LITMIR.BIZ

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claim.

       Our beginning.

       Our end.

       Chapter 1

      The swish swish swish of my windshield wipers against the rain was almost hypnotizing. All of the colors and figures outside the car were softened into an impressionistic painting that moved as I stared at everything, seeing nothing. The traffic light flicked from red to green, but I didn’t register the change, didn’t notice the cars in the lane next to me start to inch forward.

      The cars in line behind me honked, snapping me out of my daze.

      Daze.

      It would have been nice if it had been that simple. I wasn’t quite sure what the word for it at that point would have been. What could you call the total sense of loss, the lack of desire to go on living that accompanies the death of the only person you’ve ever truly loved? The feeling is too overwhelming and complicated to be confined simply to one word.

      But that was what I was trying to define.

      To my family, to my friends, to my boss.

      To myself.

      Maybe if I could define it, I could find out how to change it. Maybe if I could define it, I could fix it.

      I blinked against the tears that seemed a constant, dormant presence that lay just under the surface and put my foot on the gas.

      “Oh, get over it, lady,” I muttered at the woman behind me, registering her aggressive presence in my rearview mirror. She gestured wildly for me to move my beat-up Hyundai, swiftly swerving her sleek Porsche into the other lane as soon as a sliver of space opened up. As she sped past, she made sure she caught a long enough look at me to communicate her displeasure. I smiled mirthlessly at her as she glowered, her sharply-tweezed eyebrows punctuating the sour look she was so intent on giving me.

      I’m often amazed at how angry people get at other drivers in traffic. As though they were intentionally being slighted or inconvenienced by the other people occupying the road; as though their destination, their agenda was so much more important than anyone else’s. As though there weren’t so many more important things to worry about, like whether they’d had an argument with someone before they walked out the door.

      Or whether they’d kissed anyone good-bye.

      Whether they’d remembered to say, “I love you.”

      I looked at the engagement ring on my finger, a sparkling reminder of what I’d lost. It was ironic. Something so bright and beautiful, an announcement of togetherness and future, was for me almost as cutting as a knife. I still wore it because it felt wrong not to, like taking it off would be denying the man I had loved so much for so long.

      There were times I wanted to forget all of it, forget all the happiness so that maybe I would be able to forget how empty I now felt. There were times I wanted to take the ring off of my finger and never look at it again. Never catch another glimpse of my left hand to be given a fresh reminder that Paul wasn’t there anymore and that there would never be a wedding ring to complete the circle.

       It had been nine months.

      Nine long, agonizing months that I could barely recall.

      They were a blur of tears and paperwork and a million faces I’d never seen before all telling me how sorry they were for my loss. I felt as though I’d been on one of those stupid merry-go-rounds at the playground that’s spun too fast, and looking at anything makes you sick.

      Nine months.

      I still felt as though it had happened an hour ago, that I’d just picked up the phone to hear that Paul was dead, that he’d ruptured an aneurism in his brain. We’d never even known it was there.

      I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel after nine months. Was there a timeline for pain? Was there some magic number of days or months or years that, once reached, won passage into a less agonizing existence?

      I couldn’t compare notes—Sam had disappeared in a puff of smoke, walking out of my life without a second look back, a shock that felt like another death. And it was, to some degree. I had considered him a friend, a devoted sidekick to Paul. Out of anyone, I would have expected him to stick by my side and share in my pain.

      As I soon learned, there were many people in the rotating doors of life, quick to pass in and out without explanation. Even Paul’s parents had taken that quick spin to the Exit. Not that that would have surprised anyone familiar with Paul’s relationship with them. They were non-entities, barely skirting around the edges of his life—by their choice, not his. Paul had been their trophy child, the checklist item they had successfully crossed off, only to leave him to be the responsibility of a string of nannies and boarding schools. There had been no love lost in life, and it certainly hadn’t been found in his death.

      My relationship with my own parents was in direct opposition to that, and it was one that Paul had often envied. Mine was a family large in love, even if it was small in size. We, the Trent Trio, had always been close. When Paul had died, my parents were the first on my doorstep, quickly wrapping me in their arms and their love and hardly letting me go until they’d had to leave to head back to their home in Birmingham. Five hours’ worth of road time had, in the past nine months, become an eternity away.

      Nine months that slithered with loneliness and reminders.

      I wanted to be able to turn the corner and not feel as though I was going to collapse into a massive heap of tears if I had to walk past our favorite restaurant. I wanted to be able to see a Liberty Blue Dodge Ram without that unconscious flash of hope that Paul might be behind the wheel. I wanted to be able to walk past the shaving aisle in Wal-Mart and not have to face the crushing realization that I would never again hear Paul on the phone asking me to pick up his shaving cream if I was stopping there on my way home.

      I still felt ragged, broken. And the fact that I couldn’t pin-point an end to this feeling made it seem even more consuming, more hopeless somehow.

      There is no expiration date for grief.

      I pulled into my parking spot, finally home after another day at work I barely remembered. Another day of keeping books and punching numbers for clients I never saw. My days seemed to run on auto pilot, in part for self-preservation and in part because I had truly lost interest.

      Work was just something I did, something that filled up eight hours of my day so that I wouldn’t have to think about other things. I wasn’t even sure how well I did it anymore.

      And, to be perfectly honest, I really didn’t care.

      I didn’t have the energy to care. There was too much involved in just keeping it all together during those hours at the office, when I slipped the “normal” mask in place—the one that talked and interacted with my coworkers as though I was fine. As though I was doing a spectacular job of moving past my fiancé’s death and rebuilding a life on my own, just as I should have been. And it was exhausting. The modicum of perfection I was trying so hard to preserve took so much concentration, sometimes I felt as though my head would explode. But better that than admit to the fact that I had failed so miserably at moving on, that I was still flat on my back after being knocked down.

      “Get over it,” I muttered again, just as I had to the woman in traffic.

      Only this time, I was speaking to myself.

      I rested my head on the steering wheel, closing my eyes and listening to the sound of the rain pelting the windshield and the roof of my car, the purring sound of the engine as it idled. I didn’t even listen to the radio anymore. I wasn’t sure I could handle hearing songs that reminded me of him.

      My cell phone trilled inside my purse, breaking the spell. I lifted my head and glared at the bag resting beside me on the passenger seat. Who would be calling me? My phone rarely rang anymore; people seemed afraid to talk to me. I wasn’t sure if they thought I was too fragile

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