Present Day, Late September
Awareness surged into my consciousness. I fought to hold onto the darkness, to press my eyes shut so I could remain in the sanctuary of sleep. Reluctantly my eyes fluttered open in the dense fabric of the pillow I had my face buried in. A groggy haze clouded my senses, and my mind reeled as I struggled to make sense of what it was that had jarred me awake.
Lying on my stomach, I lifted my head. I blinked as my sight slowly adjusted to the muted light bleeding in from the heavy drapes I had pulled over the window. I squinted in the direction of my door. Knocking continued to resonate from downstairs. I rammed my face back into the refuge of the pillow, willing whoever was pounding at my front door to disappear.
I should have known that would never be my luck.
A key rattled in the lock. The front door unlatched and it slowly whined open.
My pulse stuttered. Not in fear, but because I didn’t think I could handle this today.
Every time, it was the same.
“Liz?” traveled up the stairs on a direct pathway to my unwilling ears.
Natalie.
I didn’t respond. Instead I gripped the pillow, forcing my face deep into the fabric. Maybe if I bored into it hard enough, it would swallow me whole. Maybe…maybe I could just disappear.
Footsteps creaked on the stairs. “Liz?” she called again, quieter this time. I squeezed my eyes tighter when I felt her presence emerge. My bedroom door sitting half ajar slowly swung open all the way.
Tension hovered as a thick silence between us before, “Elizabeth,” finally flooded into my room on a troubled breath.
Gathering the energy, I forced myself to turn toward her. I rested my cheek on the pillow, blinking over at my cousin who stood in my doorway with worry etching every line on her young face.
She’d grown her hair out a bit, the dark blonde locks curling in a soft wave just over her shoulders. She wore her normal—a thin, over-sized sweatshirt with the neck cut out so it hung loosely off one shoulder, short-short cutoffs, and flip-flops. She turned up a soft smile.
Casual and kind. She always was.
“Hey,” she said quietly as she chanced a step into my room.
“Hey,” I returned, my voice scratchy against my dry throat. I tried to pretend as if I was happy to see her. And it wasn’t like I didn’t want to see her, that I didn’t care about her or want her to be here. It was just the way she looked at me, as if she could possibly understand. Sympathy I didn’t want oozed from her pores. Her movements were slow as she came to stand at the edge of my bed, like maybe if she touched me, I would break.
She seemed unwilling to accept that I was already broken.
“It’s time to get up, sweetheart,” she almost cooed as she reached out and brushed the hair from my forehead. “I’m here to pick you up. We’re going to go to lunch with your mom and your sisters.”
Internally I cringed. I knew it wasn’t their intention, but these interventions always felt more like an ambush.
“You should have called first. I don’t think I’m feeling up to it today.”
Though she tried to hide it, frustration leaked from her sigh. “Come on, Elizabeth. You’re never up for it. And you and I both know if I’d have called, you just wouldn’t have answered. You need to get out of this house. It’s just an hour or two.” She strode across my room and raked the drapes back from the window.
Bright light burned into the room. I blanched at the unwelcomed intrusion.
She headed back to the entryway. “Now go jump in the shower. I’ll be waiting for you downstairs.”
“Nat…” I mumbled, just wishing she would leave me alone.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “We’re going to lunch, Elizabeth. You need to eat and your family needs to see you. Two birds with one stone and all.” She kind of laughed, though there was little humor to it. It sounded more like disappointment.
I rolled onto my back and draped my arm over my eyes. “What time is it?”
“Just after eleven…which means it’s time to get up. Now scoot.”
Resigned, I sat up on the side of the bed with my back to Natalie. I willed myself to leave the place that was my only reprieve. The only remedy for the bleakness of this life was found in the obscured blackness of sleep. Not in the pills they promised would make me feel better but instead just intensified the aching numbness. Not in the counseling sessions that did nothing but stir up the pain, those anguished hours that only amplified the loss.
All I wanted was to sleep.
I didn’t dream. I didn’t see. I didn’t hurt.
I didn’t exist.
Get up, I screamed at myself from within my mind.
Sucking in a breath, my feet hit the floor and I pushed myself to stand. Pain rocketed through my body. Something physical. Something real.
Clenching my hands into fists at my sides, I swallowed down the tears that worked their way to my eyes, hoping Natalie wasn’t there reading my posture from behind.
