Page 8 of An Unfinished Story
Moving to the porch, Claire settled into a rocking chair with Willy curled up on her lap. She petted him while sipping her tea, smoking another cigarette and watching the cars with out-of-state license plates pass.
When she was ready, she thumbed through the pages she’d already read, found the second chapter, and fell back into David’s story, back into his arms. He hadn’t let her read his old mysteries, insisting that they were trash, but now she wondered. Maybe she could dig those up too. David had been such a good writer. She knew that from his emails and letters he’d written over the years, but to read a story he’d created caught her off guard. He’d had true talent.
Claire burned through the first composition book in two hours. Willy had settled onto his favorite perch: a bamboo table by the door. Climbing into the hammock, Claire tore into the next book.
A notion settled in. David had written this book as some sort of cathartic exercise—a way to heal from his pain. He’d put all the hurt she didn’t know he had into these pages, the sadness of being infertile, of never becoming a father. It wasn’t a sad story by any means. Anything but! Claire felt great inspiration pulling for the main characters. But disguised in those words were the layers of David she hadn’t known existed.
David had still wanted to be a father, even after he and Claire had agreed to stop trying. She’d forced him to stop bringing it up, to let go of the idea of parenthood. And she thought he’d been on the same page, that he’d moved on.
Claire’s bottom lip quivered as it became all too clear that her husband had never gotten over their misfortune—his low sperm count. After their attempts to get pregnant and the grueling effects of negative results—and then what they believed was a sure-thing adoption that fell apart at the last moment—Claire had drawn a line in the sand. As difficult as it had been to say goodbye to her hopes of one day becoming a mother, she felt she knew what was best for them. “I don’t want to talk about babies anymore, David. We have to let this go. I’m too hurt. I’m tired of being pricked and pried apart. And I can’t take one more up and down.”
Being the wonderful, loving, and supportive husband that David was, he’d given her a tight hug, encasing her with his love. “All I need is you, baby.”
The man who’d grown up the oldest of five.
The man who was an uncle to seven and counting.
Her husband who had confessed to wanting four children (two boys, two girls) on their first date.
All I need is you.
Clearly, he’d needed more. David was the man in the story, and this was his way to experience fatherhood. Claire knew exactly why he hadn’t let her read what he was working on. If she had, she would have known how much he’d been suffering, and without question, she would have blamed herself.
But the guilty feelings weren’t enough to keep her from reading.
As the sun fell and she reached the third composition book, a budding idea took a firm hold. One of the most painful parts of grief and loss was how the memory dimmed. The legacy faded. Shortly after David had died, their house had filled with people. Casseroles spilled out of both refrigerators and freezers. Each day, lines of people had come to pay their respects, reaching a giant crescendo at the funeral, where hundreds of people turned out. A few weeks later, Claire hadn’t had as many visitors. She hadn’t received as many phone calls. Most of the casseroles she’d either eaten or given away. Soon, it was the occasional drop-by from her dearest friends. Six months later, David’s memory was fading, and by the year anniversary of his death, his name was barely uttered. Here she was three years later, and even she was supposed to have moved on.
The buildings he’d designed, which Claire would always stop and admire, were all that would survive. Well ... and his desk and chair.
And this book.
Claire had the idea that if she could get it published for him, she’d find a way to keep him alive. Or at least it would be a way to preserve his legacy, more words than any gravestone could hold. And perhaps it would help quell the guilt that was bubbling down in her depths. Maybe she could make right her wrong.
Claire returned to the final pages. She could feel the end of his story coming and hadn’t felt so invested in the characters of a book in her entire life. Had David intended this to be the last draft? She’d never know, but the story might be publishable as it was. Why hadn’t he shared it with her yet?
And then.
There were no more words.
Halfway through the third book, the story stopped midsentence.
Claire flipped through the blank pages, hoping to find more words. Nothing.
Leaving Willy back inside, Claire ran to her car and, under the glow of the moon, sped across St. Pete. She so hoped this wasn’t a sad story. Was that why he wouldn’t let her read it? When she reached their home, she ran up the stairs and raced into his office. She spent the next two hours searching for more words. Where were the other drafts? Had he tossed them? Had he hidden them somewhere?
She moved around his office like a madwoman, desperately pulling books off the shelf, opening drawers. She even knocked on the walls and floors, looking for hollow spots. It was soon evident that he had not finished his story. He died with words left to give, a story still to tell.
No one would ever know how it ended.
Lying on the floor amid the boxes of his books, Claire cried herself to sleep.
She woke puffy eyed in the middle of the night, not quite aware of her location. Whitaker Grant’s book—the one inscribed to David—lay next to her head, lit up in the moonlight. She stared at it for a long while as her eyes and mind adjusted.
The realization of what she needed to do wrapped around her like David’s arms when he’d last come to find her at the end of the dock. For perhaps the first time since he’d died, she felt hope, an almost impossible hope, like discovering a lost diamond ring in the waves. It was as if she’d suddenly found the answers she’d been looking for, and Claire was shocked, even saddened, that she’d waited three years to go through his office.
This book had been lying in a drawer collecting dust for three long years. His unfinished dream. As though wearing blinders, she felt a desperate need to get this book finished.
And Whitaker Grant was the one to do it. She knew that with all her heart, as if David had appeared to tell her so.
