Piece by Piece

by Laura Bradford

For hours after everyone had finally left the repast, she’d buried her face in the same softness, her sobs broken only by her repeated requests—each one hoarser than the one before—for a single do-over from the same God Pastor Pete had always said could do anything.

  But He hadn’t.

  Jeff was gone . . . The kids were gone . . . Her mom was gone . . . And she—

  The vibration of her phone against the top of the nightstand startled Dani into wiping the latest round of tears from her cheeks with one clumsy swipe of her non-pillow-hugging hand. A glance at the screen had her reversing her initial vow to let it go to voicemail.

  Still, when she lifted the device to her ear, she found she had nothing to say.

  “Dani? Are you there?”

  She made herself nod.

  “Dani?”

  Realizing her mistake, she lowered her chin to the top edge of the pillow and closed her eyes. “I . . . I’m here.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Emily said on the heels of an audible whoosh. “I was worried when I didn’t see you at all yesterday, but Rob said I needed to give you a little time.”

  She lifted her head, kneaded the skin beside her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “You saw me yesterday,” she whispered. “And, about that . . . Thank you. Thank you for getting everyone out the way you did. I just couldn’t do it all anymore—the stories, the awkward hugs, the pity. It was too much.”

  “It’s Friday, Dani. That was Wednesday.” Emily paused, coughed. “I took your garbage out to the curb for you just a few minutes ago. I didn’t want you to miss it with all the empty tins and stuff from the caterer still in the can. But don’t worry, Rob or I will put it back inside the garage after they come and empty—”

  “Wait. What?” She inhaled against the pillow one more time and then gently shifted it back into its place beside her own, Emily’s words looping round and round in her thoughts. “I think you’re off a day, Em. It’s only Thursday.”

  “No. It’s Friday. The Friday paper is sitting in front of me on the table right now.”

  “What happened to Thursday?” she asked, rising to a stand.

  The silence that met her question lasted a beat, maybe two. “Do you want me to come over? I don’t have to pick Bobby up at school until eleven thirty.”

  She knew Emily was still talking. She could hear the rise and fall of her friend’s voice just as surely as she could feel the rise and fall of her own breath. Only her breath was coming faster, her chest beginning to pound.

  If Emily was right, and it was Friday, Dani was supposed to make the run to pick up the boys from morning kindergarten. It was her turn. Next week it would be Emily’s. She’d arranged it that way so she wouldn’t have to drag Ava—

  “Emily, I’m sorry, I have to go. I don’t feel very well.”

  It was true; she didn’t. The same queasiness that had driven her from bed a few times during the night was back, hovering, threatening.

  “Have you eaten?” Emily asked.

  Had she? She didn’t think so. But then again, if Emily was right about it being Friday, she’d lost track of an entire day somehow. Just like she had when—

  “Because if you look in your freezer,” Emily continued, almost breathless, “you’ll find all sorts of things you can warm up in the microwave. I could even do it for you, when I come over.”

  “Please don’t come,” Dani managed past the tightening in her throat. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Then we can talk or just sit together if you’d rather. Whatever you need.”

  “Whatever I need?”

  “Yes, whatever you need.”

  “Can you pick Spencer up when you get Bobby?” Dani asked. “Can you take a picture of me and Maggie painting the mailbox together so I can send it to my mom?”

  Now that she had started, she couldn’t stop the words or their shrillness any more than she could the tears she felt streaming down her cheeks and into her mouth, each question, each image, hitching her shallow breaths. “Can you scoop Ava off the ground and put her into my arms so I can take her up to her room and read her favorite book to her again and again? Can you have Jeff stop on the second step from the top in the garage so I can wrap my arms around his neck and be at the exact right height to kiss him full on the mouth?”

  The silence in her ear was back, but still, she pressed on, her words giving way to broken sobs. “And while you’re doing whatever I need . . . can you . . . can you rewind my life back to that morning . . . and make me keep them home . . . with me? Or . . . have me go with them . . . so none of this would’ve happened . . . or . . . so . . . I could be with them now . . . instead of here—alone?”

