Page 28 of When We Had Forever
Her hard-earned slenderness aside, though, she looks lessened, somehow. I even spot two different mystery stains on her navy chiffon blouse. Very un-Kate-like.
“You kind of look like shit, too,” I say. “Is everything all right? How’re the kids? How’s Tanner?”
She downs her coffee like she’s shooting tequila. With palpable desperation. “Ha. The kids’re...you know. Terrors. And Tanner’s...Tanner. Always off playing computer chess while I’m cleaning up theentire bag of flourHunter’s exploded all over the couch or trying to stop Evelyn from eating pennies. I swear, it’s like my husband has become just another human to keep alive. Sometimes I try to remember what it was like to desperately want to have sex with him all the time, and I just can’t.”
I nod in sympathy, though I can’t actually empathize. I never stopped wanting to have sex with Michael all the time. Then again, I never cleaned up bags of flour while he hid in his office playing computer games, so maybe that has something to do with it.
Either way, I can’t help but mourn the fact that while Kate once got starry-eyed when speaking Tanner’s name, she now talks about him the same way she talks about her dog.
“But I didn’t come here to whine,” she says briskly. “I mean, I’m tired. Just...so damn tired, all the time. It’s like no matter how fast I run, I never get anywhere. But that’s a bullshit thing to complain about toyou. Having a dead husband’s got to be a thousand times harder than having a clueless, alive one.”
I nod again, touched. Other people always dance around this subject, as if maybe I’ve forgotten about how my marriage ended and if they remind me, my grief will detonate all over them.Mina Drake, land mine of hazardous emotion. Proceed with caution.
But Kate has no problem speaking Michael’s name aloud. She talks about him like he’s just as real as he was. Like she’s acknowledging that I have every right to feel the way I do.
“I’m worried about you,” she says.
I fiddle with my coffee. Okay, so maybe this is going in a different direction today. “When are you not?”
“Well, never. But I’m extra worried these days. You’re too skinny. Are you eating anything?”
I make a show of dumping in generous helpings of cream and sugar. “Does coffee count?”
“No. It definitely doesn’t. And you never answer my calls anymore. Do you even talk to anyone? Ever? Because I tried emailing, too. Nothing.”
I duck my head. “Yeah. I haven’t checked in...um...a few months. Life’s so much easier if I stay off the internet.”
“Really,” she says, flat. “How come?”
I stare into my cup. Kate knows exactly why I avoid the headlines and internet clickbait—for the same reason I shop at Seagrove’s mom-and-pop grocery store, despite their failure to stock my favorite brand of kettle corn. At least there, I won’t encounter the tabloids the larger supermarket plasters everywhere. I won’t round a corner and risk confronting a face I’d rather forget. “Come on. You know.”
Kate’s scrutiny sharpens. “Is seeing Michael’s brotherreallythat hard? Because at this point, I have to wonder if that’s just an excuse. I mean, you’ve never even met the guy.”
A bitter laugh chokes me. I don’t need to meet Grayson Drake to find the sight of him disturbing. “Maybe not, but you don’t know what it’s like to see an angry, tattooed version of your dead husband every other time you go out.”
Her mouth twists. “Okay, maybe not. But I do know holing up here isn’t doing you any favors.”
“I’m fine. Really. I’m just waiting for the world to forget its fascination with my ex-brother-in-law.”
“Then you’re going to be stuck here a long time. Especially after this latest fiasco.”
I wince. “Ugh. What’s he done now?”
“Gone on another one of his benders.” She waves a hand. “Knocked out a guy in a nightclub, or something. Honestly, I didn’t even read it this time. Just saw that he made the cover ofAmerica WeeklyandCelebrity Style, looking as pissed off as always.”
“Oh, wonderful.” I sip at my coffee, then spit it back into the cup. In proving a point, I’ve rendered it undrinkably sweet. “Maybe this time, I’ll finally get lucky and he’ll do something he can’t recover from.”
Kate’s look turns flinty. “You don’t mean that.”
I grumble. Of course I don’t. But Ihavehated Michael’s brother for fourteen years, ever since he and my husband collided in Seattle and everything changed.
It was bad enough when Grayson catapulted to fame three years ago.National Geographic’s gorgeous bad-boy photographer snapshotted himself just moments after being dug out of an almost-fatal avalanche on Mount Everest, and the picture took the world by storm. Within weeks, some nature network had snapped him up to host its newest wilderness show, which only lasted a season, but that didn’t stop Michael and me from having to field endless questions. Now, with my husband gone, the questions have stopped, but the sordid life of Grayson Drake continues to resemble a never-ending car crash the public can’t look away from. Watching him drink himself from one scandal to another while bouncing from one beautiful woman to the next has made it impossible for me to find peace.
“Look.” Kate sets her coffee down and folds her arms. “All I’m saying is you can’t stay miserable forever. It’s been half a year. Don’t you think it’s time to rejoin the world of the living? At least a little?”
I run my forefinger around the rim of my cup. Idomiss my old life with a ferocity that guts me, but excuses aside, I have this sense that if I go enjoy myself in a world without Michael in it, I’m accepting that somehow it’s reasonable that one day my husband just ceased to exist.
It’s not fucking reasonable, not in any capacity.
