They’re all my reasons.
I knew exactly what he meant.
Stella’s car was gone when I pulled into my driveway, and Emme’s too. I experienced a pang of regret even as I breathed a sigh of relief.
Inside, I changed my clothes without looking at the bed. From the garage, I grabbed what I’d need to paint the boards, then I headed next door and got started without even knocking.
It wasn’t long before Mrs. Gardner came out. “I thought I heard something out here,” she said. “My, it got chilly, didn’t it?”
I nodded and kept working, dying to ask about Stella but biting my tongue. Talking about her wouldn’t help me forget.
“I’m making some lunch. Would you like a sandwich?”
“No, thanks.” I tried not to think about what kind of sandwich she might be making. Turkey? Ham? Roast beef? Leftover meatloaf? My stomach rioted.
“Are you sure? It’s just me in there. The girls have gone back to Detroit and left us all alone.”
So she was gone. That was it—I wouldn’t see her again. The vise on my heart tightened. “I’m sure.”
“Well, if you change your mind, you let me know. It’s never too late, dear.”
She went back into the house, leaving me there to wonder if she was right.
Monday after work, I grabbed the mail from my box and dumped it onto the kitchen counter as usual. Most of the mail I got was junk or addressed to the previous owners, so I didn’t even look at the stack of envelopes and flyers before changing my clothes and heading out for a grueling ten-mile run.
I thought about Stella with every punishing step. Did she hate me? Was she sad? Had she been more successful than me at forgetting?
When I got home, I went up to the room with my weight bench, and I could hardly stand to look at the stairs. I lifted for a solid forty-five minutes, then came down to the kitchen for some water, forbidding myself to stop and sit on the steps where we’d had sex just so I could feel closer to her.
Day after day, for two weeks straight, I did the same thing, but it never got easier. In fact, it got worse. I stopped sleeping in my bedroom and spent restless nights on my uncomfortable couch. I never rode my bike. I did anything to avoid looking in the dining room at the inn, at the table where we’d sat trading stories and laughs. If I had to work at the wedding barn, I refused to look at the spot in the back where we’d been together. I stopped doing work at her grandmother’s house, but then I felt bad when the dead leaves began to pile up and spent one Sunday afternoon raking and collecting them. I wore earbuds and blasted heavy metal music so that when Mrs. Gardner called to me from the back porch, I wouldn’t feel like such an asshole when I didn’t respond.
Mack and I flew to Iowa to serve as pallbearers at Bones’s funeral, and I thought that might drive home the validation I was looking for, but it didn’t. And as hard as I tried, as hard as we all tried to remain stoic and detached during the service, I don’t think any of us got through it without our composure slipping. It was such a tragic waste.
After we got home again, I ached to call Stella and pour my heart out to her. I wanted to tell her about Bones, about how lost he’d been, how the military had failed him when he’d tried to get help. I wanted to tell her how guilty I felt that he’d reached out to me the night he killed himself, and I hadn’t said the right things. I wanted to say to her, This is why I can’t be with you. How I feel right now, this pain, is why.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I’d never hated being alone so much.
Thirty-One
Grams
I didn’t understand it. I simply didn’t understand it.
I’d done everything right. Lured her up here, got him to come over, made the introduction—and it was obvious right from the get-go they were attracted to one another. But still I had to intervene!
The chicken, the pie, the meatloaf. I might not be a product of the twenty-first century, but some things don’t change, and I know the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. (Although high heels and lipstick never hurt, either.)
It was clear that night at the dinner table they were already crazy about each other. And from what I gathered, things in the feathers were A-OK. So what had gone wrong? Why on earth didn’t he want to be with her?
I nearly marched right over there and demanded an answer the minute Stella pulled out of the driveway. But I told myself to wait. For one thing, he might still be grieving for that friend of his. And for another, I’d never been one for a direct approach. I always found it much more effective to be stealthy. The sneak attack.
I’d bide a little time. Get the lay of the land.
You might have won the battle, Mr. Woods, but the war isn’t over yet. Not if I have anything to say about it.
And I always had something to say about it. What grandmother didn’t?
Thirty-Two
Stella
I tried hard to forget.
I worked. I ran. I even baked an apple pie. But everything reminded me of him. Everything.
A new couple was referred to me for counseling, and the wife happened to be a military photographer who’d served in Afghanistan. She’d been diagnosed with PTSD, but she didn’t feel that was right. “It’s something else,” she insisted. “It’s more like the things I’ve seen have left a bruise on my soul that won’t go away. And I can’t relate to anyone who hasn’t seen those things, who doesn’t know what it was like for me to have to document them.”
