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One hip leaned against the counter, he waited patiently while she picked her way through her thoughts. Through the story she needed to tell, and the paralyzing fear that knowing it, he’d turn away. He had a son, after all, while she had a matched set of emotional baggage.
“It didn’t. A few weeks later it happened again, then again the next week. Pretty soon, it was every couple of days, then daily. I hadn’t gone out much, not since Will’s death, but I stopped completely, scared it would happen in public.”
She’d seen the homeless people on the corners in the city, eyes wild, screaming at ghosts, or huddled in a corner, rocking back and forth and keening. Once, she’d judged them. Now, she was them.
“Cara kept coming by, checking on me, making sure I ate, even if only a few bites. I...” She trailed off, then took a fortifying breath, her words a raw whisper through a throat half-closed in both denial and the relief of admitting a truth she’d never shared with anyone else. “I wanted to die after losing Will. Eventually, even Cara couldn’t reach me.”
She’d drifted, unmoored and aimless. No hope, no future, nothing but one long day bleeding into the next, empty and destitute.
“What about your family?”
Scott’s voice captured her, anchored her, drew her back from the vacant threshold that threatened to sweep her away again, though it had been three years.
“They... tried.” She couldn’t give a better response. “They didn’t understand why I couldn’t move on. ‘Life knocks you down sometimes, but you pick yourself back up’,” she mimicked, her voice more bitter than she’d intended.
Perhaps Will wasn’t the only one she harbored anger toward.
They came from a different world, a different generation, or they simply wouldn’t meet her where she’d found herself, drowning in grief, but either way, after suggesting she be committed to a psychiatric hospital if she couldn’t pull herself together, they’d left her to Cara’s increasingly futile efforts.
“I don’t remember much from that time. My therapist said it’s pretty common,” she shrugged, but the gaps in her memory bothered Abby.
What had happened in those weeks and months after Will’s death? Who had come to his funeral? What had the eulogist said about his life? She couldn’t recall, even when she tried.
“Then, Gen.”
Like sunrise after the longest night imaginable, a warm, fuzzy weight in her arms, a rough tongue on her cheek, puppy breath in her nose.
“I was in bed. Or maybe on the couch? Cara plopped this soot sprite of a pup into my arms and told me I had a dog, now, so I’d better take good care of her.” Abby smiled at the first happy memory she had after Will’s death, and it gave her the courage to raise her eyes to Scott’s.
He watched her, mug abandoned at his hip, his intense gaze boring into her, peering into her very soul.
“She grabbed my hair in her little mouth and pulled,” Abby laughed, wrapping a lock around her index finger and tugging.
She’d always wanted a dog, but Will had been so busy with school, and her shifts were never regular. It wouldn’t be fair, he’d said.
She’d clutched the warm, wriggling puppy to her chest. Well, she had time, now. All the time in the world. An empty lifetime unspooled ahead of her, bringing with it an unending sense of existential exhaustion. A dark wave rose up, threatening to pull her under again, but before it could, those teeth had latched onto her hair again, pulling and growling.
“For weeks, every time I drifted away, she’d grab my hair. It didn’t matter how many times I pried her little jaws apart and told her to cut it out, how many obedience classes we took, how many dog training books I read—nothing would stop her. Eventually, I gave in.”
“But she doesn’t do it to Dylan,” Scott said. “Do I need to be worried?”
Abby shook her head. “She’s never done it to anyone else. It’s her one bad habit, and honestly, I don’t mind. Not anymore. Gradually, the attacks tapered off for the most part. I still have one sometimes, but not often. Usually only when I’m...”
“Scared,” Scott supplied.
Abby dropped her eyes from his gaze. “Yeah. Scared. Or... upset.”
She hadn’t wanted to use that word, but she owed him the truth, and she’d all but wrenched her heart out through her chest for him already; she might as well finish the job.
“Last night you were... upset.”
Abby swallowed hard. “Not at you. At... me. I don’t know how to do...this.”
Scott crossed the kitchen floor, crowding into her space, and though she eased back, the counter pressed into her spine, preventing her retreat. Stopping, he towered over her, but despite his close proximity, he didn’t touch her.
“Don’t know how, or can’t?” When she didn’t answer, he continued, “Because I’m willing to wait, if it’s what you need, but I can’t fight a ghost. That’s not fair to either of us.”
She nodded. “Or to Dylan.”