Chapter 2
In retrospect, this probably should’ve happened a lot sooner.
It’s been six months since the night Ted died, and time has done nothing but amplify your anger and resentment. It seeps into every aspect of your being — into your relationships and your professional life. And the more you learn from the initial investigation, the more fuel is added to the fire raging inside of you. You’d been well aware of the infidelity prior to his death. It’s what had sent your fist hurling towards his face that night, just before he walked out the door for the last time. But the toxicology report caught you off guard — a mixture of opioids and benzodiazepines in his system. Eighteen years of marriage, and this is what you have to show for it; a husband who spent his time getting high off of narcotics and fucking twenty two year olds while you worked your ass off to provide for your family. You’re starting to get the sense that you’re mourning a stranger.
It’s a losing battle, attempting to balance any fucking semblance of a normal life as every single support system you have is chiseled out from under you until a sequence of clumsy moves sends the whole fucking thing crashing to the ground.
Another violent outburst has Christopher terminating your working relationship under the guise of concern. He loves you, he says. He cares about you. He’s worried. You’d struck back — told him that his desire to cover his own ass clearly outweighed any concern for you or your boys or your ability to pay your fucking mortgage. In the end, you’d agreed to take some time off to try to rein in this anger, whether you’d actually meant it or not. Reluctantly, that included accepting the information for a grief group that he had hastily scribbled down before all but pushing you out the front door.
You’d considered blowing it off more than once, the name “Friends of Heaven” enough to make you gag every time you read it, but it was this or therapy. Grief group seemed like the lesser of two evils at the time. But as you step onto the large gazebo overlooking the ocean, take in the posters and flyers and pamphlets, you become less and less confident.
The coffee is shit, and the pastries are stale, so you skip the formalities and take a seat, avoiding curious eyes in an attempt to thwart off conversation. Participation had never been outlined in the terms of your agreement, after all. You have a plan. Stomach this for a few weeks, put on an act, and go back to picking up the scattered pieces of your life.
The leader of the group, Pastor Wayne, is almost exactly what you’d expected, save for a few of the darker anecdotes that he offers. He speaks of closure, of moving on and forgiveness. It’s the same bullshit you’ve heard every day since Ted’s death, with some extra flowery words to make it sound profound. You’re not sure what’s more nauseating, his words of encouragement or the stories shared by the other members of the group. It’s disturbing, really, the kind of shit death brings out of people. Ordinary people die and people speak about them like they’re saints — like they’ve never made a single misstep in their entire existence. It’s a load of shit and you know it. There are people here who have been in mourning for over a fucking decade and are still incapable of anger towards the ones they lost.
Your agitation only grows with each and every impassioned, emotional speech and you’ve already begun to consider an escape plan when a voice stops you cold in your tracks.
“It’s been six months,” the voice says, and your eyes roam the group to find her. She’s clearly a regular here, based on the murmured encouragement and sympathetic words being tossed in her direction. She looks different in the light of day, with color in her cheeks and the mysterious blood stain missing from her patterned dress. You find yourself enthralled, even as the anger begins to brew in your gut. You can’t understand how this woman is sitting here surrounded by people in mourning to discuss the man she killed while his widow struggles daily just to keep her fucking head above water. You grit your teeth, consider ripping her to shreds in front of this group of people, but your curiosity wins out.
“I can’t stop thinking about how different things might be if I’d been able to carry to full term.”
It takes a moment for your mind to put the pieces together — the blood soaked dress, the way her hand had habitually cradled her stomach. You wonder if the twists will ever end, if the proverbial shoes will ever stop dropping. Maybe if you were a better person, you’d find a little empathy — accept that you’d been thrust into a situation that would allow you to confront your selfish approach to the grieving process. Instead, it only serves to further fuel the flame of anger inside of you. You’ve been aware of your unhealthy coping mechanisms from early adulthood, standing stone faced by your mother’s bedside as she took her final breath. It’s as if every other emotional switch inside of you had been turned off, leaving only anger behind. It’s what had single handedly destroyed your relationship with your father — the endless shucking off of his attempts at comfort and affection and bandaging your grief with reckless behavior and isolation. You’re oddly attached to it — your anger. It’s your biggest downfall and your greatest source of comfort, and it feels oddly threatened in this woman’s presence.
“Shit,” you mutter, and you can feel the very moment her eyes fall upon you. It’s hard not to take a sick satisfaction in the way her color drains from her face. You’re idly aware of the Pastor spouting off some bullshit about forgiveness as your accusing eyes bore into her sympathetic ones.