“Go on,” she prodded at my back.
I forced myself to nod and plodded into my bathroom. I turned the shower as hot as it would go and let it warm up as I shed the clothes I’d worn for days. Grimacing, I stepped into the steaming shower.
Blistering heat scorched me as the water pelted my skin. I made myself stay under it, wishing it could somehow burn this sorrow away, begged for it to cleanse my spirit the same way it did my body.
But it was no use. Unrelenting anguish built up in my chest and burst from my mouth and eyes. Beneath the shower, I placed my hands on the wall and dropped my head, bending at the middle as I gasped for breath. For countless minutes, I gave into it and let myself cry, let my grief go unseen in the water that pounded on my head and back. It streaked in rivulets down my body then dripped onto the tiles of the shower floor before it disappeared down the drain.
Gone.
I clutched my stomach as I wept.
Gone.
And I knew this hurt would never fade.
Swallowing around the emotion lumped in my throat, I forced it all back inside, searching for the numbness. The last thing I needed was for Natalie to think she needed to come up here to check on me. Quickly I washed, then turned off the shower.
I dried and dressed. Mindlessly I ran a brush through the long length of my hair.
I didn’t dare look in the mirror.
Inhaling, I searched inside myself for some semblance of normalcy, and I trained my expression as I left my room and started down the stairs. I gripped at the railing as I took them one by one.
Natalie looked up from where she stood in front of the couch, facing the stairs as she folded laundry.
“You don’t need to do that,” I fumbled through the embarrassment that surged through me.
“Pssh.” She smiled a smile that was much too fake. “I don’t mind laundry at all.” She inclined her head to the towering pile. “Besides, it looks like you could use some help.”
I knew she meant it to be nice, but it punched me in the chest. I’d become helpless. Worthless. I couldn’t even fold my daughter’s laundry. It was pathetic.
What was hardest for me was the fact that Christian was still financially taking care of me. Every two weeks, he deposited money into the account we shared, one we’d opened together as we’d started out on what was supposed to be our life together. A life I now had to accept was never meant to be. He never touched any of it, either, and I knew he left that money for me.
It was humiliating. Demeaning.
Yet I took it because I didn’t know what else to do. The thought of having to get up every day and go to work churned my gut into a frenzy of anxiety. So I took from the man I had broken, or maybe he had broken me.
My chest squeezed.
The truth was, it was life that had broken us both, ripping from us what we didn’t know how to live without.
Natalie folded one of Lizzie’s shirts and stacked it on top of the growing pile. “So how are you feeling today?” she said in the most casual way, but with the heaviest of undertones.
God.
Every time I saw my family, it was the same—them looking at me, waiting for me to snap out of it, all of them constantly telling me one day it would be okay. Resentment had steadily built, because none of them understood. I’d gotten to the point where I didn’t even want to see them, didn’t want to be in their presence, because all they did was encourage and judge and prod and promise me things that could never be. None of them knew what they were talking about.
They didn’t.
They couldn’t.
I stood at the bottom of the last step, clinging to the railing as if it were a lifeline. “I’m actually feeling pretty well today. You know what, why don’t you go on without me? While I have the energy, I think I’d better clean up some stuff around here. The house could really use a good cleaning.”
Frowning, she lifted a brow as she called my bluff. “You can clean later. And we have reservations. Come on, let’s go.” She tossed the last shirt on the folded pile and grabbed her purse from the floor.
She headed out the door, leaving it wide open behind her.
Sighing, I followed, knowing there was no chance I was going to get out of this. I stepped outside into the day. Natalie already sat waiting for me in her little, white four-door sedan.
In surrender, I settled into the front passenger seat.
The ten-minute drive to the restaurant was taken in near silence. Natalie continually stole glances at me, kneading the steering wheel as if she were building up the nerve to say something. I kept my attention trained on my fingers that I twisted on my lap, just wishing for the next hour to be over with.
Natalie pulled into the restaurant parking lot, found a spot, and cut the engine. I stepped from the car. My attention darted around to see the parked cars of the women of my family who’d gathered. The ones who were always there to support and love.
A wave of guilt crashed over me.
God, what was wrong with me?
These women only cared about me.
I dropped my head, squeezing my eyes shut as I put a hand out to steady myself on the car, knowing I’d do anything to make it back, to dig myself out of this hole that I had fallen into.
I just didn’t know the way.
