Chapter Three

Hailey

I wake the next morning, my body aching, my eyes burning. I lie in my bed, my eyes blinking to take in the room

I stretch my legs in front of me, the smell of coffee making its way up to my room. “Who is down there?” I ask, knowing that Crystal is behind me.

“Your parents stayed the night and so did Blake,” she whispers from beside me. I turn on my back now, looking up at the ceiling.

“My chest feels like someone is sitting on it.” Rubbing the middle of my chest, I’m trying to get the ache to go away. I throw my legs off the bed and make my way down the stairs. The shades are closed all around the house, and the weariness fills the rooms all around us. My mother and father sit at the kitchen table with coffee in front of them.

My father’s eyes tired and bleak; my mother’s are still filled with tears especially when she sees me walk into the room. The front door opens when Blake comes in, a box of doughnuts in one hand and a bag holding McDonald’s in the other. “I didn’t know what you would feel like, so I got one of everything.” He puts the bag in the middle of the table, but no one reaches for it.

When Crystal comes downstairs, she walks into the kitchen, going straight for the bag in the middle of the table. “You didn’t get any hash browns?” she asks with a shrug, taking an egg biscuit out of the bag.

“What am I going to do?” I look around the room at everyone. “I don’t even know when or where the funeral is?” I wipe the tears away. “I don’t even know anything about him really.”

“I can call his brother and ask him?” Blake says, pulling out a chair in the middle of the table. He is just about to reach for the bag when the doorbell rings.

The blood drains from my face, scared to face whoever is at the door. My mother looks at me, my brother getting up from the table to walk to the door. He unlocks the door and opens it, finding a man with glasses standing there.

“Can I help you?” he asks the man.

“Hailey Williams?” The man asks for me, and I walk to the door.

“That’s me.” I step in front of my brother, taking in the man with the khaki pants and the polo shirt.

“You’ve been served.” He hands the papers to me. My hand reaches out to grab them as he turns and walks away, down the step to his gray Honda Civic.

“What on earth is this?” My father gets up and comes to the door, taking the papers out of my hands and opening them. “You have to be fucking kidding me.” He flips the pages over, looking up at me and then at my brother.

“What is it?” I ask, walking to him.

“You’ve been served a cease and desist letter as well as a restraining order against his wife and their children.” My eyebrows pinch together as I look at the papers and see Eric’s name. “You are not allowed to mention Eric, and if you do, they will sue you for slander.”

“What the fuck,” Blake yells. “They were in a relationship.”

“According to the papers, they are also saying you have been stalking him and his family, and if you attend the funeral, you will be arrested for trespassing.”

The sob rips out of me; my hand going to my chest, trying to rub the pain away. “I can’t do this.” The fight left in me gone.

“She has to be able to go to the funeral. She has to have closure,” my mother says from besides me on the floor.

“Joannie, we can’t do that,” my father says. “I’m going to call the office and see what can be done, but”—he shakes his head, looking down at the paper—“it doesn’t look good.”

“What did I do?” I ask the room, all eyes on me. “What did I ever do to them?”

“You did nothing to them,” my brother says. “Not one fucking thing.” I just nod at him, then slowly get up and walk back up the stairs to my room. But instead, I go to the spare room, not wanting to lie on our bed without him. I look at the white ceiling while I listen to the sound of my father asking questions on the phone. At the same time, Blake threatens to go down there and beat the shit out of his brothers, and Crystal tells him she is going to start the car.

When my father comes upstairs, he finds me still looking up at the ceiling. Walking into the room, he sits by my side. I move my head to the side, looking at the defeated look in his eyes. “There isn’t anything we can do.”

“I know,” I tell him, softly reaching out to hold his hand.

“I think we should go to the funeral anyway and say fuck them.” He squeezes my hand.

“No, I won’t put you guys through that.” I blink as tears fall out of my eyes and onto the pillow. “I won’t give them the satisfaction to do that to me.” The tears don’t stop. “I won’t let them have that hold on me.” He nods his head while my eyes give into the burning, my lids closing.

***

One Month Later . . .

“This is fucking horse shit,” I hear Crystal yell from somewhere in the house. Her footsteps pounding up the steps get closer and closer to where I am. She storms into the room that is dark and pushes the curtains open, letting sunlight come blaring in.

“What the fuck, Crys?” I groan out as I try to swallow past the cotton balls stuck in the back of my throat. I cover my head with the covers. My head’s spinning and throbbing.

The covers get ripped off me. “Get your ass up,” she says as I moan and try to grab the pillow beside me, but the only thing I touch is the empty bottle of wine I came to bed with.

“GET UP!” She now yells at me.