Her husband loved her but didn’t understand why she hadn’t been able to simply come home and be wife and mother again. He kept telling her she hadn’t done anything wrong, had nothing to be ashamed of, and she needed to move on and stop obsessing over it. He wanted her to take the anti-anxiety pills her doctor had prescribed, believing that would “numb her up” and make it easier to cope.
I thought of Ryan, of course, and the night he’d told me about what it was like for him over there, and then what it was like for him to come home.
“Do you want to be numb, Carrie?” I asked her. “Will that help you cope?”
“No,” she said. “I want to talk to him about it. I want him to listen to me without trying to help me cope.”
“Do you hear what she’s saying, Dean?” I asked her husband.
He looked uncomfortable. “Yes, but talking about it upsets her so much. And it upsets other people. I don’t think she should talk about it.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. Ryan’s voice was in my head. “She needs you to be a safe place, Dean. She needs to feel accepted and understood, no matter what she says. Can you do that for her?”
When they left, hand in hand and a little more hopeful than when they’d arrived, I locked my office door and wept.
Maren flew in the first weekend of November, which was the weekend before Emme’s wedding, and the three of us went out for dinner Saturday night.
“I’m starving,” Emme said, cracking open the menu. “But I’m so nervous to eat because I don’t want my dress to be too tight.”
“You’re not going to outgrow it in a week,” Maren assured her. “Eat what you want.”
Emme stared at her. “Hello, I’m pregnant, and my body is getting bigger every single day. I could absolutely outgrow my dress in a week.”
“Then you’d wear something else,” Maren said calmly. “The dress isn’t the most important thing.”
Emme shook her head, her eyes wide. “It’s like you don’t know me at all.”
I laughed, glad to be out with them, distracted from my broken heart. The server came around, and Maren and I ordered wine while Emme struggled to choose an appetizer. “The calamari. No! The spinach and artichoke dip. No! The steak tips. Oh damn, they have an olive plate too. I love olives.”
“Just bring them all,” I said. “We’ll have small plates tonight.”
Emme smiled. “Good call, sis.”
We chatted about the wedding, about family, about work. Maren caught us up on the house she and her fiancé Dallas were building on a ranch in Oregon and said they’d been so busy they’d made no wedding plans yet, but they were thinking maybe next summer out there. Emme answered all our questions about being three months pregnant and how she couldn’t wait to find out the sex of the baby.
I knew exactly what he meant.
Stella’s car was gone when I pulled into my driveway, and Emme’s too. I experienced a pang of regret even as I breathed a sigh of relief.
Inside, I changed my clothes without looking at the bed. From the garage, I grabbed what I’d need to paint the boards, then I headed next door and got started without even knocking.
It wasn’t long before Mrs. Gardner came out. “I thought I heard something out here,” she said. “My, it got chilly, didn’t it?”
I nodded and kept working, dying to ask about Stella but biting my tongue. Talking about her wouldn’t help me forget.
“I’m making some lunch. Would you like a sandwich?”
“No, thanks.” I tried not to think about what kind of sandwich she might be making. Turkey? Ham? Roast beef? Leftover meatloaf? My stomach rioted.
“Are you sure? It’s just me in there. The girls have gone back to Detroit and left us all alone.”
So she was gone. That was it—I wouldn’t see her again. The vise on my heart tightened. “I’m sure.”
“Well, if you change your mind, you let me know. It’s never too late, dear.”
She went back into the house, leaving me there to wonder if she was right.
Monday after work, I grabbed the mail from my box and dumped it onto the kitchen counter as usual. Most of the mail I got was junk or addressed to the previous owners, so I didn’t even look at the stack of envelopes and flyers before changing my clothes and heading out for a grueling ten-mile run.
I thought about Stella with every punishing step. Did she hate me? Was she sad? Had she been more successful than me at forgetting?
When I got home, I went up to the room with my weight bench, and I could hardly stand to look at the stairs. I lifted for a solid forty-five minutes, then came down to the kitchen for some water, forbidding myself to stop and sit on the steps where we’d had sex just so I could feel closer to her.
Day after day, for two weeks straight, I did the same thing, but it never got easier. In fact, it got worse. I stopped sleeping in my bedroom and spent restless nights on my uncomfortable couch. I never rode my bike. I did anything to avoid looking in the dining room at the inn, at the table where we’d sat trading stories and laughs. If I had to work at the wedding barn, I refused to look at the spot in the back where we’d been together. I stopped doing work at her grandmother’s house, but then I felt bad when the dead leaves began to pile up and spent one Sunday afternoon raking and collecting them. I wore earbuds and blasted heavy metal music so that when Mrs. Gardner called to me from the back porch, I wouldn’t feel like such an asshole when I didn’t respond.
