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No one would blame me for taking more time off, but thinking of the urn downstairs in the dark house, I shivered. I didn’t need more time here. I needed to be out there with the living, reclaiming my life, no matter how unfamiliar it might seem.
Scrolling through my emails, I opened the first one and then the next. It took me a good hour to get through them all. Then I began drafting the letter that I would be sending out en masse, letting everyone know that I appreciate their kind words and support. And I did. I just didn’t want to talk to them all about it, in detail. I didn’t really understand what I was feeling.
I cared for Trevor. I hurt that he was gone. But deep down, somewhere buried in the depths of my sorrow, I also knew that things between us would have ended one day. I just thought it was going to be with a breakup, never in a million years did I think it would end like this.
Chapter Nine
Six Months Later
It would have been harder if it hadn’t been for my career. For those six months after Trevor’s death, I threw myself into work like never before. At first, everyone treated me so gently, like they were afraid I might break, but what they didn’t seem able to fathom was the fact that I was going to be flourishing in no time at all.
Flourishing, though, definitely made me feel like shit.
I had done all the normal almost-widow things during the first few weeks; crying in the bathroom between shoots and going straight home afterward while ignoring all sorts of invitations to let loose a little with my friends. Most of all, though, I slept. Food was to fuel my body, but the few glasses of wine before bed were to knock me out. I shut everything else out by sleeping, hoping that by keeping everyone away, I would somehow figure out what I was feeling.
Then one day I woke up, and I wasn’t tired anymore, and that was when the guilt set in.
In nearly eight weeks, I had accomplished so much at work, but in my personal life, nearly nothing had changed. The door to Trevor’s office was still locked, his urn was still on the floor, and only about a quarter of the offshore accounts had been successfully rerouted to my personal account. Other than a full work schedule, I was nearly in the same place that I had started.
Now that I was fully awake, though, the snail’s pace I had been moving at transformed into a fever pitch of forward momentum. It was almost the opposite of the months I had been in that twilight state.
I booked a flight to Los Angeles, checked myself into a long-stay Airbnb, and got to work. I not only shot new scenes for mainstream production companies, but I also did a ton of content for my OnlyFans.
I attended every party, every networking event and even built my social media profiles back up from their semi-permanent hiatus. I was back in full force and ready to be a star again.
There was some fear from those around me that I was going to crash and burn, but only I knew why I was suddenly able to grab the reins of life again. I was free to be myself not because I had finally healed from my fiancé’s death, but becausehe had died.
That day I woke up and realized I didn’t want to sleep my life away any longer was the day I realized that all the invisible chains Trevor had latched onto my life were finally broken. They had been for weeks at that point, but acknowledging that fact had made me so painfully full of guilt that it seemed to short circuit my brain.
I was awake, alive, and flourishing—because Trevor was dead. I had never felt worse while simultaneously experiencing the greatest successes of my professional life. Who becomes happier after losing someone they love?
I spent a fair amount of time exploring Lace Elm, too, even though Dallas was a close enough drive. I wanted to see the little town I had unwittingly become a part of, floating to myself the idea of staying on the property. Even with the money Trevor had left me, I’d be hard pressed to find something as stunning as my current home. I still yearned for the city, but soon, I hoped to be able to bring part of the city to me instead. I had all the space in the world for parties, dinners with friends, and I even considered offering one of my fellow performers a room to rent, just so the place wouldn’t feel so lonely.
There was just one problem: the secret office, and the giant urn on the floor.
Some days I passed the urn and told it hello, while at other times I went multiple days doing my best to not even look in the urn’s direction. It weighed heavily on my mind that it was still resting on the floor like so much discarded bric-a-brac, but what else could I possibly do?
It meant I had to get into the office, one way or the other, before I could invite anyone to the Lace Elm house. I can’t have guests stubbing their toes on my dead fiancé’s urn. Simply having that thought was an example of how odd my life had become, but as long as I was moving forward, odd would suffice.
Strangely enough, being lonely so often taught me many things about loving myself. I started running, pushing myself until my lungs were ready to give out. I would run until the dark thoughts that still plagued me at night lost their grip, and I was so light I could nearly fly.
I did yoga on the balcony in front of the rising sun. I took long baths in the jacuzzi tub just because I could. I stopped being lonely, because I was enough on my own, and it changed me for the better.
It was a sort of visual change, too, even if it started from the inside out. My name was on the lips of more and more producers, and photographers I had worked with for years noticed distinct changes in me; the lines of my body more pronounced, the sallowness that had affected my skin for so many months becoming tan and warm again, and as one director said from behind the camera, “I don’t know what you’re doing differently, but you’re positively glowing, Rachel.”
The same night, my manager joined me and a few other performers at a cocktail bar downtown, handing me a shot while still holding another for herself.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing. I just had the director at the shoot we left approach me, wanting to know if you had your passport. Do you like Europe, Rachel? He has this idea for a shoot, but it requires you to be on location in Croatia.”
“I love it,” I purred, tilting my head back and letting the shot slide down my throat like liquid fire. In reality, I had never been, but I was going to walk the walk, and talk the fucking talk if I needed to, that was for sure.
It was safe to say life was getting back on track. Until it wasn’t.
It was 3:07 a.m. when the notifications from the outdoor camera began coming in like crazy. I fumbled for my phone, pulling the app up with my vision still blurry from sleep, but when I saw the same thing moving across all the cameras one by one, my blood ran cold.
Dressed in all black, with a hood obscuring their face, was a person pacing the circumference of my property, slowly and steadily, as if they were in no hurry. The sight was so unreal that I thought I was dreaming at first, but reality sank in as I watched the intruder move.