“How do you forgive the person who ran your husband down and left your children fatherless?”
Her gaze falls to the floor and you feel a sense of vindication — like you’ve won something. You’ve always been overly competitive. But then multiple pairs of eyes are watching you expectantly, and you realize there truly are no fucking winners here.
Unsurprisingly, you struggle to find any catharsis in this — a bunch of long ago bereaved people eager to hear how fucked up other people are so that they don’t have to face their own miserable lives.
Good call, Christopher.
x
She has the balls to approach you afterwards.
She slinks over to you like a puppy in a shock collar — a glutton for punishment.
“Hi,” she utters sheepishly. “Sorry, I-I know I’m probably the last person you want to talk to.”
There’s a biting remark on the tip of your tongue, a burning in your chest, and you’ve thought of this moment so many times over the past six months — of how you’d react to it. In every scenario, your rage would consume you, spend you spiraling down the path of self destruction once and for all. Never had you imagined yourself struck silent. But there’s something so familiar about this interaction — something reminiscent of that night outside of the police station, an interaction that had haunted you for longer than you cared to admit. The expression that she wears now is not dissimilar to the one you’d witnessed that night, something that you can’t quite put a finger on. It’s unnerving.
A small scrap of paper is thrust in your direction and you find yourself focused on her fingers and the multiple rings that adorn them; imagine them cutting into her skin as she grips the steering wheel harshly.
It’s only when she’s pulling her hand away, paper tucked safely in your fist that you catch the tail end of her sentence.
“— if you need anything.”
There’s a big part of you that wants to lash out — to tell her that you need her to leave you the fuck alone, to die, to feel even a fraction of your pain. But there’s something there, in the look she gives you — something dark beneath the hope and trepidation.
“Didn’t see your mustang in the parking lot,” you eventually manage, and it’s not anywhere close to what you wanted to say, but the darkness you’d caught on to rises just a little closer to the surface and her gaze becomes more avoidant and you realize you’ve struck gold.
“Steve — he, uh, he took it when we broke up,” she admits, and it comes back to you full force; the way she’d watched his hand unflinchingly as it came down toward her. “I, um, I don’t drive anymore.”
“Probably for the best,” you mutter, and the hurt in her eyes is immediate. Good, you think, but your heart begins to sink into your stomach and you find yourself instantly annoyed by how disingenuous your satisfaction actually is. The feeling intensifies when you see the look on her face, the same one she wore the one and only time you spoke previously, outside of the police station. A look that says ‘I deserve this’ — something that makes you wonder if there’s not a warped sense of gratification she takes from the abuse she receives.
“Right,” she agrees with a tight smile, making an awkward gesture to the paper that you’re still holding firmly in your grip. “Anyway, I just wanted to give you that. And to tell you… you know, if you need anything — I mean, seriously, anything at all—“
“Yeah, thanks,” you interject, immediately dismissing both her and the idea as you turn to walk away.
“You’re welcome,” she says, and her response is so sickeningly sweet and impossibly fucking earnest that you just can’t help but take one last parting shot.
“Don’t count on it,” you throw back over your shoulder, and you don’t even have to glance back to see her forlorn expression.
x
You hadn’t intended to call. You really hadn’t. But it’s been yet another sleepless night and your mind has been running in circles for hours on end. You can’t stop thinking of that night at the station, the blood soaked dress and the miscarriage and this perfect stranger’s apparent masochism.
It’s just a few minutes past midnight when you finally give in, slamming the digits into your phone so violently that you fear the screen might actually shatter.
She answers immediately, sounding way too chipper for this time of night. You almost hang up then; listen as she repeats the greeting twice more before you’re gripped with the paralyzing fear that she might hang up and you’ll spend another several hours resigning yourself to the inevitability of repeating this process.
“Hi,” you finally utter, rolling your eyes and she repeats the greeting in a questioning tone. “It’s, uh, it’s Jen. Jen Harding.”
It’s silent on the other end now, for long enough that you actually have to check to ensure that the call hasn’t been disconnected. Sure enough, the seconds continue to tick by on your screen.
“Hello?” You huff, and her response is immediate.
“Yes, sorry, hi. I uh, I’m sorry — I didn’t expect you to call.”
“Yeah,” you laugh, but it’s devoid of any humor. “Neither did I.”
“I’m glad you called,” she reassures, and you really don’t know what to do with that — don’t know how to tell her that the only reason you had was because you couldn’t stop thinking about her miscarriage or the details surrounding it. “Is there— is there something I can do for you?”
