Life Intended (9781476754178)

by Kristin Harmel

  “Dad?”

  I turn in slow motion to see a girl standing there in a pink nightgown. Her wavy chestnut hair falls just past her shoulders, and she has big green eyes the exact color of Patrick’s. I feel my heart flutter.

  She’s immediately familiar to me, and although I can’t quite grasp the thread of memory that ties everything together, I know instantly that she’ll be thirteen in four weeks, on July eighth. I know she loves One Direction and that her favorite member is Louis, because he’s the mature one. I know she loves to draw and play the piano. And I know she got a B+ on her vocabulary test last week because she misspelled the words sagacious and countenance.

  “Hi,” I whisper.

  The girl is staring at me with concern. “Mom?” she ventures, and something inside me bursts wide open.

  I turn to Patrick with wide eyes. “I’m her mother?” I whisper, but of course I am. I know it instantly, and just as quickly, there’s a sudden buzzing in my ears. I see Patrick open his mouth to reply, and I feel him wrap his hand around mine, but already, the light is growing brighter, and he’s beginning to fade into it.

  “Come back!” I cry, but I know he can’t hear me.

  I lose sight of him as the room disappears. The last thing I can feel is his strong fingers slipping from mine.

  Four

  My alarm jars me awake, and it takes me only a split second to remember the feel of Patrick’s touch, warm and solid and alive. I sit bolt upright, blinking into the darkness.

  “Patrick!” I call out, but there’s only the bleating of the alarm clock in return. I hit the snooze button, and in the sudden silence, I already know that I’m back in my real life, the one I share with Dan, the one in which I’ll always be a widow. “Patrick?” I repeat feebly, although I already know he’s not here.

  As the room comes into focus, the last shred of hope disappears. The blackout shades obscure most of the light, and I’m wrapped in the cool silk sheets I’ve grown accustomed to.

  “It was just a dream,” I say aloud. “A dream. That’s all. Patrick is gone.” But I can’t get over how real it all felt. His touch. His taste. The weird way everything seemed to glow.

  And although the details are fading fast, I can’t shake the image of the little girl with the beautiful eyes that were unmistakably Patrick’s. I can’t erase the way she felt so real and so mine, the way I actually loved her. My breath catches in my throat as her single word to me—Mom—comes floating back.

  But I’d known, somehow, that she’d be thirteen on July eighth, which means she’d been born just four months after I slept with Patrick for the first time. There’s no weird alternative universe in which she could actually be mine.

  “I’m not her mom,” I whisper, surprised at how crushed this makes me feel. “It wasn’t real.” I know I’m being irrational. But my heart is still thudding, and I can still see her face in the darkness.

  I turn on the lamp on the bedside table. Just in front of my alarm clock is a glass of water, a bottle of Advil, and a note from Dan telling me he had to head into work early but he hopes I’m not too hungover. I’ve never seen you drink so much champagne! he has concluded helpfully.

  My hand shaking, I take out two pills for my throbbing headache. I wash them down then lie back on my pillow and stare at the ceiling. “What’s happening to me?” I whisper into the silence.

  After a few minutes, I reach for my iPhone and pull up YoungWidowTalk.com, a website I visit every once in a while, though never around Dan. I enter vivid dream of husband into the search field, and several threads pop up. I begin clicking on messages, looking for an instance of a widow having a bizarrely vivid dream about her husband being alive in the present day, but all I find are mentions of dreams about people’s husbands in the past. I search next for imaginary child, and child who doesn’t exist, but I come up empty. Apparently, I’m the only one losing her mind in that particular way.

  I sigh, set my phone down, and get out of bed. The marble floor is cold beneath my feet, and it jars me back to the here and now.

  I float through my morning appointments, and by lunchtime, I know I’m too distracted to be much use to my clients. I ask Dina, the receptionist I share with three other therapists in my office suite, to cancel my afternoon sessions.

  “Everything okay, Kate?” she asks, eyeing me with concern. “You’ve never canceled on your clients before.”

