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“Go, Zoë, go! Come on, you can do it!” I heard from somewhere to my left.
I knew so many people at these things that identifying the source was nearly impossible.
There was an excited chaos—clapping, cheering, all the normal sounds of a race. And rising from somewhere above the indistinguishable soup of sounds, a group of voices unified and solidified into one.
“Say yes! Say yes!” Over and over it came, thunderous like a battle cry; and soon the small group of voices became innumerable.
I ran through the chute, past the announcer and the overhead electronic clock that seemed to spill each second. The chanting grew louder and louder, and I finally realized what they were saying and who they were saying it to.
It was for me.
I bent forward, leaning on my thighs as I tried to catch my breath. I closed my eyes against the sweat making a hasty trail down my face and breathed deeply, my heart still racing from the exertion and the excitement. When I straightened and opened my eyes, they were filled by the sight of Paul—down on one knee in front of me.
Sweaty, shirtless, and wind-blown, he looked up at me with eyes that seemed to sparkle brighter than I’d ever seen them. He reached into the tiny front key pocket of his running shorts and pulled out a ring, smiling. Expectantly, nervously, unabashedly smiling—like a little boy at Christmas.
My heart was melting and overflowing and exploding all at the same time.
“Zoë Evangeline Trent,” he said, his voice barely audible above all the noise around us. “Will you marry me?”
Maybe I was still trying to catch my breath.
Maybe it was shock that this was truly happening.
But at that moment, I couldn’t even find words. The salt of the sweat I had tried so hard to keep out of my eyes ran together with the salt of tears, and all I could do was reach out and fall into Paul’s waiting arms.
He rose up and held me long and tight—tight enough to leave me breathless.
Finally, I found my breath and my words, and I pulled back to look at him. Everything else melted into a foggy haze as I looked into those cool blue eyes.
“Yes,” I said, nodding as fresh tears pooled and blinded me. “Yes, yes, yes,” I whispered again. “Yes, I’ll marry you.” The words came louder and stronger, and a raucous whoop rose up from the crowd that had gathered around us.
“Now give the woman a kiss, you idiot!” Sam bellowed, pushing his way to the front of the fray.
I smiled at Paul, and he smiled back—his crinkled eyes and crooked grin the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. The kiss that followed was full-bodied and passionate, heady and electric and consuming. One that set my heart on fire and seemed to blaze a trail all the way down to my toes. I could taste the salt on his lips, a remnant of race sweat, as he pulled me tighter and tighter to his chest and lifted me off the ground. The rest of the world washed away, the noise around us muted to a barely audible whisper. It was our moment, our feeling—and the fact that other people were around became an insignificant detail.
I could have stayed like that forever, locked in that embrace and in that kiss.
This time was ours to claim.
Our beginning.
Our end.
Chapter 1 (#u2b5a0e90-587a-5734-972a-38985ea5cb95)
The swish swish swish of my windshield wipers against the rain was almost hypnotizing. All of the colors and figures outside the car were softened into an impressionistic painting that moved as I stared at everything, seeing nothing. The traffic light flicked from red to green, but I didn’t register the change, didn’t notice the cars in the lane next to me start to inch forward.
The cars in line behind me honked, snapping me out of my daze.
Daze.
It would have been nice if it had been that simple. I wasn’t quite sure what the word for it at that point would have been. What could you call the total sense of loss, the lack of desire to go on living that accompanies the death of the only person you’ve ever truly loved? The feeling is too overwhelming and complicated to be confined simply to one word.
But that was what I was trying to define.
To my family, to my friends, to my boss.
To myself.
Maybe if I could define it, I could find out how to change it. Maybe if I could define it, I could fix it.
I blinked against the tears that seemed a constant, dormant presence that lay just under the surface and put my foot on the gas.
