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But mostly, I think about Greg. I think about all the things I took for granted. And how loneliness is a real thing that can settle deep in your bones and make a home there.
I think about how hard Greg had fought to keep his business afloat. How hard he’d worked for our family. How much pressure he had to have been under. How he’d tried to pay Jack Mooney off, how he thought he was doing the right thing for our family, and how we’d both kept secrets from one another. Secrets that added up. I think about all the frustrations and the distractions that festered over those three weeks. The petty arguments, the disagreements over money, everything that would inevitably prove to be inconsequential.
Greg was smart. His company sold two months after his death, and between the equity in the company and the life insurance policy he had set up, we are covered. Not only that, but people—strangers, from across the world—donated to a GoFundMe account that my former realty office set up. It astounds me that people could be so kind. Still, it doesn’t balance out the evil that took everything from us. No amount of money, and I’m not sure any amount of kindness, ever could.
The woman brings me back to the present when she asks if I have any questions. Usually, I say no. But today anger has once again reared his ugly head, and I ask her what she knows about grief. I ask her if she realizes that the odds of being murdered are one in one hundred and thirty-three.
Afterward, she tells me I shouldn’t speak that way in front of Naomi and Blair. “Why not?” I ask. “Their father is dead. It’s not as if it’s something they don’t already know.”
On Thursdays, after our therapy sessions, we visit Theo at the hospital—“hospital” being a polite term for mental institution.
Every week his cheeks are increasingly sunken in, and today his shoulders are slightly more hunched than they were on our last visit. Blair brings a drawing she made for him. Naomi saves up stories to tell. Theo likes her stories. He tells Blair her artwork covers his walls, that it’s so good the other patients try to steal it. “But stories,” he says to Naomi, “those you cannot steal.”
I bring a pair of new pajamas and a few of the books he requested. It’s the least I can do. I don’t know how long he’ll be here, but I assume for a while.
He stabbed his mother twice as she tried to stop him from fleeing with the knife. In addition, he confessed to placing the camera in our home and to uploading the video of Greg and me to the internet. I considered just once, and very briefly, asking Alex to help him, but I know better.
He contacted me from his office a few days after Greg was killed. He didn’t apologize; he simply asked if there was anything he could do. Maybe it was the anger over everything that had happened, but I didn’t go easy on him. I told him never to contact me again and, that if he did, I would seek a protective order.
It felt good to say words that had belief behind them. Greg was right. Alex is manipulative, but he isn’t evil. It’s a fantasy he has, thinking that he can fill the hole in his life with me. He’s broken, but like my husband said: It’s smart not to invite broken things into your life. It’s not your job to fix them. No matter how shiny the project looks, you’ll bite off more than you can chew every time.
“You’ll never believe this,” Theo says, catching my attention. I know what Greg would say about me being here. About dealing with another broken thing. Even after death, I can both understand and defy him. I think he would be proud there’s still a little of that left in me—fight, that is—otherwise, what would be the point? I might just give up.
Theo tells the girls about his therapy session that morning, about how his therapist told him that life is meant to teach us lessons. “She says that if we ignore the lesson or go another direction, and we don’t face it, it’s like the universe recalibrates to escalate the lesson to be bigger and harder the next time. Then, if you make a similar choice, there’s more to learn. That lesson moves on to a more difficult, harder, bigger lesson than if you had learned it completely the first time.”
“That’s why,” he says, “it’s important to let go of things.”
Blair crinkles her nose. “I don’t get it.”
Theo smiles and then opens his mouth to speak, before closing it again. He looks over at me. “To show the universe you’ve learned your lesson and you don’t need to learn it again.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I say. “I don’t think the universe is keeping score.”
Later, I give the girls money for the vending machine. Theo and I look on as they carefully make their selections.
“You should have just gone away,” he says, same as the last visit, and every one before that. “Why didn’t you just go away?”
“I don’t know. But I really wish we had.” Blair holds a bag of chips up, waving them in the air like she’s just struck gold. The grin on her face is nearly an exact match to her father’s. My eyes well up with tears. “If I had known—”
“It’s okay,” he says, shaking his head. “Sometimes not knowing is better.”
