Page 113

“Birdie!” It’s Bo’s voice that calls my name, but I don’t stop.He invited me here to see his wife?

Somehow, I’m in the minivan, turning the key, shifting the gear.

Reverse to drive.

Forcing one breath, then two.

When I look in the rearview mirror, he’s standing in the middle of his driveway, hands by his sides, shrinking as I drive away.

A mile down the road, I pull over, fall out of the door onto my hands and knees, and vomit.

I don’t go to the visitation. After seeing Bo—Mandy—it felt like too much.

I swirl my hand around the warm water of the bathtub. Veda’s funeral is in two hours, and as much as I can’t fathom seeing them all again, I have to go. For Veda.

Just like I refused to let Bo stop me from taking the job with her in the first place, I refuse to let him stop me from saying goodbye.

I slide under the water, hoping for the dozenth time it will make me feel better. For the dozenth time, it doesn’t.

Bo called me four times last night. Four times, I didn’t answer. His text ofplease call me, it’s not what you think,almost made melaugh from the irony. The same words he said the day I found out about his wife in Veda’s living room. If it wasn’t happening to me, I’d laugh and wonder if Veda planned this too…just to see my reaction.

How I’m supposed to love him in any capacity after that seems both improbable and impossible.

I can accept he’s mad at me. I can even accept he blames me for how Veda ended her life. But to just let me walk up tothat?

It’s a kind of punishment I didn’t think him capable of.

It takes every ounce of energy to get dressed. Black fitted pants, black turtleneck, black peacoat. I put makeup on, trying to make the bags under my eyes less obvious, but everything feels like a lie.

At the church, Bo is waiting at the top of the steps outside the door, greeting everyone who walks in. I watch him through my windshield. He’s in a suit, handsome with his hair pushed back, beard trimmed short. People shake his hand, no doubt giving canned condolences, and he smiles kindly at them.

A smile he’s given me so many times but never will again.

I imagine what I’d say to him if this were a different life. I’d be standing next to him, holding his hand, squeezing it every time someone said, “She was a great woman, Bo.” A message would travel between our connected palms that would be as much about our love for each other as the woman we were saying goodbye to.

But that life is a foolish fantasy stolen by a secret I kept and a wife he has.

When the last people enter, I get out of my van and blow a steadying breath. As if he senses me, his gaze lifts across the parkinglot and zeroes in on me. The door opens next to him. Mandy appears, tapping him on the shoulder, saying something, and gesturing inside.

He nods toward her, looks back to me—unmoving across the parking lot—before going inside.

I let out the breath I’ve been holding, ignore how the scene just sent a million splinters into my gut, and walk to the church.

The service inside and then by the grave happen around me. The words float in one ear, out the other, with only a few catching.

The people tell stories of versions of Veda I didn’t know. They aren’t the woman who yelled at me to wedge clay or forced me to hold a joint to her lips. They aren’t the woman who blew out a candle because I was scared of the toxins or watched me fall hopelessly in love with her grandson. They are, however, Veda just the same. The pieces I do catch, make me smile. Because yes, Veda was who she was with me, but she was also someone else before that too.

In the church, Bo sits in the front row, Mandy on one side, Lucy on the other.

At the grave, Bo stands in the front row, Mandy on one side, Lucy on the other.

In both places, I stay in the back. Alone.

In both places, as if we can’t not, our eyes find each other’s more than once.

Every time, I look away first, feeling my own pain metastasize within me.

Because: Veda is dead, Bo blames me.