“Oh, get over it, lady,” I muttered at the woman behind me, registering her aggressive presence in my rearview mirror. She gestured wildly for me to move my beat-up Hyundai, swiftly swerving her sleek Porsche into the other lane as soon as a sliver of space opened up. As she sped past, she made sure she caught a long enough look at me to communicate her displeasure. I smiled mirthlessly at her as she glowered, her sharply-tweezed eyebrows punctuating the sour look she was so intent on giving me.
I’m often amazed at how angry people get at other drivers in traffic. As though they were intentionally being slighted or inconvenienced by the other people occupying the road; as though their destination, their agenda was so much more important than anyone else’s. As though there weren’t so many more important things to worry about, like whether they’d had an argument with someone before they walked out the door.
Or whether they’d kissed anyone good-bye.
Whether they’d remembered to say, “I love you.”
I looked at the engagement ring on my finger, a sparkling reminder of what I’d lost. It was ironic. Something so bright and beautiful, an announcement of togetherness and future, was for me almost as cutting as a knife. I still wore it because it felt wrong not to, like taking it off would be denying the man I had loved so much for so long.
There were times I wanted to forget all of it, forget all the happiness so that maybe I would be able to forget how empty I now felt. There were times I wanted to take the ring off of my finger and never look at it again. Never catch another glimpse of my left hand to be given a fresh reminder that Paul wasn’t there anymore and that there would never be a wedding ring to complete the circle.
It had been nine months.
Nine long, agonizing months that I could barely recall.
They were a blur of tears and paperwork and a million faces I’d never seen before all telling me how sorry they were for my loss. I felt as though I’d been on one of those stupid merry-go-rounds at the playground that’s spun too fast, and looking at anything makes you sick.
Nine months.
I still felt as though it had happened an hour ago, that I’d just picked up the phone to hear that Paul was dead, that he’d ruptured an aneurism in his brain. We’d never even known it was there.
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel after nine months. Was there a timeline for pain? Was there some magic number of days or months or years that, once reached, won passage into a less agonizing existence?
I couldn’t compare notes—Sam had disappeared in a puff of smoke, walking out of my life without a second look back, a shock that felt like another death. And it was, to some degree. I had considered him a friend, a devoted sidekick to Paul. Out of anyone, I would have expected him to stick by my side and share in my pain.
As I soon learned, there were many people in the rotating doors of life, quick to pass in and out without explanation. Even Paul’s parents had taken that quick spin to the Exit. Not that that would have surprised anyone familiar with Paul’s relationship with them. They were non-entities, barely skirting around the edges of his life—by their choice, not his. Paul had been their trophy child, the checklist item they had successfully crossed off, only to leave him to be the responsibility of a string of nannies and boarding schools. There had been no love lost in life, and it certainly hadn’t been found in his death.
My relationship with my own parents was in direct opposition to that, and it was one that Paul had often envied. Mine was a family large in love, even if it was small in size. We, the Trent Trio, had always been close. When Paul had died, my parents were the first on my doorstep, quickly wrapping me in their arms and their love and hardly letting me go until they’d had to leave to head back to their home in Birmingham. Five hours’ worth of road time had, in the past nine months, become an eternity away.
Nine months that slithered with loneliness and reminders.
I wanted to be able to turn the corner and not feel as though I was going to collapse into a massive heap of tears if I had to walk past our favorite restaurant. I wanted to be able to see a Liberty Blue Dodge Ram without that unconscious flash of hope that Paul might be behind the wheel. I wanted to be able to walk past the shaving aisle in Wal-Mart and not have to face the crushing realization that I would never again hear Paul on the phone asking me to pick up his shaving cream if I was stopping there on my way home.
I still felt ragged, broken. And the fact that I couldn’t pin-point an end to this feeling made it seem even more consuming, more hopeless somehow.
There is no expiration date for grief.
I pulled into my parking spot, finally home after another day at work I barely remembered. Another day of keeping books and punching numbers for clients I never saw. My days seemed to run on auto pilot, in part for self-preservation and in part because I had truly lost interest.
Work was just something I did, something that filled up eight hours of my day so that I wouldn’t have to think about other things. I wasn’t even sure how well I did it anymore.
