by Lisa Sorbe
Is my relationship with Brent the type that most women dream about? Probably…not. But he’s smart, handsome, and guards his personal space as much as I do. Plus, he has his priorities in check, and the only time we discuss the future is when we’re talking about work. And though our reasons are different, neither of us want a family.
We’re a match made in heaven.
In fact, when he heard about my mother’s passing, he didn’t offer to accompany me back home. He didn’t lend a shoulder to cry on or offer to help pick up the pieces of what was left of my heart. His response was, of course, related to work. “Go,” he’d said, “I’ve got this.”
And I was more than okay with that. The last thing I want to do is mix my life in Phoenix with the one I had in Wolf Lake.
I absently pull a CD from the plastic crate and study it while he fills me in on the recent antics of a fellow co-worker. Fiona Apple’s dreamy gaze peers at me from under the plastic cover and, without thinking, I crack it open and push my thumb against the center until I hear a soft click.
“Glaser said you’d be out for a while.” Brent continues, sounding unnaturally subdued. “You didn’t mention that.”
I sigh, palming the CD as I make for the old boombox on my desk. Pushing a button on the left, I wait as the top pops up and then slide the disc into place. “Helena,” I say, “thinks I need more than a week to deal with this.” I shrug even though he can’t see me. “I don’t.”
“So you’ll be back next week?”
“That’s the plan.” I push play, and the first notes of Shadow Boxer trickle from the speakers. I turn the volume up a notch, silently mouthing the lyrics to a song I thought I’d long forgotten.
“Excellent. I was planning to schedule a meet—” He pauses. “What’s that?”
“Fiona Apple,” I answer, my blood already pumping to the rhythm of the music. I’d forgotten how much I loved this song. Or music, in general. I didn’t have time for anything besides books and studying in college and then, after I started working, for briefs and depositions and court dates.
“A what apple?” Brent’s confusion is tinged with annoyance.
I close my eyes and roll my head, feeling a sharp crack as I do. “Fiona App—…Actually, never mind. It’s nothing.” I punch the stop button and silence once again fills the empty house. “Look, I should really get going. I have a ton of stuff to do and not a lot of time to do it in.” Now my voice is the one with a hint of exasperation. “I’ll let you know when I’m back, okay?”
“Fine, yes.” Brent takes a breath, the exhale bleeding through the phone like a hiss against my ear. “Are…How are you doing, Elena? You’re handling everything okay, right?”
I jerk, my back straightening. “Of, course I am.”
“Good,” he says, sounding relieved. “Good.”
My mouth drops a bit; this sentimental, human side of Brent is not something I normally see. We don’t indulge each other with menial displays of sentimentality. But hearing the concern in his voice, even from a thousand miles away, strikes a chord in me, triggers a desire I haven’t felt since I was young. It’s not appreciation, exactly. Or love. But, rather, the kind of neediness you get when you’re a kid and deathly sick with the flu or you fall off your bike and skin you knee so bad the pain takes your breath away. And the only thing you want, the only thing you need, is someone who cares about you so much that they’re willing to draw some of the pain away from you and take it on themselves.
My mother’s dead, and I don’t have anyone like that anymore.
And finally, the tears that have been building and pricking my eyes since finding out she died, threaten to spill.
“Brent,” I say, and my voice is barely more than a whisper. “I didn’t—”
But he cuts me off, and any inclination that he cared is gone. “I was going to meet with Carlisle tomorrow, but since he prefers you, maybe I can stall him until you’re back.” He chuckles. “Shit, Glaser threw me for a loop saying you wouldn’t be back until August.”
