Chapter 2
Ivy did not bother answering the house telephone as she searched for her sneakers. It was a good day if she answered. Most of the time, she just let it ring until whoever called gave up. She’d just finished binge watching all the episodes of Orange Is the New Black, and needed to find something else on Netflix that would totally distract her from life. She scrolled through the selection, deciding on Alias, since there were several seasons. She set the timer to start so she’d be all set when it was time for the next round of binge watching. This series should take her at least a week to ten or eleven days to watch. In between, she’d do the same thing she’d been doing for the past eight years. She’d established a routine of sorts, and it worked for her.
She started her mornings around eleven o’clock with an entire pot of strong black coffee. Overly caffeinated with energy, she would spend the rest of the morning hiking the mountainous trails behind her house. She never had a path in mind when she headed out; instead, she just knew she had to burn off the excess energy she’d consumed from the coffee. After three or four hours, she would find her way back to the house, where she would shower in the downstairs guest bathroom. Really, she thought, as she found her sneakers in the guest bathroom, it was the only room in the house without the memories. The one room that had not been splashed with memories of a life she was no longer living. A life that was beginning to fade with the passing of time, a life she’d assumed was her God-given right as a woman, a life as a wife . . . and a mother. It hurt just thinking the word. She could not say it out loud without hot, angry tears streaming down her face. Right when she thought she had a handle on the life she no longer had, it would hit her full force: She was never going to have that life again. It was over. Done. Finished. And had she had the courage, she would have joined her family, but what little faith she had left kept her from joining them in death. Sometimes, though, she wondered if she had chosen to take the easy way out, how would she actually go about doing the evil deed?
She had numerous bottles of tranquilizers, sleeping pills, and several unopened bottles of antidepressants she had been prescribed over the years, but had never taken. Nothing would soften or blur the sadness she lived with daily. No, pills were too easy.
She had seen an episode of True Crime where a woman had poisoned two husbands with antifreeze by pouring it into a drink. Supposedly, it was sweet, and deadly. Ivy simply could not see herself running down to Pep Boys to purchase a jug of the stuff to bring home and add to her ice tea.
Though, really, weren’t these thoughts of suicide overly dramatic, when she knew she would never have the courage to see them through to the end? She did not own a gun, and thought that method of taking one’s life extremely thoughtless, since someone would have to clean up all the blood. She sometimes wondered if she could somehow magically put a bullet in her brain, then clean up after herself so that no one else had to deal with it, could she then bring herself to do it? But no, that would not be her way to end it all . . . if she ever decided to take herself out.
Knives were too scary, and she really did not like the sight of blood, so that, too, was out of the question. She supposed she could walk in front of a car, maybe go to the Blue Ridge Parkway, where tourists gawked at the scenery while driving, and hope she would get lucky and find the one car that realized when it was too late that they were about to hit a pedestrian. No, that was stupid, too, and why burden an innocent person with all that guilt? She certainly had enough to share, but it was all hers, and she would never wish her nightmarish life on her worst enemy. And she only had one enemy, and, fortunately for him, he was dead, too. He was the reason her family had died eight years ago in the crash, which had made national news for more than a year while the National Transportation Safety Board did its investigation. And when the NTSB concluded that the crash was due to pilot error, Ivy had wanted to kill the man who had taken her family and the other passengers: Captain Mark Dwight Murray. He had ruined the lives of so many who had lost their loved ones the way she had. The Boeing 747 had only been airborne for ten minutes when the captain’s mistake cost 109 passengers and six crew members their lives.
No, she could not let her thoughts go down that path. Not again. She knew what would happen. She would get into her car and drive to Lucky’s Liquors and come home with enough alcohol to keep her numb for weeks; then, when she had gone through her supply, she would do her best to stay sober, and would succeed until her thoughts once again took her down what she mentally referred to as the dark path, and she would trek back to the liquor store and restock her supply of booze.
Ivy hated that she was so weak that she could not be strong like her father, but she couldn’t help it. Her life had been nearly perfect; then, boom, it was gone in a flash. She had never recovered and doubted that she ever would. One could not go on after such a tragedy . . . could they?