Mack and I flew to Iowa to serve as pallbearers at Bones’s funeral, and I thought that might drive home the validation I was looking for, but it didn’t. And as hard as I tried, as hard as we all tried to remain stoic and detached during the service, I don’t think any of us got through it without our composure slipping. It was such a tragic waste.
After we got home again, I ached to call Stella and pour my heart out to her. I wanted to tell her about Bones, about how lost he’d been, how the military had failed him when he’d tried to get help. I wanted to tell her how guilty I felt that he’d reached out to me the night he killed himself, and I hadn’t said the right things. I wanted to say to her, This is why I can’t be with you. How I feel right now, this pain, is why.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I’d never hated being alone so much.
Thirty-One
Grams
I didn’t understand it. I simply didn’t understand it.
I’d done everything right. Lured her up here, got him to come over, made the introduction—and it was obvious right from the get-go they were attracted to one another. But still I had to intervene!
The chicken, the pie, the meatloaf. I might not be a product of the twenty-first century, but some things don’t change, and I know the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. (Although high heels and lipstick never hurt, either.)
It was clear that night at the dinner table they were already crazy about each other. And from what I gathered, things in the feathers were A-OK. So what had gone wrong? Why on earth didn’t he want to be with her?
I nearly marched right over there and demanded an answer the minute Stella pulled out of the driveway. But I told myself to wait. For one thing, he might still be grieving for that friend of his. And for another, I’d never been one for a direct approach. I always found it much more effective to be stealthy. The sneak attack.
I’d bide a little time. Get the lay of the land.
You might have won the battle, Mr. Woods, but the war isn’t over yet. Not if I have anything to say about it.
And I always had something to say about it. What grandmother didn’t?
Thirty-Two
Stella
I tried hard to forget.
I worked. I ran. I even baked an apple pie. But everything reminded me of him. Everything.
A new couple was referred to me for counseling, and the wife happened to be a military photographer who’d served in Afghanistan. She’d been diagnosed with PTSD, but she didn’t feel that was right. “It’s something else,” she insisted. “It’s more like the things I’ve seen have left a bruise on my soul that won’t go away. And I can’t relate to anyone who hasn’t seen those things, who doesn’t know what it was like for me to have to document them.”
Her husband loved her but didn’t understand why she hadn’t been able to simply come home and be wife and mother again. He kept telling her she hadn’t done anything wrong, had nothing to be ashamed of, and she needed to move on and stop obsessing over it. He wanted her to take the anti-anxiety pills her doctor had prescribed, believing that would “numb her up” and make it easier to cope.
I thought of Ryan, of course, and the night he’d told me about what it was like for him over there, and then what it was like for him to come home.
“Do you want to be numb, Carrie?” I asked her. “Will that help you cope?”
“No,” she said. “I want to talk to him about it. I want him to listen to me without trying to help me cope.”
“Do you hear what she’s saying, Dean?” I asked her husband.
He looked uncomfortable. “Yes, but talking about it upsets her so much. And it upsets other people. I don’t think she should talk about it.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. Ryan’s voice was in my head. “She needs you to be a safe place, Dean. She needs to feel accepted and understood, no matter what she says. Can you do that for her?”
When they left, hand in hand and a little more hopeful than when they’d arrived, I locked my office door and wept.
Maren flew in the first weekend of November, which was the weekend before Emme’s wedding, and the three of us went out for dinner Saturday night.
“I’m starving,” Emme said, cracking open the menu. “But I’m so nervous to eat because I don’t want my dress to be too tight.”
“You’re not going to outgrow it in a week,” Maren assured her. “Eat what you want.”
Emme stared at her. “Hello, I’m pregnant, and my body is getting bigger every single day. I could absolutely outgrow my dress in a week.”
“Then you’d wear something else,” Maren said calmly. “The dress isn’t the most important thing.”
Emme shook her head, her eyes wide. “It’s like you don’t know me at all.”
I laughed, glad to be out with them, distracted from my broken heart. The server came around, and Maren and I ordered wine while Emme struggled to choose an appetizer. “The calamari. No! The spinach and artichoke dip. No! The steak tips. Oh damn, they have an olive plate too. I love olives.”
“Just bring them all,” I said. “We’ll have small plates tonight.”
Emme smiled. “Good call, sis.”
We chatted about the wedding, about family, about work. Maren caught us up on the house she and her fiancé Dallas were building on a ranch in Oregon and said they’d been so busy they’d made no wedding plans yet, but they were thinking maybe next summer out there. Emme answered all our questions about being three months pregnant and how she couldn’t wait to find out the sex of the baby.