  “I’m just not feeling well,” I tell her. It’s not entirely a lie.

  While I wait for her to let me know she was able to reach everyone, I head back into my office and dig in my middle drawer for the framed photo of Patrick I took off my desk after my fifth date with Dan. I’d told myself then that it was time to put Patrick away. And I had. Mostly.

  From time to time over the last two years, I’ve pulled out his picture and stared at it when I needed answers. There’s always something about seeing his calm, sea-green eyes that seems to untangle everything in my head.

  But today, looking at him just makes everything more confusing. He’s so young in the photo, a sharp contrast to how he looked last night. It wasn’t real, I remind myself. It couldn’t have been. Still, I run my finger lightly over the outer corners of his eyes and think how endearing it was to see the laugh lines that would have formed there. I touch the deep black of his hair and think about how beautiful it looked laced with gray.

  The intercom on my desk buzzes, startling me.

  “I reached everyone, Kate.” Dina’s tinny voice fills the office. “You’re all canceled for the afternoon.” She hesitates. “You sure you’re okay? Can I get you anything?”

  “No, I’m good!” I force a chirp. “Thanks!”

  There’s staticky silence for a minute. “I’m going to take lunch now.”

  “Okay!” I reply brightly. “See you tomorrow, then!”

  I shove Patrick’s photo back into my desk drawer, beneath a stack of files, and then I reach for my phone. Susan picks up on the first ring.

  “I’m off for the afternoon,” I tell her. “Can I come over?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Can’t I come see my sister without something being wrong?”

  “We’ll talk about it when you get here,” she says firmly, letting me know she sees right through me.

  Twenty-five minutes later, I’m pulling up outside her brownstone in a cab. She greets me at the door with a glass of white wine, which she hands to me wordlessly.

  “It’s only one in the afternoon,” I say, taking the glass anyhow.

  “I know by your voice when you need a drink. And now is one of those times.”

  She walks away before I can respond, so I shut the door behind me and follow her in, taking a sip as I go. She’s right.

  “Hi, guys!” I say as I pass the living room, where Sammie and Calvin are glued to the television. On the screen, a cartoon mouse I’ve never seen before is giving a cartoon bear a lecture, and Calvin is giggling. Sammie turns around, grins, and waves. I feel a sudden pang of longing for the green-eyed girl in my dream.

  I find Susan in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with her own glass of white wine. There’s an open bottle of chardonnay on the counter beside a bowl of kettle chips. “Well?” she says as soon as I round the corner. “Spill. Is this about you getting engaged?”

  “No,” I say immediately. But when she just raises an eyebrow at me, I look down and mutter. “It’s stupid. I just had this crazy dream last night. I mean, I think it was a dream . . .”

  I let my voice trail off, and when she doesn’t say anything, I force my gaze up to meet her eyes. She looks calm and pulled together. Exactly how I should be feeling right now. Instead, I feel jittery, like a drug addict going through withdrawal.

  “Go on,” she says calmly.

  And so I tell her about waking up beside Patrick, hearing his voice, fee
ling his touch. I tell her how his hair was speckled with gray; his frame was sturdier; his touch was just as achingly familiar. Her expression grows sadder as I speak, and by the time I’m done, I can feel tears rolling down my cheeks.

  She sighs, puts her glass down on the counter, and pulls me into a hug. “It’s just nerves, sweetie,” she says into my shoulder. “Saying yes to Dan is a big deal. It’s totally normal to have a dream like this.”

  “But it didn’t feel like any dream I’ve ever had before,” I say in a small voice. “It felt like it was actually happening.”

  “Of course it did.” She releases me and steps back. “I think there’s a part of you that feels like you’re doing something wrong by moving on. But it’s time, Kate. It’s okay. Patrick would want this for you.”

  I take another tentative sip of my wine. I contemplate telling her about the girl with the green eyes, but I already have the feeling she thinks I’ve lost my mind. “It just felt like I was getting a glimpse of the life I was supposed to have,” I say instead.

