Page 36 of The Cabin
“I seriously did.” I grin—my cheeks hurt from the effort. “I almost bought you a Birkin instead, but I felt like you wouldn’t have accepted it.”
“You felt correctly,” she said. “That would’ve been too much.”
“There’s no such thing, in my mind. Not after—”
“Enough, Nadia. I’m your friend. We made an oath, remember? Ride or die, bitch.”
“Ride or die.”90 daysThank god for double shifts.
My boss tried to talk me out of it, but I insist on doubles, as many as possible. I throw myself into work. More hours than I’ve ever worked in my life. Eighty, a hundred hours a week. I take shifts in the ER, in L&D, wherever I can get work. Anything to keep me away from home.
Tess has stopped trying to tell me to slow down. She sees that I can’t.
He was right.
He haunts that house.
I hear his voice reading to me in the living room.
I see him lying beside me, in that big empty bed. Hear him laboring to breathe.
His office is closed, always.
I keep half expecting to hear those barn-style sliding doors open, to see him come out, grinning tiredly after a long writing session.
I wonder what happened to that last story he was writing? Maybe it was all fake, a cover up for his illness and the preparations he made.120 daysI lie in bed, at three thirty-three in the morning. Staring at the ceiling.
He died four months ago today. Four months ago, this very second, he breathed his last breath.
I can’t cry. It hurts too deeply to cry anymore. Something inside me is deeply, irreparably broken. Shattered into a million, trillion pieces. Into dust.
I’m good at faking. I have my work smile down pat. Hi, Mrs. Murphy, how are we feeling, today? Easy.
Inside, I’m hollow.
I can’t bear to look at photographs of him. Not yet. But…the details of his face are beginning to blur in my mind. The sound of his voice. His scent.
I haven’t cleaned out his drawers, or his side of the closet.
I open his shirt drawer, sometimes, just to get a whiff of his scent. Briefly, so the smell that is part of him doesn’t fade.
I wear his silver Citizen Eco-Drive watch to work. I had a few links taken out so it wouldn’t be so loose around my wrist. It’s still massive on me, which reminds me of him.210 daysFuck, I miss him.
I finally looked through my photos on my phone. I’d started to forget what he looked like.
I watched a few videos of us: in the park, running together. Laughing at the old man in the grass behind us, hand shoved in a plastic grocery bag, trying to catch poop as it fell out of his dog’s butt.
Christmas, two years ago. We gave each other fleece onesies and nothing else. Or at least, that was the agreement. We both broke it, though. I bought him the watch I now wear all the time, and he bought me a Pandora bracelet and a pair of earrings.
I made it through maybe fifty photos and two videos, and then I was crying so hard I couldn’t see and my heart felt like it was going to crack into pieces. Or maybe I just felt the cracks more acutely.
I’ve worked eighty hours a week minimum since I went back to work. I haven’t cooked myself food once in that time—I live on coffee, takeout, fast food, and protein bars.
Tess moved out a few weeks ago, to her sleek top-floor condo downtown. She quit her job—she’s now doing something technical involving computers from home; she’s freelancing, doing her own thing instead of working remotely for some Silicon Valley megacorporation. She’s happy. Sowing her wild oats, she says. And still worrying about me.
Don’t, I tell her. I’m fine, I tell her.
But I’m a shitty liar, which she’s well aware of. I’m not fine. Not at all.
But hell, my husband died. I’ll never be fine again.Part IIIRedemption’s SongLetters From The Dead, Part OneDING….DONGGGGGG…
The doorbell rings, surprising me, and I nick my thumb with the whittling knife.
“Shit,” I hiss. “Ouch—motherfucker!”
I stick my bleeding thumb in my mouth and taste pennies as I head for the front door. It’s 8 p.m., and I can’t even begin to fathom who the fuck could be at my door, let alone at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night.
Whoever the hell this is, he’s even taller than me, which is saying something, and he’s hunched at the shoulders, with droopy but intelligent eyes, and I’m reminded of a vampire from an old black-and-white movie.
“Nathan Fischer?” he asks, in a slow, deep, syrupy Southern voice.
“Yeah, that’s me. Who are you and you what d’you want?”
“May I come in? I shall be brief.”
“Not until I know who you are, and what you want.”
“Understandable. First, let me apologize for the late hour on a weekend.” He withdraws a business card; it’s thick, expensive card stock, ivory in color and printed in navy blue ink trimmed with gold leaf. This is the business card of a serious attorney.
