On Second Thought(22)

Apparently, he had a tiny little oddity in one of the blood vessels in his brain. Not a problem, unless one’s wife needed a second glass of wine.

Cause of death: wife wanted to have buzz on during irritating speech by sister’s boyfriend.

Couldn’t Eric just have asked Ainsley to marry him in private, like a normal person, I don’t know, like maybe five years ago? Instead, he had to make a big production in front of everyone, in front of his Wellness Montage (it had been labeled, and really, who the hell photographs the removal of a testicle?). No, we all had to drink a toast to my little sister, and boom, I’m a f*cking widow.

I looked at the line, which went out the door, out into the foyer and down the street. When we pulled up to the funeral home, the line of mourners was four people thick and wrapped around the block. So much black it looked like the Night’s Watch from Game of Thrones had descended. That was two hours ago, and the line showed no sign of thinning.

Everyone loved him.

Nine months ago, I hadn’t. Nine months ago, I hadn’t known him. I’d finally gotten to that happy Zen place, and life had been really, really good.

If he had tripped nine months ago, I wouldn’t have even known about it. Seven months ago, I would’ve lost a very sweet guy I’d been seeing. I would’ve been melancholy for a while. Would’ve made a black joke about how the universe was telling me not to date. Five months ago, I would’ve mourned him, would’ve wondered if we had truly been in love or if it was just infatuation. I would’ve gone to his wake and introduced myself to his mother as a friend, smiled sadly when I thought of him.

Four months ago, I would’ve lost my fiancé, but I still wouldn’t have known the reality of living with him day after day.

Ninety-six days of marriage.

I drifted over to the casket and, for the first time this endless evening, took a long look at my husband’s body.

That woman had been wrong. He looked absolutely dead. His face was hard and stiff, like one of those plastic surgery addicts, pumped up on filler. I wondered if the funeral home used the same stuff. Juvaderm. Botox.

Oh, Nathan.

At least his hair felt the same. My fingers stroked it, gently, trying not to make contact with his scalp. Just his hair, soft, silky hair that curled a little when he was sweaty. Roman emperor hair, I said once. We were in bed at the time. His smile...

“Hey.”

It was Eric. Cause of death: extremely long-winded speech.

“Hey,” I bit out.

“You doing okay?”

“Not really.”

He put his arm around me, and I felt a pang of regret. Eric had always been a decent guy, if self-absorbed. “I was telling Sean about how weird this was, given my cancer. Like there’s some meaning here.”

The irritation came swooping back like a vengeful eagle. “There’s not, so please. None of your platitudes, Eric.”

He blinked. “I...I just meant life is short. You have to live life large.”

“Not now, Eric.”

“It’s almost a message from the universe. You know I loved him, too. And I thought I’d be the one who died. You know? From my cancer?”

“I vaguely remember, yes.”

“It’s just so random. When I was getting chemo, there were days when I thought this was the end, and I said to myself—”

“Here, Kate.” My sister pressed a glass of water into my hand. “Mrs. Coburn wants you to meet someone. Nathan’s friend from Columbia.”

Saved by the mourners. My sister steered Eric away, and I took another long look at my husband.

I love you, I thought desperately, and at almost the exact same time, another thought came, hard and defiantly ugly.

I wish we’d never met.





Chapter Seven

Ainsley

“Just when I’d accepted the divorce,” Candy liked to tell people on book tour, “Phil showed up with his child.”

I remembered thinking at age three and a half that it would be fun to live with a lady named Candy, that her house would be sparkly and we’d eat mostly pink foods. There’d be a lot of singing, I imagined.

There wasn’t. Candy sighed a lot. She had a daily headache.

Hence, my childhood of guilt. Candy would buckle me briskly into a car seat, then wince as she stood up, hands on her back. She was in her forties when I came to live with her, and she’d tell her friends that she’d forgotten just how hard little kids were. She was dutiful, showing up at parent-teacher conferences because Dad was off with the boys of summer. She made sure I ate nutritious—and tasteless—dinners, but it was pretty clear. I was not her daughter. She already had one of those.

When I came along, Candy had been working on her PhD. It took her four more years to finish her dissertation, which became her most famous book—Stuck with You: Raising the Recalcitrant Stepchild. It took me decades to figure out it was about me.

Unlike Sean and Kate, I was a day-care kid. From their stories, it seemed they were raised in a magical kingdom of sibling friendship and parental delight. Candy baked back then, coconut cookies and angel food cake. Kate and Sean had stories of the time their mother made a tepee in the living room over winter break, or read The Wind in the Willows out loud, doing all the voices to perfection. Sean and Kate even shared a room until he turned seven.