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PROLOGUE
SUMMER
They say that grief doesn’t get smaller; you just grow around it, expanding your life with friends, with family, with work, with hobbies and distractions, until it no longer feels like your loss is all you are.
If I could look inside myself, what would I see? I imagine I’m like the attic of the Chevalet gallery—Ben’s gallery, my gallery now—packed to the rafters with boxes and packaged canvases and crates of old decorations for every season and holiday and parcels of postcards and merchandise to sell by the register. After all, not everyone wants to, or has the money, to buy a piece off the wall. But it’s a mess, that attic, and I think that’s what I am: a mess of wonderful things that make me smile and remember, and terrible things that lurk in the dark corners and hang around like the scent of something rotten that you can’t quite find.
I still have emotional whiplash, and I think the ache of it will linger for the rest of my life, but that’s to be expected, right? In one summer,thatsummer, I went from being a wife to a stepmom to a widow. I went from the world being my oyster to clamming up again. Alone again… only not as alone as I was before. I have friends, I have the love of a little girl who calls me “Big Bear,” I have more money than I know what to do with, I have a beautiful apartment in the Garden District, I have everything anyone could wish for, but I don’t havehim. The one who made this possible. I once thought that meant I had nothing, but time and some very stubborn friends have been determined to show me that’s not true.
The loss of him should’ve been enough to make me crawl under a rock, never to emerge again, but the people who touched his life, touched mine, and by their hands, I was pulled out of that pit of despair and solitude. Without them, I don’t like to think about where I’d be.
So, maybe the inside of myself isn’t quite like the gallery attic, but more like Pandora’s Box. Before Ben, it was filled with the trauma of my past, the struggle of the present, and the unknown of the future; the lid forever threatening to burst open and release all of those monsters or drag me down into the box with them. With Ben, the lid began to seal shut, though a few nasties still banged inside it, demanding freedom. After Ben, his accident, his death… it unlatched the lid and let everything out, plus a few demons I hadn’t bargained for: warped creatures of grief that I can’t even begin to describe. No one can, unless they’ve been through it. It’s like the world narrows, until you’re looking at it through a hole no bigger than a straw, feeling so detached from it all that you wonder if it would be easier to just break away. It’s like a migraine that won’t quit, and no pill even begins to ease it, and you’re just wandering around in agony, hating those who don’t feel that stab behind the eyes, in the gut, in the heart. It makes you resent happiness in any form, it twists up the roots of you until it has you in a chokehold of bitterness, but it’s nothing compared to the guilt that slams you under the ribs when you dare to laugh or smile for the first time since. I remember that moment. I was with Lyndsey and Grace on a normal Sunday afternoon, playing out in the garden, and the guilt made me sick,physicallysick; my body rejecting the merest hint of joy.
I don’t get sick anymore. I smile and I laugh, and I see the beauty in the world again, and sometimes I think,he would have loved this. See, at the bottom of Pandora’s Box, and in the very depths of me, one thing remains, and that one thing keeps me going, letting me know there’s a life out there for me to live, that it’s not all over yet if I don’t want it to be.
Hope.
1
SUMMER
“Sorry, sorry, I’m on my way! Got stuck in traffic leaving the city. Today is apparently “drive like a moron” day. You know how it is.” I shout over the throb of the air that rushes by the wound-down windows, hurriedly turning down the blaring jazz from the radio while I’m at it.
I can picture Lyndsey nodding as she replies, “I figured, but Grace wanted me to call.”
“You said you were leaving two hours ago!” Grace’s voice is distant, somewhere in the background. From the garden, maybe, in that suntrap by the willow tree where Lyndsey and I have shared way too many glasses of white wine; the glasses always damp with condensation, waiting to be drunk while we get lost in conversation.
“I know, I know, I’m so sorry. New Orleans is full of tourists driving badly today.” There’s a familiar twinge of guilt between my ribs, like Grace herself is plucking the tight muscles that hold the bones together. She’s been panicking; I hear it in her voice, though it’s far away. It’s a feeling I understand all too well. Every time Lyndsey and Grace visit, and head home in the car, I can’t settle until I get a text or a call to let me know they’re home safely. Same with Ms. T and the girls from the gallery, and the latter don’t even drive home; they walk.
I hear Lyndsey moving around the kitchen of her beautiful home in Slidell: the clink of a ceramic bowl on the huge island in the middle, the slight whisper of napkins being rearranged, the soft sliding of drawers and the knock of cupboards opening and closing. She’s in hostess mode, likely stressed out of her mind, but she called because her daughter asked her to. A small gesture that used to be so alien to me, since my own mother wouldn’t have tossed me a bottle of water if I was on fire.
“Are you on I-10?” Lyndsey asks, chewing discreetly on a stolen morsel of party food.
“Uh… not exactly.”
She sighs. “Taking the scenic route again?”
“Something like that. Sorry. I know I-10 is quicker, but… before I knew it, I was on this road again.”
I imagine her shaking her head in mock despair. “I wouldn’t mind if you were in a car that functions, Summer. Seriously, if you don’t get rid of that hunk of junk, I’m going to buy a new car for you. No takebacks.”
I smile. “It won’t get used.”
“You forget, Summer; I know where you keep your car keys, and that thing is going to end up at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain if I get my way.” Lyndsey’s laughter brings a chuckle to the back of my throat, though I know she’s half-serious. She hates this crusty Honda Civic, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. It reminds me of where I came from, and that if I want a new car, I need to work for it, making the money myself instead of using what’s in my bank account, gathering interest.
“Hey, according to John, it only needs a new fan belt, and not for another five thousand miles,” I protest playfully, drumming my fingers on the thin, cracked sill likeI’mthe one playing the trumpet that sings from my speakers.
“John isn’t going to tell you to get rid of it, Summer. He’d be out of business.” Lyndsey pops something else into her mouth, crunching down on it as she adds, “Well, I won’t keep you. Got a thousand things left to do here, and Oscar is out picking up the cake so I’m flying solo ‘til he gets back. Just… drive safe, and get here in one piece, okay?” It’s a phrase that has become a habit for both of us, every time one of us is traveling.
“Will do,” I promise.
“Is she almost here?” Grace’s voice filters through again, bringing a fresh smile to my lips.
“Not yet, honey,” Lyndsey replies, “but soon.”
“I can’t wait to see you!” Grace shouts. “Drive safe, and get here in one piece!”
With a quick goodbye, Lyndsey hangs up and I twist the dial on the radio until the jazz envelopes me once more, providing the soundtrack that’ll see me through the bayou, all the way to their house in Slidell.