I clamp my lips together so hard my teeth ache. Helena wanted me to take a leave of absence to not only deal with everything going on here, but because I haven’t taken one vacation day since starting work at the firm five years ago. “It’s not healthy, working the way you do all day, every day,” she told me when I informed her about my mother. Her husky southern drawl, the twang that cause most to wrongly underestimate her when they first hear it, was as sharp and adamant as I’d ever heard it—and that’s saying something, believe me. “I love you like a daughter, Elena. Hell, you remind me of myself at your age. And that’s why I’m not asking, I’m telling you to take this.” Her steely gaze left no room for argument, and I strode from our meeting already trying to figure out a way to worm myself back into the office in a week rather than the ninety days that she was demanding.
But now, I feel a sort of desperation shudder through me at the thought of being forced away from the one thing that holds me together. I clear my throat and press the pads of my fingers against the corner of my eyes. “I’ll talk to Helena again. Sort this out. Just…make sure you keep me posted on everything, okay? And let me know about that meeting with Carlisle.” I swallow the lump in my throat and try to force a smile through my words. “The asshole is so tit happy I’ll have him giving us what we want by the end of the hour.”
“Well,” Brent says, his voice turning rough, “you’ve got the goods.”
I roll my wet eyes. “You know I don’t like using them, though.”
“Oh, come on, Elena. I was only joking. You’re one of the best attorneys I know. But if there’s any possibility of an advantage on this case, I say we take it. And if Carlisle slips up because he’s a perverted prick and you’re an astoundingly beautiful woman, that’s his problem, not ours.”
We talk for a few more minutes about work and, after severely bashing the opposing attorney for his chauvinistic ways, I end the call feeling almost normal. Of course Brent doesn’t care how I’m handling things on a personal level, but only as a colleague, where my state of mind will either be a benefit or a detriment to the case. And, honestly, that’s fine with me. I know what our relationship is, what we are to each other. I don’t need him handling me with kid gloves like I’m some fragile piece of glass that could shatter at any moment.
I’m not weak. And I don’t break.
With new determination, I toss the phone onto the bed and get to work.
Most people don’t understand what it’s like to go from having everything to having nothing. And I’m not talking about things. Things come and go: they break, lose their newness. Eventually, all that stuff you wanted so desperately in the first place usually just ends up in a junk pile that you either donate or trash or sell.
I’m talking about people. The people you expect to be around you your whole life, their days entwining with yours via some unseen thread: the past and present and future woven together like a great big tapestry, conversations and memories, the good times and the bad, every bit of it stitched together in a sort of divine ethereal fabric that blankets your life in purpose, in love…in everything that matters.
For most, Time tends to dole out losses in small amounts—a little bit here, maybe a spot there. Usually, it allows for breathers in between; a decade or two or three will pass, like a calm between storms, a soft reprieve before the world tilts once again, leaving you scrambling to stay afoot. And then there are some people, the lucky ones, who seem to live their entire lives within the eye of the hurricane, never once subjected to the horrors raging outside of their safe little realm.
Though, I suppose the secret to surviving the storm depends on your state of mind. Your ability to handle the sudden and irreversible absence of the person you love the most…your reason for living, for breathing.
My mother didn’t handle my father’s death all that well. I’m not faulting her at all; my parents were, at the risk of sounding too airy fairy for my own good, what some would consider soulm
ates. Together since they were kids, they loved each other with a fierceness that was both tender and blazing. Growing up, my old brother Mike and I would often shield our eyes and make overexaggerated gagging sounds whenever my parents displayed any type of affection toward one another—kissing good-bye, kissing hello, holding hands and slow dancing in the kitchen to music only they could hear. It was the little things like that, knowing the sort of love they shared, that made it extra hard when my dad left this world for the next.
So no. I don’t blame her for her breakdown, for the mornings she was unable to get out of bed to go to work or the grocery store or make dinner for Mike and me. I learned to do the shopping, the cooking, and the cleaning while Mike took over the mowing in the summer and the shoveling in the winter. He made sure the pool was ready for cold weather and changed the oil in our mother’s car when it started to leak. I reminded her to shower, shampoo her hair, and eat.
But the way she failed to pick herself up and even try me realize the sad, inevitable truth about life.