And, to be perfectly honest, I really didn’t care.
I didn’t have the energy to care. There was too much involved in just keeping it all together during those hours at the office, when I slipped the “normal” mask in place—the one that talked and interacted with my coworkers as though I was fine. As though I was doing a spectacular job of moving past my fiancé’s death and rebuilding a life on my own, just as I should have been. And it was exhausting. The modicum of perfection I was trying so hard to preserve took so much concentration, sometimes I felt as though my head would explode. But better that than admit to the fact that I had failed so miserably at moving on, that I was still flat on my back after being knocked down.
“Get over it,” I muttered again, just as I had to the woman in traffic.
Only this time, I was speaking to myself.
I rested my head on the steering wheel, closing my eyes and listening to the sound of the rain pelting the windshield and the roof of my car, the purring sound of the engine as it idled. I didn’t even listen to the radio anymore. I wasn’t sure I could handle hearing songs that reminded me of him.
My cell phone trilled inside my purse, breaking the spell. I lifted my head and glared at the bag resting beside me on the passenger seat. Who would be calling me? My phone rarely rang anymore; people seemed afraid to talk to me. I wasn’t sure if they thought I was too fragile to carry on a conversation, or if they were absurdly afraid that death was contagious. Whatever the reason, I was too drained to be offended. It was actually almost a relief. There comes a certain point that having to say, “I’m fine,” one more time becomes an agony in itself, when you’d rather avoid the sympathetic looks that everyone gives you when they hear what happened.
The phone continued to ring as I rifled through the contents of my over-stuffed purse. I was curious by now at who it might be, who might dare risk calling the grief-stricken pseudo-widow.
That’s what I was.
Not quite a wife, not quite a widow.
I was without definition.
I found my phone and hastily flipped it open, not even bothering to check the caller ID.
“Hello?” I croaked.
“Zoë? Is that you?”
“Kate?” I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like her.
Kate, who’d been my best friend since the third grade and had been there for every major event in my life.
Every one except this one.
“I’m on my way, Zoë. I’m here,” she said so quietly it was almost a whisper.
Hearing her reminded me of how much I had missed her, and not having her to lean on these past months had left me feeling even more alone. I knew that if she could have been there with me, she would have. She would have dropped everything and come running the minute she heard.
Simpler said than done, though. Kate had spent the last year in Africa doing relief work, living in poor, dangerous conditions that afforded few luxuries and complicated travel. She hadn’t been able to come home for Paul’s memorial, but we’d written to each other constantly. She gave me every bit of support possible, but I still missed her like crazy.
Technically, she wasn’t quite home yet, but she was at least finally back in the country. She’d dialed my number the minute her plane had touched down at LaGuardia, her first domestic stop in the long succession of airports and layovers that was to come over the next hours. Knowing Kate, she probably hadn’t even waited until the stewardess had granted permission for cell phones to be turned back on.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“Just come over.” It was all I could manage without crying.
Kate and I had met in the third grade, after one of the sadistic little boys in my class decided he liked the contents of my lunchbox more than his and attempted to lay claim to them. Fortunately for me, Kate’s innate sense of seeking justice for the underdog had kicked in early, and she came to my rescue. The freckle-faced little pipsqueak never even saw it coming. One minute, he was twisting my arm behind my back in an effort to persuade me of the merits of relinquishing my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The next, he was flat on his back with a bloody nose and one hum-dinger of a black eye.
The mean right hook was a move she’d learned from one of her five older brothers, while her self-appointed role of school-ground superhero seemed an attempt to mirror the values that her parents had been trying to teach her. I’d always known she would pursue that fierce passion and channel it to do something important with her life; but, on that day, she was my guardian angel.
Over the next two decades, Kate and I took our cafeteria meeting and cemented our bond to become closer than the sisters we’d each always dreamed of having. My house became her house, her house became mine. Had we been able to occupy the exact same space at the exact same time, we would have been one person, and sometimes I think our parents forgot which kid belonged where.
