Page 107 of Happy After All

“You don’t have to apologize,” he says.

He walks me to my Jeep and stands with me, saying nothing. He reaches out and touches my face. “I wish I knew the right thing to say.”

“I don’t think there is a right thing. I spent so much time wondering if there was something ... anything ... that my friends could’ve said. That Christopher could’ve said. But we experienced the same loss, and we couldn’t even find a way to talk about it. So I don’t know how anybody else is supposed to talk about it with me.”

“What a dick,” he says.

“I don’t know if he was. Maybe he was. I ... He wanted me to be fixed. I couldn’t figure out how to be. I ... I keep thinking I’m okay, Nathan. I keep thinking that I’m done grieving. Then it hits me, in this terrible wave. What’s wrong with me? Why did I make that about me?”

“You didn’t. You lost ... Amelia, I’ve experienced loss. I understand grief. I know that it comes in waves that you can’t anticipate. I know that it tries to drown you sometimes. I get it.”

I wrap my arms around my body and try to hold myself together. “I just didn’t expect that. I don’t think about it all the time. That’s the thing. It’s the Chris trigger. He’s ... He’s engaged, and he and his fiancée are having a baby. At least, that’s what he said. That does hurt. It means he found a way to move past this that isn’t quite how I did it. I’ve just been here. Hiding.”

“Yeah. Well. I’m not exactly the person to ask about letting go of your grief. I’ve spent nearly three years working on my dead wife’s memoirs.”

I laugh, in that way you laugh when nothing is funny and everything hurts. “I mean, that is pretty impressive. I’m just the grief hide-and-seek champion. Except I think it’s finally catching up to me.”

“What can I do for you?”

“You shouldn’t have to do anything for me.”

“But I want to.” He takes a deep breath. “I haven’t wanted to do anything for anyone in a very long time. So please let me. It’s been a really long time since ...” He grits his teeth. “I know this might surprise you, but I’m kind of a hermit. Back home.”

It doesn’t surprise me, but it hurts me. I wanted to believe he had a network somewhere. That he falls apart when he comes here because this is where they went on their honeymoon. Because he’s working on her story.

“I write, and generally, I don’t associate with anyone,” he says. “I have my deadlines, I start the next book. I have old friends. Friends that were hers and ours. My in-laws. They love me. Which, actually ...” He swallows hard. “It’s a terrible thing to watch them grieve. Because ... She was everything to them. Their only child. I don’t think my parents would be half as sorry to lose me. But here I am.”

My heart twists. “That sounds suspiciously like survivor’s guilt.”

“We aren’t supposed to be talking about me,” he says.

“Why not?” I ask.

“You’re hurt.”

“The whole world is hurting.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t minimize this. You don’t have to. You don’t have to be fair. Who made you feel like you had to be?”

I close my eyes. “You already know the answer to that. Like I said. We went through the same loss.”

“You didn’t experience it the same. It felt differently to him. Or maybe it didn’t, but he expressed it differently. I haven’t learned ... I haven’t learned anything. Writing my wife’s memoirs, you would think I would learn something. About grief, about processing this. I haven’t learned a damn thing. Except that it’s not the same for me as it is forsome people. A guy I went to high school with lost his wife, and a year later he got married again. I can’t imagine that. Do you have any idea how terrifying it was when I found out my wife was sick? Living in the dread of ... when she was going to go ...” He shakes his head. “I can’t imagine ever putting myself in that situation again. I mean ...”

“When you feel so happy, and then you just lose it. It comes from nowhere.”

I understand that. I felt like everything was coming together when I got pregnant. That something was going to be healed by it. Instead, something got broken. So much worse than it was before.

“Yes.”

“Anyway. This sucks,” I say.

“Yeah.”

His agreeing with me is right up there withI’m sorry.

I’ve thought for a long timeI’m sorrydoesn’t fix grief.

But right now, I think maybe that isn’t true. Because having him with me right now makes me feel like something might be fixable in me that I didn’t think was.

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