, and Shawn back there on drums. We’ve got some CDs and swag after the show, so stick around. Thank you!”

  After exiting the stage and grabbing a few bottles of water, Adam and the band set up their small table filled with shirts, stickers, and CDs. Chatter and noise filled the dark bar, which was packed to the brim with people. Benny and his wife, Lacey, stood chattering with another couple, while Ollie flirted with a group of women, which only egged them on. Shawn held a beer in one hand, leaning back and watching as Adam exchanged merchandise for cash and handed out lists of upcoming shows.

  A middle-aged man dressed in a crisp blazer, free of any speck of lint, approached the table. His dark hair lay parted evenly to one side, and his arm draped around the woman next to him. His khaki slacks were perfectly pressed into a crease. Typical anal retentiveness, Adam thought as his mood quickly soured.

  “You know I’m thirty, not fifteen anymore, right, Dad? You don’t have to check up on me.” He winced as his father, John Bell, thumped his back and grasped his shoulder. “You didn’t tell me you were coming tonight.”

  “I’m not checking up on you, and I hadn’t planned on coming, but my clients cancelled our dinner meeting for tonight. Plus, I wanted you to meet Mary.” He motioned to the thin woman. She was dressed modestly, unlike the usual women clinging to John’s arm, and not a strand of her red hair fell out of place from her tight, neat bun. Adam shook her hand, and she smiled.

  “Your father brags about you all the time,” said Mary, her mirth touching her eyes.

  “Great,” mumbled Adam. Shawn sidled his way behind Adam towards the bar. Probably going for another beer—what is that, his fifth already? But Adam shrugged off the thought.

  “I can definitely see the resemblance,” she continued, laughing at Adam’s grimace. “I’ll be right back.” She squeezed John’s arm and disappeared into the throng.

  “She’s something else, isn’t she?” said John, watching her walk away.

  Adam ignored him, instead handing a t-shirt to a young woman and giving her change from their tin box of money. It had been mere weeks since the last girlfriend came and went in his father’s life, yet his father seemed utterly unfazed by this fact. And the one before her had only lasted a month. How quickly his father cycled through women made Adam want to gag.

  “So, you have a new girlfriend. Another one,” he said, finally.

  “And? When have you ever cared?”

  “Since you’ve gone through eight relationships in the last year.”

  “And you’ve been counting? It’s not any of your business,” said John. “You are my son, not a dating guru. If you were, you wouldn’t be single.”

  Adam scoffed. “You know, Mom told me she tried to make it work. At least I don’t just leave when things get tough. How many women did you screw while Mom was in the hospital? Do you even care how she’s doing?”

  Memories of his mother, broken and lifeless, flashed through his mind. Who was it who had to take care of her? Not his father, that was for sure. Adam had only been seventeen, yet he had been forced to step up lest he lose his mother too.

  John avoided his glare. “Things happened between us that you don’t know or can understand. Ella and I only talk on a need-to-know basis since she moved.”

  But Adam understood perfectly. His father had abandoned Ella when she needed him most, when her grief became too much, when she could no longer hold on to her last shred of sanity and succumbed to the worst thing Adam could have imagined. She survived, but it had been Adam who remained by her hospital bedside, not John. While his mother was hospitalized in a psychiatr
ic facility, his father found solace in bars and other women. Eight years ago, Ella finally returned to her roots in New York after the final divorce papers had been signed.

  A group of boisterous girls approached the table, and Adam forced a smile as he handed out show schedules. John nudged him and nodded toward the gaggle. “You’re one to talk, you know. You could date any of those girls,” he said as they vanished into the crowd.

  “Whatever, Dad. I’m not you.”

  “Maybe if you listened once in a while, you’d have a lady in your life. Look around you—there are plenty of available women here.”

  “Like I’d take your dating advice.”

  The smug smirk on John’s face morphed into a casual smile as Mary emerged from behind a crowd of college students. She promptly kissed John’s cheek.

  Adam nodded at her with his own smirk. “Hope you don’t have a career, Mary. Keeping this knucklehead in line is a full-time job.” He jerked a thumb at his father.

  Mary’s lips parted, half smiling, yet no words escaped.

  “Don’t be rude, Adam,” said John.

  Heat flushed across Adam’s cheeks. Rude? No, his father was the rude one by showing up without calling ahead of time. Reaching down for a cardboard box beneath the table, Adam slapped another stack of CDs on the table. “Don’t you have a court case to work on or some murderers to defend or something?” he blurted out.

  Mary seemed to freeze, other than her eyes flickering back and forth between Adam and John. The tension in the air had peaked, and Adam wanted nothing more than to sling several choice words at his father.

  Finally, John broke the silence between them. “We’ll let you get back to your, uh, fan club.”

  “It was nice to meet you,” said Mary with a tentative smile.

  “Yeah, you too.” He gave a slight nod to her.

  Without saying goodbye, John slipped his arm around Mary’s shoulders, and they squeezed their way into the crowd.

  Adam ran both his hands through his hair and closed his eyes, his agitation already beginning to subside.