  “Oh, Dani, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I’d take it all away if I could; you have to know that.”

  She knew Emily was crying. She could hear her friend’s sniffles intermingled with her own. But when everything about her was literally numb, it held little effect. “Emily, I have to go.”

  “Go? Go where?”

  “Off the phone. I just can’t do this anymore.”

  “I could come over later if that’s better. Maybe when Rob is home and he can be here with the—” Emily’s words fell away.

  Dani picked them up. “You need to be with your kids, Emily. And with Rob. That’s where you should be—where you should want to be. Always. Not looking for time alone so you can come over here, or get your hair done, or-or”—she pressed her fingers to her lips in a futile attempt to stop their trembling—“get a massage, or sit at a bistro table staring out at grapes of all things. Because those thoughts? Those wishes? That time you think you need so badly? You just might actually get it.”

  * * *

  She sat on the bottom edge of the twin-sized bed and pulled the discarded sock to her cheek. Was it just six months ago they’d redecorated Maggie’s room, taking it from the teddy bear motif of her kindergarten days to the more frilly and fanciful space of a still sweet and innocent third grader?

  The wall color had been easy: princess blue—the same princess blue as the comforter. The trim had been painted a crisp white that popped against the wall just as the white and silver dust ruffle and pillow sham did against the bedding. The window seat where Maggie loved to sit and read boasted a slew of throw pillows in blues, whites, and silvers. And the floating shelves the contractor had built for the wall across from the bed helped put the exclamation point on the room’s underlying theme with a place to tuck a tiara, a magic wand, and the jar of pixie dust Dani had made with silver glitter.

  Closing her eyes, she let herself remember the moment she and Jeff had led Maggie up the stairs to see her newly finished space. Maggie had been so excited to see it she’d bounced up and down on her feet, waiting for Dani and Jeff to open the door. And when they had? The child’s pure joy had been so real, so heartfelt, the mist that always seemed to find its way into Dani’s eyes during such moments had been reflected in Jeff’s, as well.

  Soon, the moms of Maggie’s friends had begun calling, asking to stop by and see the room they’d heard so much about, with more than a few who did saying it belonged in a magazine. Yet now, as Dani took in the desk and the shelves Maggie could reach, she began to notice things she hadn’t put there during the decorating phase.

  A Barbie doll, dressed in a princess-like dress, sitting on the edge of one of the floating shelves . . .

  A seashell Dani recognized from their last trip to the beach . . .

  A—

  Clutching the sock to her chest with her left hand, Dani stood and made her way over to Maggie’s desk, her gaze riveted on a drawing taped to the wall. Behind, and slightly to the right of the princess desk clock, the artwork depicted a little girl with brown wavy hair Dani knew to be Maggie, sitting at a table with a rolling pin in one hand and a flower-shaped cookie cutter in the other. The light brown circle on the table in front of her was clearly rolled-out dough. On the round face was a smile that stretched from ear to ear. Behind the drawn Maggie was a drawn Da
ni, her brown hair sitting atop her shoulders, her cheeks rosy, her smile a near perfect match of her daughter’s.

  She lingered her gaze on the drawing through a few more thumps of her heart and then wandered over to the window seat and its view of the backyard. How many times had she come into this room and found Maggie reading in this very spot?

  Hundreds . . .

  How many times had she watched Ava or Spencer climb up next to their big sister for cuddles and a story?

  Hundreds . . .

  How many times had Maggie begged to wish on stars with her before bedtime only to give up and make one by herself when Dani said she already had everything she wanted?

  Hundreds . . .

  She tried to stifle her answering sob with the sock, but it was futile. Maggie would never read in this spot again. Ava and Spencer would never again wander into this room in search of their sister. And all those wish-making requests she’d turned down? They, too, were gone. Forever.

  “Oh, my sweet, sweet Maggie, I have a wish now,” she managed between strangled sobs. “I wish I could have all of you back.”