“Are you ready, sweetie?” Natalie asked as she climbed from her car. Brown eyes full of worry met mine over the roof of the car.
“Yeah,” I lied.
She smiled and inclined her head toward the restaurant door. “Come on, I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat.”
I followed her inside. Small, square tables filled the entirety of the authentic Mexican restaurant. A din of voices rose up in the intimate space as waitresses rushed around during the busy lunch hour, casting quick smiles as they wove through the tables to serve their guests.
Toward the back of the restaurant, where two tables had been pushed together to accommodate all of us, Sarah waved wildly above her head.
“There they are!” Natalie lifted her own hand and waved. She grabbed one of mine and wove us through the crush of tables. “Hey, guys,” she said as we approached.
Both of my sisters tossed their napkins to the table as they stood, greetings on their smiling faces.
“You made it,” Sarah, my older sister, said as she rounded the table and pulled me into her arms. Her hold was warm in its unending support.
I stiffened.
I knew she noticed my reaction, and still, she only hugged me tighter.
“It’s so good to see you, Elizabeth,” she murmured quietly, pulling back to look me in the face.
“It’s good to see you, too,” I said. I knew somewhere inside me it was the truth.
Squeezing me by the upper arms, she stepped back.
Carrie, my younger sister, was hugging Natalie before she pranced over to me. A cheery smile split her face. “Elizabeth! God, where have you been? I miss you.” She hugged me a little too hard.
I struggled to breathe.
It was always a chore, forcing the air in and out of my lungs, taking in this requirement for life. It was a hundredfold in the presence of her overzealous welcome.
And it wasn’t her fault, I knew. That was just it. Of everyone here, Carrie was the one who understood the least. She’d spoken words that had cut through me with the force of a knife.
It just wasn’t meant to be.
I knew she truly only meant it as encouragement.
Still, it’d made me want to rip her face off, to scream at her and tell her to shut her mouth.
Instead I’d ended up on my knees, puking, trying to purge her comment from my consciousness.
“Miss you, too,” I forced myself to say, like with my older sister, knowing somewhere inside me I felt it, even if it was obscured.
She bounced back and plopped back down into her seat.
Slowly Mom rose from her chair. Her approach was calculated as she watched me. I’d been avoiding her. I didn’t know why. I just couldn’t handle the way she looked at me. I understood how hard it was for her to see me this way, that I too only wanted joy for my own child. It would kill me if Lizzie had to go through something like this in her life. It made me want to wrap her up and shut her away, keep her protected from any tragedy that could befall her.
Maybe I was broken. But there were enough pieces left of me that I still adored my daughter.
That’s the one thing in this messed up life I was giving thanks for. Lizzie my light, Lizzie my life.
She was the hope that coaxed me out of bed in the morning, what gave me the ability to put one foot in front of the other, the last bit of drive that sustained my weary soul.
Through all of this, I was able to recognize that my mom felt the same for me.
Strong arms wrapped me up, my arms pinned between us, Mom’s rough voice low. “Thank you for coming.” She tilted her head to the side as she studied me, every movement meaningful, full of support.
I nodded and lied. “I wouldn’t have missed it.”
She pursed her lips and dipped her head once, accepting the deception for what it was.
I took my seat and opened the menu in front of me.
Conversation struck up at the table, the four of them chatting about their days. The inconsequentials of their lives rose to the surface of their chatter, but it was obviously there to cover up the undercurrent of strain stretching us all tight. Uneasy eyes darted and searched, peeking at me from over their menus and casting furtive glances they probably didn’t think I noticed.
I shifted in discomfort.
Why had I let Natalie talk me into this?
Thankfully the waitress came and rescued me from the scrutiny that had taken hold of the table.
She left and returned quickly with my iced tea. “Your food should be out shortly. Let me know if there’s anything I can get you in the meantime,” she said as she placed the drink down in front of me.
I mumbled, “Thank you,” turned back to the table, and let my gaze drift over the women who had always stood by my side. They had always been the ones to rally around me, no matter what the circumstances. Once again, I knew they were here to pick me up when I was down.
Little did they know it was an impossible feat.
I did my best to keep up with the words they spoke. I tried to listen to the details about their families, the things that were important to them, near to their hearts. Sarah talked endlessly about her children. Angie had won the spelling bee and Brandon had started a new season of football. She talked of how excited he was that he now got to play tackle, how terrified she was to finally allow him to take part in it.