We differed in so many ways that our friendship might have given other people pause. Not only in personality, but also in physicality. While I was small-boned and athletic, Kate was tall and regal, even as a child. My light brown curls were in direct opposition to the thick blonde mane that cascaded down her back like hair in an expensive shampoo commercial, my large green eyes like foliage to be watered in the wash of her impossibly bright blue ones. I maintained an “athletic” build, never managing to fill out my bras, while Kate could rock a 34C like nobody’s business.
When boys entered the picture, none was allowed access to the inner realm unless approved by the uninterested party and a rigorous battery of tests was passed. After high school, we moved in together and pursued our respective futures at local colleges instead of flitting off to far-flung universities that would strain both our finances and our relationship. Despite the fact that we knew life might eventually send us off in different directions, we were determined to walk the road side by side as long as we possibly could.
The year after graduation proved to be the beginning of our diverging paths. Kate enthusiastically signed on with Oxfam, while I fell into a job at an area accounting firm. She was active while I was complacent. She had a passion while I had a job, and I would have been lying if I said there wasn’t part of me that was more than just a little bit jealous that she knew what she wanted from life and wasn’t afraid to go after it.
Kate was everything I wanted to be when I grew up.
Just without the running off to third world, impoverished, and war-torn countries part.
I was a little too fond of indoor plumbing and other modern conveniences.
Kate had loved Paul the minute she met him, nicknaming him “Six” and telling everyone he was the sixth brother she’d never known she always wanted. Her work with Oxfam and various other programs kept her traveling, so she didn’t have much opportunity to spend time with us; but the time we did share, no one seemed out of place or ill at ease. Everyone fit together as seamlessly and easily as though they had known each other for years instead of the brief period that it truly had been. Even Paul’s best friend Sam had met with her approval, and I’d briefly entertained the thought that the two of them might one day end up together, making us all one big happy family. A relationship like that, though, would have needed more of a foundation than merely the week-long visit she’d had with us during the two years Paul and I had been together.
Despite the miles and the time apart, though, Kate and I had kept our friendship as strong as possible, never allowing contact to lapse—even when we had to resort to book-length letters sent through the slowly moving channels of regular mail. Paul’s death had been a devastating shock to Kate, as well, since the two of them had become close through their own exchange of letters.
And now, she was finally coming home.
Chapter 2 (#u2b5a0e90-587a-5734-972a-38985ea5cb95)
I woke the next morning to the sound of my alarm clock, a wretched, wrenching, jarring sound that seemed to be a cross between a school bell and a fire alarm. It was the first of my five alarms to go off, each set at three-minute intervals so that oversleeping was made nearly impossible.
I opened my eyes to glare at the glowing digital numbers and smacked the snooze button.
It was Saturday, not that it really made that much difference to me anymore. Saturdays were just another day to survive like all the rest.
I rolled out of bed, barely managing to escape landing in an ungraceful heap on the floor, all tangled up in my sheets. I hadn’t slept well last night, though that hardly proved different from any other night. There was a decided difference in things, though—I felt different. I felt tired of it.
I shuffled into the bathroom to grab my morning handful of vitamins and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like death.
“Good morning, beautiful,” I said sarcastically to the unrecognizable face I saw staring back at me. I looked haggard. My skin was dull, my eyes were puffy, and I was desperately in need of a haircut. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had one. What had happened to the woman Paul had fallen in love with? I wondered if maybe she had died with him.
I felt as though she had.
I felt as though I was an empty shell, completely unsure of what to do and who I was anymore.
I was still standing in front of the mirror, staring at my reflection but not really seeing anything, when the buzzer sounded. I was startled out of my near-catatonic state and propelled myself out of the bathroom, away from the image of the pathetic woman in the mirror.
“Yes?” I asked into the little white intercom box by my front door.
“It’s Kate,” it crackled back at me.
Two seconds later, she was at my door, crushing my bones as she hugged me.