  Susan grasps both of my arms firmly and waits until I look at her. “This is the life you’re supposed to have. Right here. Right now. Losing Patrick was terrible, but it was a long time ago. You can’t keep retreating to thoughts of him every time you have a chance to move forward, or you’re going to let life pass you by. Is that what you want?”

  “No.” I sniffle. I look down for a long time, then I look up to meet her gaze. “It’s just that it felt like I was meant to be there. I knew things I couldn’t have possibly known. I felt like I was totally at home.”

  “Kate, listen to yourself. It was just a dream,” she says firmly. “Let me hear you say it.”

  “But—”

  “Kate, seriously!”

  “It was just a dream,” I repeat obediently after a pause.

  Sammie appears in the doorway to the kitchen then, and I quickly try to hide my tears by taking another sip of wine. She’s not fooled. “What’s wrong with Auntie Kate?” she asks Susan, glancing at me with concern. “She’s crying.”

  “We were just talking about your uncle Patrick, and Auntie Kate got a little sad,” Susan says.

  Sammie looks puzzled. “But I don’t have an uncle Patrick.”

  I choke on her words as Susan hustles Sammie out of the room. I can hear her reminding Sammie that I used to have a husband, and that I’m very sad sometimes that he’s gone.

  Susan returns a moment later, her cheeks a little flushed. “Sorry about that,” she says. “We don’t talk about Patrick much in front of the kids, because it’s confusing for them to think about people dying. I didn’t mean for her to hurt your feelings.”

  “I’m just an emotional wreck today. Not her fault.” I force a smile and try to lighten the mood. “By the way, you may be interested to know that in my dream, you lived in San Diego. I bet you had a great tan. So there’s that.”

  Susan goes very still. “San Diego?”

  I nod. “Yeah, apparently you’d moved there eleven years ago, because Robert had gotten a job offer. Lucky you, right?”

  Susan presses her lips together. “I told Mom and Dad not to tell you that,” she mutters. “How long have you known?”

  “Known what?”

  “About Robert’s job offer.”

  When I look at her blankly, she sighs. “The year after you lost Patrick, Robert got a pretty great job offer in San Diego.”

  “He did?” Goose bumps prickle on my arms.

  She nods. “But we decided to stay here.”

  “For me?” I venture in a small voice.

  Susan hesitates. “You would have done the same. But how did you know about California? Mom?”

  “No.” I look down at my hands, more perplexed than ever.

  “Well, who told you then?” Susan asks.

  I shrug helplessly, my heart thudding. “Patrick did.”

  It’s impossible, isn’t it? Seeing Patrick and the life I could have had in such finite detail can’t be anything but a dream, but then how could I have known about San Diego?

  That’s what’s swimming through my mind as I head out of Susan’s apartment and make my way toward the subway station on Eighty-Sixth. It’s not the dream itself that’s haunting me, although seeing Patrick has unearthed feelings I thought I had closed away for good. What’s bothering me is what it means. And if I’m divining information that actually matches up to reality, is there a chance it’s something more?

  “Don’t be a lunatic,” I mutter to myself, earning a pitying glance from a passerby, who cuts a wide path around me on the sidewalk. I smile an embarrassed apology and put my head down until I duck into the subway station.

  I catch the 6 train, but instead of getting off at Grand Central, my usual stop, I find myself riding the train to the Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall station and walking west on Chambers, toward my old apartment. I have to see it, if only to remind myself once and for all that Patrick is gone, as is the life we shared long ago.

  I’ve deliberately avoided this area of Manhattan since I moved farther uptown. I’ve declined invitations to birthday dinners in the neighborhood, taken cab drivers on roundabout, nonsensical routes, and mostly convinced myself that it could be stored away in a lockbox with all my other memories of the years before Patrick’s death. But the lock was broken last night.

  I reach the doorway to my building, walk up the steps, and take a deep breath before looking right, to the listing of tenants. My gaze stops at Apartment 5F, where P + K Waithman used to be written in block letters that seemed so permanent. The line beside the buzzer now reads Schubert.