  Chapter 4

  Using her shoulder and the wall as a guide, Dani made her way down to the first floor, her legs quaking between steps. Sometime during the night, the slow, steady beat of dread had switched into warp drive, expanding its way beyond her ears and into her chest. But even as she’d prayed it was a sign of the heart attack she’d begged God to give her, she knew better.

  Beyond the occasional sip of water, and the two crackers she’d found in Jeff’s suit pocket that had taken her nearly four days to consume, she hadn’t eaten since the repast. Longer, if she didn’t count the single, solitary crouton she hadn’t been able to keep down, anyway.

  She’d tried to ignore the rapid heartbeat, the clammy hands, her nearly paper-dry throat, but to do so meant continuing to stay upstairs where every sound, every sight, made the emptiness in her heart all the more crushing. No, she needed a chance to catch her breath no matter how shallow and fleeting it might be . . .

  At the bottom of the steps, she stopped, collected her balance, and reveled, momentarily, in the sameness of the noises that had greeted her in this same spot every morning for nearly a decade. There was the quiet yet steady ticking of the kitchen clock, the faint hum of the ice maker, and the distant bark of the Andersons’ dog as it spotted the Ridgeways’ cantankerous cat heading home after yet another night of carousing.

  It was all so normal, in fact, that for a few quick strides she actually found herself mentally inventorying the pantry as she wavered between making pancakes or French toast. But it didn’t last. Because as normal as those first few sounds had been, the absence of Ava’s sweet “good morning, Mommy,” and Spencer’s running feet on the stairs compared to Maggie’s more methodical pace told her everything was different.

  Grabbing hold of the edge of the center island, Dani closed her eyes through the sudden yet powerful wave of nausea. When it passed, she crossed to the refrigerator and made herself pull it open.

  Sure enough, the milk she would normally have picked up on a Friday afternoon wasn’t there. Neither was Jeff’s favorite brand of orange juice. Instead, in the places where she would have put them, there were stacks of Tupperware in assorted shapes, sizes, and lid colors. The stack of red-lidded containers, according to the sticky note on top, was from the Andersons and included a tuna casserole, a side salad, and a homemade biscuit. The blue-lidded containers were from the Ridgeways and included the various components of their family’s favorite comfort meal.

  Dropping her hand to her side, she stared at the containers in front of her even as her mind’s eye wandered to the freezer and the packed shelves she didn’t need to see to know were filled. It was what she and her neighbors did for one another when someone’s parent passed, or the season’s creeping crud rendered a mom too sick to feed her family. In fact, not more than six months earlier, while battling a flu she’d picked up in Spencer’s classroom, she’d opened the refrigerator to these same colored lids with the very same contents. Only that time, the containers were bigger, their contents intended to feed five people . . .

  Jeff.

  Maggie.

  Spencer.

  Ava.

  And herself.

  But now, despite the same families using the same colored lids, the containers were smaller, their limited contents reflecting the single mouth left to feed.

  The quaking in her legs was back. So, too, was the nausea that had her closing the refrigerator door on food she needed yet had no desire to eat. Instead, she grabbed a glass from the cabinet, filled it halfway with water from the sink, and carried it over to her spot at the kitchen table. It wasn’t that she wanted to sit there, surrounded by four empty chairs, but it was getting harder and harder to stay standing without feeling like she was going to faint.

  She needed to eat. She knew that. But knowing it and doing it were two different things.

  “Baby steps get you to the same place, Dani . . .”

  Startled as much by her own gasp as the clarity of her mother’s voice in her head, Dani rushed to right her glass before she spilled its water down her chin and neck. She knew her mother wasn’t there, knew it just as surely as she knew her own name, but still she looked toward the hall . . . the pantry . . . the sixth chair at the table, and held her breath for half a beat just in case she was wrong.

  She wasn’t.

  The voice, the words, had been so real, so true to what her mother would have said in that moment, she dropped her head into her hands and hitched out a sigh. “I don’t know how to do this, Mom,” she whispered. “How to do any of this.