The sincerity of it catches you off guard; almost makes you feel guilty for taking her up on her offer and forcing her to relive whatever trauma was attached to that night for her. You’re sure there’s a sensitive way to handle this, but tact had never really been your forte. A graceful dancer, your mom would tease you, but a clumsy communicator.
“You had a miscarriage that night,” is what you eventually blurt out, and maybe it has something to do with the numbness that has consumed you these past couple of months, but you can’t seem to find it in yourself to be apologetic.
The ensuing silence has just begun to threaten to swallow you whole when she finds the words.
“We were on the way to the hospital when it happened,” she tells you, voice thick with tears. “It was just so dark and I thought if we could just get there fast enough, maybe there’d be a chance this time. It was stupid. It was stupid and reckless and god, Jen, you have to know how sorry I am. I never meant—“
She cuts herself off mid sentence and you immediately get the sense that no one ever really let her talk for this long. And you can see why, because the amount of information she offers right out of the gate is enough to have your world spinning off its axis.
“Wait, I thought— the report said that you were the one driving.”
“I was,” she confirms, and you can’t help but wondering if this was all a big cover up and she took the fall for Steve — if she’d lied for him so much at this point that she had begun to believe it herself.
“You were miscarrying, Judy.” Your voice rises as the accusations build and the anger clutches you in its grip.
“I-I was. But Steve— he was too upset to drive. He knew what the result would be. We both did. He didn’t even want to go to the hospital, but—“
“Jesus Christ,” you seethe. “You were having a fucking medical emergency and he wouldn’t drive because he was upset? Do you even hear yourself?”
An answer comes in the way of sniffling, a bit of rustling across the line, followed by an unmistakable crunch.
“I’m sorry, are you fucking eating right now?”
“No!” She sounds absolutely horrified, but the word is muffled around a bite of god knows what. “I mean, yes— but not because I don’t care, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just… I’m kind of an emotional eater.”
And, well, you’ve earned the right to be a little annoyed. Because where Judy is stuffing her face, you haven’t managed to do more than shift the food on your plate around for months. Granted, the sympathy meals that had found their way to your door were fucking disgusting, but the point still stands.
She sniffles again, and there’s a brief satisfaction when the action sends her into a brief choking fit, immediately followed by an apology. Even as you sigh in annoyance, you feel your anger waning, just a little bit.
“What are you eating?”
“An Entenmann’s cookie,” she tells you, her voice perking up for the first time since she’d answered your call, her apparent love of junk food obvious, and you find yourself thinking that maybe the two of you might have even gotten along, in another life. Especially when she specifies: “you know, the little ones?”
You’re already halfway to the kitchen when you respond, “why yes, I do.”
x
“It was my fifth one,” she explains, and you wonder how you got to the point where she’s sharing details over failed pregnancies over milk and cookies. “I think we both knew deep down. But I was five months along. We let ourselves hope. Or, well, I did. I don’t know if Steve ever allowed himself to. And the minute I started cramping…”
It’s your turn now, to respond through a mouthful of cookie, and all you can manage is a lousy “that sucks.” But it brings a small chuckle from the other end of the line, and you find your lips turning up into a sympathetic smile.
“Thanks,” she says, and you can hear the ellipsis— feel the weight of the words she wants to say. You offer no response; are rewarded when the words finally leave her lips. “His new girlfriend is pregnant. Steve’s. He, uh, asked me to paint a mural for the nursery.”
You scoff, and you’ve never been a huge fan of phone calls but you’re suddenly grateful no one is present to watch you spew cookie crumbs across the counter. “Please. Like you’re gonna say yes to that.”
Her silence tells you everything you need to know.
“Judy!”
“I know,” she whines, and if you find yourself smiling a little bit, you’ll blame it on the sugar high. “I just don’t know how to navigate all of this. We were together for so long. I don’t know how to not have him in my life.”
“Tell me about it,” you mutter, and her guilt is immediate.
“God,” she gasps, and you hear what sounds like a palm hitting a forehead. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I—“
“Ted was cheating on me.”
It’s a secret you’d been fully intent on taking to the fucking grave, the shame and baggage that comes along with the confession too heavy to bear. Only, once you start, you just can’t seem to stop, the guilt and the trauma overflowing from your lips before you can so much as consider the implications.
“It’s why he left the house that night. We fought. It got… heated. He left. He left and the next time I saw him, he was lying on a table in the fucking morgue.”
