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“Kate asked me to make tonight fun,” she said, drawing back. She was shaking.
“I can’t believe you didn’t come to her funeral,” he said. “It would have broken her heart. ”
“She knew I wouldn’t come. She even—”
“And that makes it okay? Don’t you think Marah would have liked to see you in there? Or don’t you care about your goddaughter?”
Before she could answer—and what could she say?—he pushed away from her and went back inside, tossing his coat on the washing machine as he passed through the laundry room.
He knew he’d lashed out unfairly. In another time, in another world, he’d care enough to apologize. Kate would want him to, but right now he couldn’t manage the effort. It took everything he had inside just to keep standing. His wife had been gone for forty-eight hours and already he was a worse version of himself.
Three
That night, at four A. M. , Johnny gave up on the idea of sleep. How had he thought it would be possible to find peace on the night of his wife’s funeral?
He pushed the comforter back and climbed out of bed. Rain hammered the shake roof, echoed through the house. At the fireplace in the bedroom, he touched the switch and after a thump-whiz of sound, blue and orange flames burst to life, skating along the fake log. The faint smell of gas floated to him. He lost a few minutes standing there, staring into the fire.
After that, he found himself drifting. It was the only word he could come up with to describe the wandering that took him from room to room. More than once, he found himself standing somewhere, staring at something with no clear memory of how he’d come to be there or why he’d begun that particular journey.
Somehow, he ended up back in his bedroom. Her water glass was still on the nightstand. So were her reading glasses and the mittens she’d worn to bed at the end, when she’d always been cold. As clear as the sound of his own breathing, he heard her say, You were the one for me, John Ryan. I loved you with every breath I took for two decades. It was what she’d said to him on her last night. They’d lain in bed together, with him holding her because she was too weak to hold on to him. He remembered burying his face in the crook of her neck, saying, Don’t leave me, Katie. Not yet.
Even then, as she lay dying, he had failed her.
He got dressed and went downstairs.
The living room was filled with watery gray light. Rain dropped from the eaves outside and softened the view. In the kitchen, he found the counter covered in carefully washed and dried dishes that had been placed on dish towels and a garbage can full of paper plates and brightly colored napkins. The refrigerator and freezer were both filled with foil-covered containers. His mother-in-law had done what needed to be done, while he had hidden outside in the dark, alone.
As he made a pot of coffee, he tried to imagine the new version of his life. All he saw were empty spaces at the dining room table, a car pool with the wrong driver, a breakfast made by the wrong hands.
Be a good dad. Help them deal with this.
He leaned against the counter, drinking coffee. As he poured the third cup, he felt an adrenaline spike of caffeine. His hands started to shake, so he got himself some orange juice instead.
Sugar on top of caffeine. What was next, tequila? He didn’t really make a decision to move. Rather, he just drifted away from the kitchen, where every square inch held a reminder of his wife—the lavender hand lotion she loved, the YOU ARE SPECIAL plate she pulled out at the smallest of their children’s achievements, the water pitcher she’d inherited from her grandmother and used on special occasions.
He felt someone touch his shoulder and he flinched.
Margie, his mother-in-law, stood beside him. She was dressed for the day in high-waisted jeans, tennis shoes, and a black turtleneck. She smiled tiredly.
Bud came up beside his wife. He looked ten years older than Margie. He had grown quieter in the past year, although none would have called him a chatty man before. He’d begun his goodbyes to Katie long before the rest of them had accepted the inevitable, and now that she was gone, he seemed to have lost his voice. Like his wife, he was dressed in his customary style—Wrangler jeans that accentuated both his thinning legs and straining paunch, a checked brown and white western shirt, and a big silver-buckled belt. His hair had checked out a long time ago, but he had enough growing in the arch of his brows to compensate.
Without words, they all walked back into the kitchen, where Johnny poured them each a cup of coffee.
“Coffee. Thank God,” Bud said gruffly, taking the cup in his work-gnarled hand.
They looked at each other.
“We need to take Sean to the airport in an hour, but after that we can come back here and help,” Margie said at last. “For as long as you need us. ”
Johnny loved her for the offer. She was closer to him than his own mother had ever been, but he had to stand on his own now.
The airport. That was the answer.
This wasn’t just another day, and as sure as he stood here, he couldn’t manage the pretense that it was. He couldn’t feed his kids and drive them to school and then go to work at the station, producing some cheesy entertainment or lifestyle segment that wouldn’t change anyone’s life.
“I’m getting us the hell out of here,” he said.
“Oh?” Margie said. “Where to?”