Carrie had met someone new, someone who must have made an impact on her, because she giggled and her cheeks flushed red with just the mention of his name. My little sister didn’t do embarrassed. Yet she went on about this guy for the longest time, filling us in on every aspect of his life and how she was sure it would fit into hers.
I dropped my face and pressed my eyes shut, begging for it to return, for me to be able to feel it, to be excited for them, too.
I felt like the worst person in the world, because I just couldn’t find it in myself to care.
And I wanted to.
God, did any of them really understand how much I wanted to?
They droned on, and their words began to bleed together, spreading out in a thin haze that blurred at the fringes of my mind. Our food was served, and I pushed it around my plate, trying to build up the appetite to take a single bite. Laughter and giggles and sounds of surprise beat against my ears, but didn’t penetrate deep enough to touch my distorted sense of awareness.
“Liz,” Sarah said, her voice taking on an edge of frustration. “Did you hear anything I just said?”
I jerked up. Blinking, I looked at her from across the table. My mind flicked like a reel back through the conversation that had just transpired, grasping for anything that would give me a clue as to where the topic had strayed.
Displeasure flashed on her face. “Were you even listening?”
“Sarah.” Natalie slanted her head in a silent plea, her eyes widening. I swore I thought she kicked her under the table.
Sarah and I had always been close. She’d been the one I’d run to as a girl, the one who always seemed to have this natural wisdom, had insight into things I couldn’t see. And she rarely deviated from her straight-lined demeanor.
Sarah’s attention shot to Natalie. “What?” she said defensively, as if she couldn’t believe Natalie was trying to dissuade her from speaking.
But obviously, that didn’t apply for today.
Her eyes darted back to me. They blazed with emotion, sympathy and outrage and disappointment. “You have to pull yourself out of this, Elizabeth.”
At her words, I felt all the blood drain from my face. Sickness coiled, soured in my stomach as a swell of nausea swept through me.
It was bad enough when they made little comments, the ones that were meant to bolster when they really felt like a slap to the face.
But this…this didn’t just seem like an ambush. It was an ambush, an attack I wasn’t prepared for.
One I would never be ready to face.
“You’ve sat there this entire time and not said one word. Not one word,” she emphasized.
“Please, don’t do this right now, Sarah,” Natalie begged, her voice coming out low. Her attention shifted between us as she bit at her lip. Tears rimmed her eyes.
I knew they were both trying to protect me, each in their own way.
Harshly Sarah shook her head. “We’ve tiptoed around this for too long, Natalie.” Even though she spoke to Natalie, her stare never strayed from my face. “It’s been almost four months, Elizabeth. And I promise you I’m only telling you this because I love you, but you have to make a decision. It’s time you picked yourself up and started living again. For you. For your daughter. Start paying attention to the rest of your family”—she flung her hand out around the table—“because everything is just passing you by. Even when you’re here, you’re not present. And we all need you back.”
My face pinched as I slowly shook my head, struggling to see through the pain that tore through my entire being. I began to rock, my fingers twisting together in the tightest knot as I tried to deflect what was coming from Sarah’s mouth.
My head screamed at me that what she said was the truth, while my heart shrank, willing the rest of me to retreat.
It seemed like once she got started, she couldn’t stop, the worry and frustration boiling over.
“And what about Christian? The man who would crawl on his hands and knees through hot coals for you? The one who would gladly die for you? Have you stopped to look at him lately?”
Recoiling at the insinuation, I dropped my face to the side to protect myself from the things I didn’t want to hear.
“I’m serious, Elizabeth, have you stopped to really look at him? Because he is just as heartbroken as you. It’s time you either find it somewhere inside yourself to love him again or cut him loose. Walk away from him, Elizabeth, put him out of his misery, because the man is hanging by a loose thread. Do you even see what this has done to him? What you’re doing to him?”
I cringed, sinking deeper into my chair. Of course I saw it. I bore witness to it each morning when he came to pick up Lizzie. And I had cut him loose, had told him to go, and he had. But there would always be something that tethered us, a connection that neither of us could break.
How was that bond not enough to hold us together?
I forced myself to look at her when all I really wanted to do was hide.
“Sarah,” I begged, my voice cracking. Tears built and I tried my best to keep them back, to keep them in. But there was nothing I could do. They were unstoppable as they began to fall. “You don’t understand.”