You know the old saying? That it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never love before?
Yeah. Well that’s bullshit.
There are days when the world seems to quake beneath your feet. Your steps are wobbly, uncertain, like trying to walk on sand that’s sliding back into the sea.
This is how it feels walking up the sloping lawn to West’s old house, the grass slick from last night’s rain and my legs jelly-like from nerves.
I spent the last two days gutting most my room and all of my mom’s, boxing up everything salvageable and bagging the rest. Her large closet still held a rack of my father’s flannel shirts and his one good suit, and I wondered as I pulled those old clothes down how she could start her mornings when faced with such visceral reminders of him day after day, month after month, year after year. Did she become immune to their presence, and, if so, why didn’t she clean out his side of the closest sooner? What was the point in keeping these reminders of him, reliving the pain of loss over and over and over again?
My father has been gone for nearly two whole decades, but I still pressed the first shirt I pulled out of the closet to my nose, the sentimental part of me that I hated to acknowledge desperate for a hint of his cologne or a trace of the cigars he’d occasionally allow himself on Saturday nights.
Did my mother do this too, every now and then? Did she feel the weight of disappointment in her gut when the only scent wafting from the material was the stale stench of…nothing?
And when that thought hit me, the image of my mother pining over a dead man, I pulled the whole lot out by their hangers and dumped everything unceremoniously into boxes marked for the Goodwill.
And now I just need to haul all of it away.
I glance down at the card in my hand, the one West left behind last night when he came over to bring me the delicious chili dogs that I devoured in one sitting and can already feel settling on my hips. Midnight Sun Builders is printed in a deep, blocky blue text and, underneath that, is Weston Brooks, Owner in smaller, thinner print. Seeing his name like this has me all twisted up inside: pride for the boy I loved so much swelling like a balloon only to be weighted down by a feeling I can’t quite put my finger on.
I suck a deep breath in, tap my foot, crack my neck, turn around and walk back down the porch steps before trudging up them again and finally pressing my finger against the doorbell. The ring resounds inside, a chime set to the tune of Deck the Halls. It’s odd to hear it now, in May, but my mind rewinds back to the times I used to love to ring this doorbell just so I could hear the music West’s mom would plug into the bell’s charm box. During the summers, the doorbell would play Take Me Out to the Ballgame in honor of West’s dad, a retired minor league pitcher turned baseball coach for our high school. West later became a pitching sensation and, unlike mine, his college scholarship was based purely on his athletic prowess.
My nerves are so jangled up by the time he answers the door that my brain refuses to work properly. Just the sight of him—tousled blonde locks, red V-neck t-shirt, and faded jeans that are just a tad darker than the aquarium blue of his eyes—makes my breath catch, and a greeting pops out of my mouth before I can stop it. “Merry Christmas, good sir!” I blurt in a (very terrible) English accent.
West just looks at me, a steely gaze that darkens his expression. A shadow of something flits across his face, a flicker of a memory, and all of a sudden, it’s like we’re ten again.
“And a happy Christmas to you, my dear lady.” West doesn’t take on the accent he used back when we’d play this game every holiday—even though, from what I remember, his was far better than mine. His smile is polite, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and he guards the door warily, like he thinks I’m going to bum-rush it or something.
“Um, I was just…” I fiddle with the card in my hand, then hold it out rather lamely. “You left this the other night.”
West looks at it, then back up at me, raising a brow as if to say, So?
I yammer on. “You said I could call or, er, maybe ask you if I needed something?”
Lord, what is wrong with me? I’m an attorney who’s known for her composure in the courtroom. One who gives opening statements and closing arguments without so much as a stutter or a pause, with my chin lifted and a confidence that rises from my very core. I can captivate any jury, speaking from somewhere so deep inside it’s like the words stem solely from intuition, rising up and out of me as if materializing from some other realm. Normally, I’m the epitome of unwavering poise. But now, standing in front of West, I feel like a bumbling fool who can’t string more than two freaking words together.