“Jesus.” I squint one eye open. “What the hell is your problem?” I ask, folding myself out of bed. Dragging my ass to the bathroom, I’m hoping she’ll be gone when I get back to my bed. I wash my face, rinsing my cotton mouth out with water. Opening the medicine cabinet, I grab the Advil and shake three into my hand, leaning down to drink water from the sink faucet. I close the cabinet, avoiding the mirror. I don’t need to look into the mirror to see that I look horrible. Walking back into my room, I find Crystal has stripped my bed sheets off, and wine bottles fill the trash can beside the bed. How long has that been full? “What are you doing?” I ask her, leaning against the door so my head will stop spinning.

“I’m doing this tough love bullshit that I should have done last week, but Blake said to give you one more week.” She grabs the sheets in her hands as she walks down the hallway, bypassing the room I refuse to step into. I’ve been sleeping in the guest room for a month now, or maybe longer. What date is it? I turn my head, watching her toss the sheets into the wash. “Get up and get dressed. We are going out for food. Real food, not a bag of chips, or a frozen pizza, or ice cream. A whole meal.”

I close my eyes as my head finally stops spinning or at least dulling. “I don’t want to go out,” I whine as I approach the bed and sit on it. “Outside bad, inside good.” I try to joke with her, but she just glares at me.

“You don’t have a choice in the matter; either you come on your own, or I bring out the big guns.” She walks into the room with her hands on her hips. “What is it going to be?” she asks again.

“You wouldn’t dare bring out the big guns.” I point at her as she pulls out her phone and taps a couple of things. “You have three seconds to decide, or I’m calling Nanny, and she is going to be the one to get your ass up.” I look at her in shock—bringing Nanny in is a low blow, even for her. Nanny is our eighty-three-year-old grandmother who has seen enough of her own heartache to last a lifetime. She was married at twenty-two and widowed at thirty-two with three children and a debt bigger than Mount Everest. But she put on her big girl panties and thrived. Making her bigger than before. She never did remarry, and now she is the event coordinator for seniors living. She has a busier social calendar than Crystal and I combined.

“That is not fair,” I tell her as Nanny’s voice suddenly fills the quiet house.

“Knock, knock, knock,” she says from downstairs, and our wide eyes fly to each other. We scramble around the room, hiding the wine bottles under the bed. I rip the dirty shirt over my head, smelling myself as I do and almost gagging. I open a drawer and see a Tweety shirt I haven’t worn since I was sixteen years old. Trying to put it on my head, I get it stuck with only one arm in it. “Where are you girls?” We hear her walking downstairs, and I huff. Crystal runs to me, trying to help me put my other arm in.

“Why the fuck do you still have this shirt?” she whispers as she yells, “Upstairs, Nanny.” She grunts as we try to get the shirt past my boobs, but it stays stuck under my armpits.

I can’t move anymore “Fuck, try rolling it down,” I tell her while I work on one side, and she tries the other.

“This is almost like Cinderella’s stepsister with the big clown feet trying to squeeze into a dainty shoe,” Crystal says as she gets it almost over one boob before it just rolls back up.

“What in heavens are you two doing?” Nanny says from the doorway. Her perfectly coiffed white hair rests on the shoulders of her all-white outfit paired with a deep purple jacket and matching necklace and bracelets. “And what is that smell?” she says as she tries to discern where the smell could be coming from.

“That smell is Hailey,” Crystal points out as she walks away from me to give Nanny a hug. “She smells like horses.” Turning to me and smirking, she says, “Want to go out to lunch, Nanny?”

“Um. Only if that one showers.” She points at me, and I roll my eyes.

I smile at them. “That’s perfect because I don’t want to go out anyway. You two have fun.” I shoo them away with my hand.

“Hailey, you haven’t left the house since …” Nanny starts saying and then slowly stops talking. “It’s not healthy. I mean, honey, you look like …” She throws her hands up and then continues, “You look a mess. Your eyes are sunken in, and you have bags under them big enough for one of Marie Antoinette’s dresses.”

I fold my arms over my chest. “Yeah, well. I’m okay at home by myself.”

“You aren’t the only one who lost a husband,” Nanny says to me, catching me off guard.

“Actually, I didn’t lose a husband, according to every single letter that I have gotten after Eric’s death. I’m basically nothing to him. So I lost a friend,” I tell them angrily as a tear escapes my eye, and I brush it off, angry that I’m again wasting my energy on him. Every letter I’ve gotten from the time he died just reinforced that I was nothing to him. From the life insurance policy that got denied to the bank letter that froze our joint account. It has been one clusterfuck after another.