“Damn it, Elizabeth,” she said as she leaned in close over the table, her voice firm. “I know I don’t. I’m not pretending that I do. But whether I understand or not doesn’t change the fact that it’s time.”
Her words slashed through me, cutting me to the core.
To my left, Mom gently touched my arm, sadness woven through her expression.
“Your sister is right, Elizabeth. I know you don’t want to hear it, but we all love you too much to stand aside and watch you fade away. I’m not willing to sit here and allow this to go on any longer without saying something.” She glanced at the bones jutting from my arms, let them wander over my protruding collarbones. “Have you looked in the mirror lately? Have you seen what you’ve allowed this to do to you?”
Allowed this to do to me?
Anger tightened the knots in my stomach.
My mom, of all people, should understand.
I shoved my chair back from the table and jumped up.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I spat at the table, my gaze discordant as it bounced between the women who sat there staring up at me in shock. “I didn’t ask for this to happen and I sure as hell didn’t ask for your opinions or your advice.” I gripped at my aching chest. “Just leave me alone,” I pleaded. “Please, all of you, just leave me alone.”
Then I turned and fled the tortured confines of the restaurant, rushing past people who dropped silverware to their plates as they gaped at me. I ran out into the warm afternoon sun. I lifted my face to it, searching for the breath that always seemed just out of reach, as if the capacity of my lungs had been cut in half, fragmented, and I could never fully take in what was needed to live.
Because I was dying.
“Elizabeth,” rushed from Natalie in blatant relief as she came running out behind me. She stood there, hesitant as she took me in. Finally, she said, “Come on. Let me take you home.”
Distraught, I nodded through my tears and followed her across the lot. She kept her hand on my elbow as she led me to the passenger door. She unlocked it and held it open for me.
We said nothing as she drove the short distance back to my house. She came to a stop at the bottom of the driveway. I could feel the intensity of her gaze burning into the side of my face while I fisted the straps of my purse in my hands, staring down at my knuckles turning white as I did everything I could not to fall apart.
“I’m so sorry, Liz.” Her voice was quiet. “Please…” She choked over her own tears. “Please don’t think we planned that, because we didn’t. Everyone is just worried about you.”
I looked over at the regret swimming though her glistening eyes. The two of us just sat there, watching the other cry, not knowing how to make sense of this mess, because neither of us wanted to be a part of it.
She cleared her throat and shook her head. “But what Sarah said, maybe it was wrong the way she did it, I don’t know. But what she said was true. It’s time,” she stressed.
Maybe the problem was I didn’t know what my life looked like on the other side of this. I’d always believed Christian was at the end, and now, I couldn’t see him anywhere. How did I move on from that? From the hopes that had been shattered?
“I don’t even remember how to breathe, Natalie,” I admitted softly, dropping my face toward my lap as I clutched my purse straps a little tighter. “How can I go on when I’ve forgotten how to live?”
Peeking up at her, I saw her chewing on her quivering lip, obviously unsure of how to poise her words. She inclined her head and asked in all seriousness, “Do you still love him?”
A suggestion of Christian ghosted across my skin, memories of my life that meant the most to me, love and joy and everything. Sadness welled up and I swallowed it down.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
More tears trailed down her face, maybe in direct empathy to mine. Her attention traveled out the windshield where she stared at the empty street. We sat in the excruciating silence.
“Then maybe you need to remember how to live without him, Elizabeth, because you can’t continue on this way.” There was no accusation in the statement, just her own pain, her words filled with a sharp sense of surrender.
I felt them deep, because I somehow knew she meant that surrender for me, that it was time I moved on. Even if it was without Christian.
I glanced at the clock. It was only thirty minutes before I was supposed to pick my daughter up from school. Her sweet face flickered in my mind, my devotion to her unending, and I knew, most of all, my daughter needed me.
“I will try,” I promised my cousin, my friend, but inside I was reeling because who I really needed to convince was myself.
Over the console, she reached for me, wrapping me up in a fierce embrace before she pulled away and earnestly held my face, her own all splotchy and red.
“You will make it through this,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
I shook my head in her hold. Because I still didn’t know if I really would. “I need to go and pick up Lizzie,” I mumbled because I’d had all of this conversation that I could handle.
I’d said I would try, and that was all I could give.
She nodded once and I climbed from her car.