He casts his gaze to the right, then up to the moody gray sky. “Yeah,” he says, and then swallows, like he’s holding back a sigh.
A sigh of regret, I think, closing my own eyes and wishing I hadn’t come over here at all, wishing I’d just figured out a way to haul everything away in my tiny rental. Who cares if I had to make fifteen trips a day to the Goodwill, the junk yard? It would have saved me the embarrassment of asking for help, something I absolutely hate to do.
But there’s a part of me—again, that sentimental part that I hate to acknowledge—that wants to see West. Who’s found a reason to peek out of the windows every few hours since I’ve arrived, searching the street for signs of his broad shoulders, his purposeful gait, his Greek god-like profile…
He was a beautiful boy, a gorgeous teen, and now… now he’s a stunning man.
And here it comes again, bubbling up in my chest, that swell of pride that’s mixed with something else. Something heavier, almost melancholy, its weight resting just above my heart.
I can’t continue on like this, stuttering out my pleas for help like I’m some sad little wisp of a woman. So I straighten my shoulders and lift my chin. My gaze is unwavering as I force him to meet my stare. “Look, I was hoping to secure the use of your services while I’m here.” Regaining some of my composure, I barrel on, feeling more surefooted than I have since I arrived in town. “I need a truck for hauling and some,” I gesture his way, “muscle, if you will, to help with the heavier furniture I can’t manage on my own.”
West leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest and studying me like I’m a particularly tough word problem he’s trying to solve. My heart echoes dully in my ears as I wait for him to speak—thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump—and I bite my lip to keep from rambling on like an idiot.
I wonder if he’ll turn me down.
I wonder if he only gave me that card because he knew I wouldn’t use it.
I wonder if he looks as good under those clothes as I think he does…
“It should only take a day or two at the most,” I say, giving in and breaking the silence. My cheeks heat when I realize how desperate I sound, and I can feel beads of sweat break out along the back of my neck. “It doesn’t have to be done right this very minute, but time is a bit of an issue as I’d like to get b
ack home as soon as possible.”
West narrows his eyes when I say the word home.
And then he shrugs. “Fine,” he says, pushing off the door frame. “I’m pretty busy, but I suppose you could secure my services,” he smirks, “sometime later this week. I have Friday afternoon off. If we start around two, we should be able to finish up by the end of the weekend.”
I swallow hard. Today is Tuesday, and I was hoping to have the house completely emptied by Friday. I briefly contemplate just renting a truck, but toss that idea aside when I realize there’s still no way I can haul the heavier pieces of furniture out by myself. And West is…the only person I have left here.
“Fine,” I say, my voice clipped. “Two on Friday then.”
I cross my arms over my chest, nod once, and turn on my heel to leave.
“Bye, Laney.” His voice is sing-song, full of a sort of amused exasperation, like he’s talking to a pouting child rather than a thirty-year old woman.
I hear a chuckle behind me but don’t give him the satisfaction of turning.
I’m a ghost.
I’m a ghost, and I roam this house with the other specters, climbing the walls at night and drifting mindlessly during the day, trapped against my will while my soul shrivels more and more with each passing hour…
Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating.
I’m the only ghost here.
I’m quite sure my mother and father and brother have all moved on. Though my mother did love this house a lot, so maybe she’s still here, hovering somewhere, upset with the fact that I’m doing what I’ve urged her to do for years—selling this place.
I should have spent the last two days working as hard as I could so everything is ready when West arrives with his truck (and his, um, muscles) tomorrow. And there’s so much to do: boxing up the rest of the house, cleaning out the garage and the attic and the spare bedroom next to mine. But that’s Mike’s room, and I haven’t stepped foot in there since I was sixteen. So far, I’ve found excuses to avoid it, telling myself that I’ll get to it eventually, knowing even as I think the thought that I’m flat out lying to myself.