“Good. Now that we have that settled, get yourself in that shower and let’s go get something to eat.” She doesn’t give me a chance to answer. Instead, she turns around and walks to the stairs. “Oh and carry all those wine bottles shoved under the bed out to the recycle bin.” She doesn’t bother turning around to see our mouths open and then close again.

“I’ll get the bottles; you hit the shower. I would wash twice if I were you. And shave the pits because it isn’t appealing,” Crystal says as she gets down on her hands and knees to grab the bottles. When I get to the bathroom, I cut myself out of the shirt with a pair of scissors. I finally look up and see the shell of a woman I once was. My blue eyes are bleak, empty, dull. My long blond hair oily and stringy.

“Fuck you, Eric,” I say to the empty room while I shower and wash and shave. By the time I finish, I feel almost semi human. I try on a pair of jeans, but when they almost fall off, I opt for a black tank top with a cream and black maxi skirt.

With my black flip-flops on my feet, I walk downstairs, braiding my hair to the side. I find them in the kitchen with the shades open, finally letting the sun in. A stack of mail on the counter is falling over, since I only open the ones I think are important. Soft music plays from the radio on the counter. Nanny is scrubbing the food off the dirty dishes piled in the sink while Crystal opens a couple of windows to let the spring air in. Birds chirp in the background—fucking birds chirping—and the sound takes me back to that day. I blink my eyes to stop the memories from seeping in. “Okay I’m ready,” I tell them when they both look up at me. “Where are we going?”

“I made a reservation at the Garden Inn,” Nanny says, and I throw my head back and groan. The Garden Inn is the local hangout where everyone goes to have a home-cooked meal. It’s the last place you want to go when you are hiding from everyone and everything.

“Can—” I don’t have time to finish before Nanny wipes her hands on the tea towel and turns to smile at me.

“I’ll drive,” she says, not giving me a chance to back out. I look around the kitchen and see Eric in everything. Seashells that we collected on our honeymoon from the beach sit on the windowsill. Magnets on the fridge of places he’d left me for. Lies. I walk to the fridge, take them all down, toss them into the trash, and then walk out of the room.

Nanny and Crystal don’t say anything as they follow me outside to my overgrown lawn. The plants Eric and I potted last month sit on the porch dried up and dead. “I need to cut the grass,” I mumble, walking down the steps to Nanny’s car with my head down the whole time. Opening the back door, I get in and finally realize I forgot my purse. I open the door to get out when Crystal shoves my purse at me. “Thank you,” I mumble as I open it and take my shades out and put them on. I buckle my seat belt as I look out the window and see that the world hasn’t stopped. Life keeps moving. People are still getting up and going to work, kids are still in school, and life goes on, yet I’m the one still stuck in place.

After we arrive and park, I get out, trying to blend in, but I feel all eyes on me. I look down at my feet. “This is a bad idea,” I say quietly as Nanny gets on one side of me and Crystal gets on the other side. My protectors.

“Nonsense,” Nanny says as we walk up the steps. Opening the door, she steps in, and when the bell rings above the door, all talking stops. I’m about to turn around when I hear Nanny. “Oh Edith, good, you’re here. I called about a table for three. I hope it’s okay that we are early,” she says loudly, not caring that people are looking and probably judging me. I should just wear the big red letter A on my chest.

“Sure thing, Sheila,” she says as she walks. Edith is going to give us a table in the back, but Nanny stops walking in the middle of the restaurant. “We will take this table right here.” Nanny motions to the empty table in the middle of the fucking room.

“Seriously?” I say under my breath as Nanny pulls out a chair.

“This is perfect,” she says. I sit with my back toward the door but face Nanny with Crystal in the middle of us. I grab the menu Edith hands to me with a smile and a thank you.

“Um, do you guys want to start with something to drink?” she asks as she takes out her pad.

“I’ll have a vodka on the rocks.”

I take my glasses off as Nanny laughs. “She’s kidding. We’ll all have some sweet tea.” Edith nods at us and walks away. I look around and find people trying to avoid eye contact with me. “This was such a bad idea.”

Nanny closes her menu in front of her. “Why? Why do you think this is a bad idea?”

She waits for me to answer. “Because people are staring at me and whispering. It’s like I’m a circus animal let out of the cage,” I tell them both and then look at my menu, but all the words are all over the place. I’m not even looking at them.

“What are you afraid of?” Nanny starts and then doesn’t wait for me to give her an answer. Instead, she answers for me. “Are you afraid people are going to see you smile? Are you afraid people are going to judge you? Are you afraid someone is going to tell someone else that you were out and living?” I shake my head. “Newsflash, you are already at your rock bottom, so how much more can you go down?”