“Jen,” she breathes, her voice trembling. “You know that doesn’t make it your fault, right?”
An incredulous laugh builds up, and you’re kind of amazed that it’s taken this long in conversation for the tears to spill over.
“Isn’t it? If I hadn’t—“ you swallow the words you still can’t bring yourself to say. They go down like gravel. “I’ve been killing myself trying to blame everyone else. You, Steve, the fucking toddler he was having an affair with. But it’s me. I’m the reason he’s dead.”
“No,” she objects with an assertiveness that you couldn’t have assumed that she was capable of. “You’re not going to blame yourself for this. He made his choices. And I-I made mine. I hit him, Jen. I did. Punish me.”
“I hit him,” you confess on a whisper. It’s the first time you’ve uttered the words aloud. They feel foreign leaving your lips, like they’re not even actual words anymore. You test them again. “I hit him.”
“What are you— no. I hit him.” Judy’s voice is stern, her words slow and firm. “I was driving, and I—“
“No,” you interject, the tears beginning to flow freely. A lump months in the making releases itself from your throat on a sob. “I fucking punched him in the face and he walked out the door and never came back, Judy. I hit him.”
There’s a stretch of silence then, giving the panic ample opportunity to set in. This is it. You’re sure of it. Judy is halfway to the police station with this new development and they’ll be here any minute to finally bring justice to the person who is truly responsible for your husband’s death. You’re just about ready to begin the most strenuous of backpedals when a tentative voice reaches out again.
“You don’t think that’s kind of- I don’t know, justified?”
Maybe it’s the emotions running high, or the adrenaline still running through your veins, or maybe it’s because it’s the very last fucking response you’d expected, but you’re unable to hold back the sob of laughter that bursts from your lips. The irony of it all must take another minute to sink in for the other woman, but when it does, you hear a small chuckle on the other end of the phone.
“Spoken like a true domestic violence victim,” you mutter unthinkingly. “Shit, sorry. That was uncalled for.”
“It’s okay,” she responds automatically, the laughter still present in her voice. “Guess I’ve still got some things to work through.”
“Understatement of the year,” you joke, and it just feels so wrong suddenly. You can’t quite figure out how you ended up here, over sharing and laughing over shared trauma with the woman that killed your husband. It’s too much. Six months worth of repressed guilt rises to the surface, the waves swelling and threatening to pull you under once and for all.
“I should- I should go.” you tell her. It’s always been a talent of yours; this ability to close yourself off the moment things start feeling too comfortable. “It’s getting late.”
“Oh,” she says, and you wonder how it’s possible that you can hear both her disappointment and her unwavering support in a single word. “Yes, of course. Get some rest.”
“Okay, so—“
“Can I…”
“What?”
“No,” she backtracks. “It’s nothing. Never mind.”
“No,” you groan. “You can’t just start asking something and then not ask it.”
“You’re right. I hate when people do that.”
“It’s annoying.”
“It is.”
“Then ask me.”
“Can I call you tomorrow night?” She finally asks, and it comes out in such a rush that you almost miss it.
You’ve been told before, by your parents, teachers, employers. ‘Your anger will be your downfall,’ they’d say. You’d scoff, roll your eyes, even tell them to fuck off when the occasion called for it. It never felt possible. And yet you’ve still found yourself here — widowed at 44, with zero meaningful connections outside of your kids (or, okay, one of your kids. Because as it turns out, anger has a way of trickling down and infecting those unfortunate enough to get caught in the crosshairs) and you only have your resentment to blame for all of it. And there’s this tiny part of you that wishes that you could let go — that you could accept this accident for what it was, relinquish the anger and allow yourself to explore probably the least superficial interaction you’ve had in twenty fucking years. But the roots had planted deep within you, the vines spreading and invading until it became the very core of your being — without which you’d just be an empty shell of yourself. You can’t bring yourself to risk parting with it.
“I’ll see you around, Judy.”
“Right,” she responds after a moment, and you can hear the dejection even through the false positivity. “Okay.”
“Goodnight,” you murmur awkwardly, and you almost wish she would argue, just a little; that maybe she’d insist on staying on the phone until you fall asleep. But she doesn’t, and you start to get the sense that this is typical for Judy — that she’s incapable of voicing her own wants and needs, intent on putting others first.
“Goodnight,” she says instead, and you jab your finger into the end call button before you can change your mind.
Your phone gets tossed onto the cold, empty side of the bed that you’ve spent the better part of six months refusing to acknowledge as your eyes bore into the ceiling.
You don’t sleep a wink.