  Despite myself, I’m disappointed, but what did I expect? That Patrick was still here, living a secret life with a fictional preteen daughter, their names listed in plain sight? I shake my head. “You’re being ridiculous,” I say out loud.

  Still, I can’t resist pushing the buzzer. When there’s no answer, I back away from the door, and that’s when I notice that the funeral home on the corner is gone, just like it was in my dream. I hold my breath and duck into the narrow alley along the right side of the building. Through the slats in the new wooden fence, I can just make out a new jungle gym with a yellow slide, shaded by a sinewy poplar tree.

  “Impossible,” I murmur, backing away, out of the alley and into the fading sunshine on Chambers Street. I haven’t been here in more than a decade, so how could I have known about the swing set and the tree? How could I have seen them in such exact and correct detail? How did I know they’d be here?

  I walk back up the steps and buzz apartment 5F again, but there’s still no reply. I’m half expecting to hear Patrick’s voice through the intercom, vibrating with static, but that’s crazy.

  I buried him on a bright September morning long ago.

  Five

  I arrive home by four thirty, and after a half hour of sitting on the couch and staring straight ahead in confusion, I stand up and head for the liquor cabinet in the corner, the one I rarely touch.

  I like a glass of wine with dinner, and I have a pint of Guinness from time to time at happy hour with Susan, but I’ve never been a big drinker. So maybe if I have a few shots of something strong, I can force myself back to sleep, back to the dream, back to Patrick. I’m desperate to see him again, to prove to myself that I’m not going crazy. Then again, that’s probably what a crazy person would say.

  I reach for Dan’s bottle of Basil Hayden’s and pour several ounces into a rocks glass. The bourbon burns going down, but I can feel it almost immediately. I’m woozy after a few minutes, but I’m still wide awake, so I fill my glass almost to the top, take a deep breath, and drink it down.

  Ten minutes later, the room growing foggy, I make my way to the bedroom and climb between the sheets, yawning gratefully as my head begins to spin. “Please let me wake up with Patrick,” I murmur into the silence, but I’m not sure who I’m
asking. God? The bottle of bourbon?

  I drift off soon after and although I sleep soundly, I don’t dream. When I wake the next morning in my real bedroom, with Dan lying beside me, I’m crushed.

  “Morning, baby.” Dan’s voice is cobbled with sleep as he rolls over and pulls me toward him. He nuzzles my neck then pulls back, a look of his confusion on his face. “Geez, Kate, you smell like a distillery.”

  “Sorry,” I mumble, my head throbbing like I’ve been run over by a truck. “I had a few drinks last night.”

  “Again? You okay?”

  “Mmm hmm.” I force a sunny smile, which just makes my head pound even more insistently. I get up to brush my teeth and swallow three Advil, then I crawl back into bed, hoping I’ll have time to close my eyes for a few minutes before I have to be up, just in case.

  But Dan wraps his arms around me and presses his body into mine. “What time do you have to be at work?” he asks, his voice low and suggestive.

  I glance at the clock, my hopes of falling back asleep fading. My first appointment isn’t for ninety minutes, so I tell him, “I’ve got time,” because I feel guilty that I spent the night hoping desperately to wake up with another man.

  We make love slowly, lazily, and I manage somehow not to think about Patrick at all until Dan gets up to go take a shower. As I lie in bed alone, my head still aching, I feel my eyes filling with tears. I quickly wipe them away and get out of bed to begin getting dressed.

  Fifteen minutes later, Dan and I kiss good-bye at the front door, but he grabs my arm as I begin to walk out. “Kate?” he says tentatively. “Is something up? It feels like you’re somewhere else today.”

  I haven’t told him about my infertility yet, but now isn’t the right time, not when I’m on my way out the door, not when my head is still swirling with thoughts of Patrick. I’ll tell him tonight, after dinner, and it will all be okay.

  I take a deep breath. “No, I’m fine.”

  He looks into my eyes. “You sure? You’re not yourself.”