“Wow.” I laugh bitterly, grabbing my glass of water that Edith had just filled. “Don’t sugarcoat anything, Nanny.”

“I won’t,” she says. “I’ve been where you are. Actually, it was worse. He left me three kids to raise by myself.”

“Really?” I ask. “At least your husband was your husband.”

“Well, sometimes, I wish he wasn’t. He left me with three beautiful kids and more debt than humanly possible to get out of. But guess what I did?” She smiles and waves at someone who just walked in. “You have nothing to hide from. You didn’t fuck up, that dickhead did.” She looks at Crystal. “I never liked him.”

I roll my eyes. “You lie. You loved Eric. Fuck, everyone liked Eric. I used to get the ‘Where is Eric?’ before you asked how I was.” I finally smile. I think it’s my first smile in a month.

“Honey, he is gone and not coming back. So you have two choices. One, you wallow, which I have to say you’ve been doing quite well, or two, you dust yourself off and live again.”

“I choose three,” Crystal says. “Purge him from your system.”

“She can’t have sex with someone now; she isn’t in the right head space,” Nanny says. “I mean, she would probably cry in the middle of it.”

“Are you two done?” I ask, relieved to find everyone back to normal and no one listening to us. No one is pointing anymore, but I see a couple of people look over, smile sadly, and then turn around and continue their meal or conversation. The meal is long or, at least, it feels long. I ordered soup but pick fries off Crystal’s plate. When Nanny drives us back home, we wave goodbye to her as the walk inside the house feels stale, stiff.

Sitting on the couch, I feel the memories come floating back. “I hate this house,” I say as I grab the remote and turn on the television.

Crystal hangs with me until she has to go to work, and then I sit on the couch all night flipping through the channels. Night turns to morning as my eyes never tire or close, but my mind spins.

I finally get up sometime after dawn to walk upstairs to the bathroom and then make my way to the spare room. I look at the bed and realize it’s not made. The sheets are still in the wash. So I turn around and look at the closed door.

The door I shut a month ago; the door I swore never to open again. I walk toward it slowly, the floor creaking under my soft footsteps. My hand reaches out to grab the handle, feeling the cold metal under my warm hand. Turning the handle, I push the door open slowly, the hinges squeaking when I finally push it all the way open.

The stale air has specks of dust floating in the sunlight streaming in the side windows. The bed sheets lay crumpled from when I first got home on that fateful day. The pictures on the side tables have a light layer of dust on them. I still smell him; it’s faint but it’s still there. I walk in, treading lightly, almost as if I’m the stranger in the house. As if I don’t belong here. As if this isn’t my room.

I walk toward the closet and open it, seeing his dress shirts hanging there, waiting to be worn, but I know they will never see the light of day.

Taking one out, I bring it to my face, hoping to smell him or feel him, but instead, I smell soap. I place it back then go to his side table, opening the first drawer.

My hand traces the Kindle that sits on top of everything else.

When I spot a flashlight, I take it out and turn the light on. A rubber band from the music festival we went to last month sits in the corner, and another watch he needed a battery for is tossed to the side.

I spot the condoms, right beside everything, and laugh awkwardly. “Well, we know why he didn’t want to have kids right away. Asshole,” I say out loud, hoping he’s here, hoping he can hear me. I slam the drawer closed and march downstairs.

Grabbing a garbage bag from under the sink, I storm back upstairs, this time whipping open the closet door. Yanking his shirts off the hangers, I stuff them in the bag. Some hangers fly to the floor while others just dangle on the rod empty. Empty like this house. After filling up the bag with his clothes from the closet, I walk over to his chest and open the drawers to find his t-shirts all folded perfectly. I pick them up and toss them into the bag. Drawer after drawer till the bag is almost full. I still have a couple of drawers left when I hear the doorbell. Looking over at the clock beside the bed, I see it’s almost ten thirty. I open the door and come face to face with a huge bouquet of red roses in a beautiful crystal vase. “Um, I have a delivery for Hailey,” the man says as he takes in my rumpled attire.

“That’s me,” I tell him as he hands me the bouquet and walks back to his yellow van.

After I close the door, I walk into the kitchen and place the roses on the table then pull the card out. Finding the front of the white envelope blank, I turn it over and flip up the flap, taking the card out.

Thank you for opening that door one year ago and changing my life.

Forever Yours,

Eric

The sob escapes me no matter how much I try to fight it. My hand covers my mouth, and my legs get wobbly. My hand holds the table as the card falls to the floor, floating left and right before it lands right by my foot. My hand shoots out, tossing the vase to the floor and shattering it into a million pieces.