Her father had, but she wasn’t as strong as he was. He’d lost his wife; as a single father, he raised his daughter; he ran a successful airline, and still headed it up to this very day. The great George Macintosh continued to thrive. And even though the airline had suffered a huge financial blow after the crash, it recovered and continued to fly high and flourish. When she walked down the dark path, her thoughts always questioned how her father could continue as CEO of Macintosh Air, knowing how many lives had been ruined by its mere existence. Then that little devil on her shoulder would remind her that because of her father’s perseverance, she would never have to worry about money for the rest of her life. He’d continued to pay out as a death benefit what John would be making if he were still alive. There were even annual raises and bonuses. And even though she had been left with an enormous amount of money from John’s life insurance, she was still on the payroll. And her father had never even mentioned the fact that she had not done a single day’s work since the crash. Her father was just that kind of man, and she truly was grateful for his continued generosity, which enabled her to . . . to what? Wallow in self-pity? Drink herself into a stupor, day after day? Contemplate taking her own life? Was he unknowingly enabling her?
No, she thought. Her father was just being her father, taking care of her the way he had her entire life. Deep down, she knew she should make some attempt at a life, but she also knew that her heart just wasn’t in it. As it was, it was all she could do to get from one day to the next.
Other than her morning hikes, the only times she left the house were for her trips to Lucky’s or the grocery store. And these trips to Pine City were rare, as most of her basic needs could be ordered online and delivered to her house. She had just discovered that Amazon was delivering groceries and planned to utilize the service, and maybe she would join one of those meal delivery services, too. She ordered books, sneakers, and anything else she needed online, so why not food? If they sold booze, she would buy that online, too.
She made a mental note to do a Google search on alcohol sales via the Internet. There were wine clubs she could join, but she was not much of a wine drinker. No, she liked the hard stuff. Whiskey and vodka were her two best friends. Recently she had started to be a bit creative with her drinking, and had even purchased a book online for bartenders who wanted to go above and beyond the basics of alcohol consumption. She had ordered all kinds of mixers and found that she had actually begun to look forward to getting drunk at the end of the day. How pathetic was that?
Three hours later, after she had showered, she booted up her laptop and began her search for online booze delivery services. She got thousands of hits and opened a few before she hit pay dirt. An app called Saucey promised to deliver whatever your heart desired, alcohol-wise, in under an hour. She downloaded the app to her laptop and cell phone. No more trips to Lucky’s. She knew that people in Pine City talked about her. More than once, she had heard people whispering, “loony bin” and “nut job.” She had even overheard a woman telling another that she “walked the streets at night, searching for her lost family.” The urge to slap the gossipy woman had been so strong, she had had to force herself to leave the grocery store, hence her latest desire to purchase her edibles online. Gone were the days of friendly chitchat in the checkout line at the grocery store. It was incidents like this that made her wish she lived in a larger city, simply for the anonymity it would offer. More than once, she had actually thought of moving, just to escape the memories. But she found that she could not, feeling this would be a form of abandonment. And she could never bring herself to leave behind what remained of her children. Her memories would always be with her, no matter where she lived; but every time she thought about moving away from Pine City, she found herself unable to justify leaving what little remained of them and felt disloyal even thinking about relocating. Their bedrooms. The rooms she had moved them into just weeks before the crash. Since waking up to the devastating news that her life as she had known it had come to a shattering end, she had never entered those rooms, and now, almost eight years after the fact, she did not dare do so for fear of her reaction. Someday, she supposed, she would have to, but she did not see that day coming anytime in the near future. Maybe she would never go inside their rooms. There was no reason to do so. Their toys, their clothes, all the possessions her three-year-olds had, were not going to ease her pain. Even after eight years, her grief was still so raw, she saw no reason to open up an even deeper wound, so she kept the doors to their bedrooms closed. When she had been tempted to enter, she had hired a local locksmith to install new locks and made him keep the keys. He’d thought she was crazy when she had asked this, but she paid him extra; to this day, she had never needed or wanted the keys.
She placed the laptop on the coffee table and went to the kitchen to find something to eat. It was dinnertime, according to her stomach, then cocktail hour. Heating something that resembled macaroni, she took three bites, then tossed the cardboard container in the garbage. Without another thought, she pulled a bottle of vodka from its shelf and poured herself a tumbler full of the odorless drink before adding ice and a splash of tonic water.
Today was going to end just like almost every other day had for the past few years.
She planned to drink herself to sleep.