“This is my second group. The other one happens Mondays, but I usually work Monday nights, so I can’t go unless someone switches their shift with me.”

I nodded and drank the lukewarm coffee.

“Your daughter, is she within driving distance?”

“Yeah.” I looked around for the exit sign.

“Me, too. Makes it a lot easier, doesn’t it? You go often?”

“Sorry—the restroom?”

She pointed me toward the stairs and I thanked her, desperate to leave the basement.

“We’re not that bad,” she said. I stopped in the doorway. “You’ll find out for yourself, if you decide to come back from the bathroom.”

“Did you always know?” The words felt like teeth yanked from my jaw. But I had to ask.

“Know what?”

“Did you always know something was wrong with her? When she was young?”

The woman raised her eyebrows at me and I think she knew then that I’d lied to them.

“My daughter made a mistake. You never made a mistake before, Maureen? Come on now, we’re all human.”

47

This city was suffocating. I wanted to go. To drive. Twenty-two weeks had passed, and I still had a hard time walking the streets. I still had a hard time thinking. I wanted the two of us to get in our car, and mile by slow mile, leave this place behind for a while. The sea. The desert. Anywhere, I had said, let’s just go. You wouldn’t leave town. You said it didn’t feel right, not without Violet, and the familiarity of home was what she needed right now.

I hadn’t looked her in the eyes since he died. I relapsed back to spending my days in bed. When I wasn’t there, I’d be standing in the kitchen, staring at the dishes in the sink, unable to rinse them. Unable to do anything at all.

There were reminders of him everywhere. But most of all they lived in her. The tiny gap between her two front teeth. The smell of her bedsheets in the morning. The striped jumper she insisted on wearing all the time, the one that matched the overalls he died in. The walk to school. Bathwater.

Those hands.

I craved finding him in her, as painful as it was. And I hated her for it.

Nobody ever talked about him. Not our friends. Not the neighbors. Not your parents or your sister. They’d ask how we were doing, and their eyes ached with sympathy, but they never spoke his name. It’s all I ever wanted them to do.

“Sam.” Sometimes I would say it out loud when I was alone in the house. “Sam.”

The mother of the boy who died in the playground two years before sent me an email a few months after Sam died. My heart raced when I saw her name.

I’ve been praying that you, like me, somehow find a way to move on. I don’t know how, but I eventually found a sense of peace, even in the grief.

The peace she wrote about did not apply to me. I deleted her email.

“Maybe you should go away. Just you.” You spoke from the bathroom doorway. I sank deeper into the tub water so that my ears were covered.

Later that night I asked you what you had meant. Go where? Go. You wanted me gone.

“There are places that can help you. With your grief. Counseling retreats.”

“Like rehab?” I scowled.

“Like a wellness center. I found one out in the country. It’s only a few hours away.” You handed me a sheet printed on heavy-stock paper from your office. “They’ve got space right now. I called.”

“Why do you want me to go?”

You sat on the end of our bed and put your head in your hands. The back of your ribs shook and the tears spilled onto your pants, slowly and evenly, like the drip from our kitchen tap. There was a confession brewing in you, something heavy that yanked at your gut, something that hadn’t yet been said aloud. Don’t do it, I begged you silently. Please don’t do it. I don’t want to know.

You rubbed your chin and stared at the painting from Sam’s nursery that leaned against the wall.

“I’ll go.”

48

There were sound baths, energy healing circles, lessons about honeybees, and silk hammocks that hung from wood beams in the refurbished barn. My room had essential oils lined up on the bathroom counter and a pocket guide to natural healing in the bedside drawer. Therapy was at nine in the morning and three in the afternoon. Individual first, group second. They handed me the waiver when I checked in at the front desk. I ticked off the box that said: I mindfully decline to participate in the therapy sessions that are included in my weekly rate. I didn’t want to have to say our daughter’s name out loud while I was there. I had left to get away from her. I was not interested in talking about her, or you, or how fucked up my own mother was. I had a dead child. I just wanted to be left alone.

Our dinner was served at five sharp in the dining room. The solo tables were all taken so I sat on the bench of the long farm table and looked around at a sea of rich people. My sweat suit didn’t seem up to snuff. I zipped my hoodie to my chin and reached for the black beans.

“Just arrive?” I nearly dropped the spoon and turned to my left—her voice sounded just like my mother’s. The woman leaned over to look into my bowl and said she didn’t feel I was eating the right foods for my energy field. By the end of the night, we were sharing a blanket by the fire pit and drinking ginger tea as I listened to her talk. Iris was the most intense woman I had ever met. But I liked her immediately.