  “Jeff and the kids—they . . . they were my world, Mom. My everything.” She tried to clear the rasp from her throat but to no avail. “You all were.”

  Lifting her chin, she wiped the growing wetness from her cheeks. “That’s why I didn’t take time for me. Why I didn’t want you pushing me to stay behind.

  “But you did!” She shoved back from the table so hard the chair smacked into the corner of the island. “Why? Why did you do that? Things were fine the way they were—I was fine. I was great!” she spat through clenched teeth. “I was whole! And now?

  “Now?” she repeated, shrieking. “Now Jeff is gone . . . Maggie is gone . . . Spencer is gone . . . Ava is gone . . . You’re gone . . . And I’m here—here without them, and without you! And why?”

  She scanned the island, the countertops, and the table before settling, finally, on her desk and the hardback book in its center. “So I could read a book?” she screamed. “A book?”

  Racing across the room, she grabbed the book, looked down at the same cover that had once enticed yet now repelled, and threw it across the hall so hard it left a mark on the wall where it hit. “I was reading a book when my family needed me most!”

  The anger that had propelled her across the room bowed to a wave of grief so strong her knees buckled her onto the edge of her desk chair.

  “The other vehicle jumped the median at such speed, your husband’s attempt to swerve out of the way was futile.”

  She held her hands to her ears in an attempt to block out the trooper’s description of the accident, but it, too, was futile. Jeff had tried to swerve. That meant he’d seen the car coming at them.

  Had he yelled?

  Had Mom looked back at the kids?

  Did the kids see the car?

  Did they call out for her in their fear?

  Did they wonder, in those last moments, why she’d chosen to stay behind, why she wasn’t there to hold them . . . to comfort them . . . to protect them . . . to tell them she loved them?

  Or did Maggie think about the brochure she’d caught Dani looking at that morning—the one for the spa and its promise of peace and quiet without the kids?

  Extending her hands, Dani gripped on to her roots and pulled, her teeth clenching in anger even as a fresh set of tears spilled down her cheeks. “How could you stay behind? H
ow could you leave them to go through that alone? How could you lose track of everything about them because of a book?”

  Slowly at first, and then with gathering speed, she tore into herself, her throat growing rawer and rawer with each accusation she was unable to hold back.

  “How could you not know they needed you? That they were scared? That they were hurt? That they were screaming your name? How could you”—she let loose a guttural noise from somewhere deep inside her chest—“not know your family was dying? How could you not know they were dead?”

  She heard the words as they left her lips, heard them echo through the empty room, but for just a moment, it was as if they belonged to someone else. Someone she didn’t want to know. Someone awful and selfish and—

  The ring of the desk phone stole her thoughts and sent them toward the caller ID screen and the out-of-state number she didn’t recognize. She knew the likelihood that it was a solicitor was high, but for just a moment she wanted someone to yell at, someone to unleash her anger on besides herself.

  But when she reached for the phone, her fingers hit the button on the answering machine instead, unleashing a trio of giggles that stole her breath from her lungs. As she worked to catch it, Maggie’s sweet voice emerged in the greeting they’d painstakingly rehearsed together.

  “Hi! You’ve reached the Parkers’ res-i-dence. We are not home right now, but if you tell us your name and your phone number, Mommy or Daddy, but probably Mommy, will call you back very”—Maggie’s voice bowed to a flurry of whispers, a loud yet quick “very” from Spencer, a softer and not-so-quick “very, very” from Ava, before returning—“soon! Bye!”

  Lunging forward, Dani grabbed the phone. “No! No! Don’t go yet, please! Don’t . . . go,” she rasped. “Please . . . I’m sorry! I-I didn’t need time.”

  There was no use; she simply couldn’t hold back the sobs that rattled her body from head to toe. Maggie’s voice was gone, taking with it the confusion that had let her believe, for the most wonderful of moments, that their presence was in real time, rather than a recording of the past.