ALISON

How did I get here? How am I poorer, divorced almost twice, and lonelier than when I started, when the plan was to have an affluent life in New York?

I didn't get half of Helen's money. What happened instead was that I gave half of my grandmother's house to my second husband. His pride of not getting money from his wife somehow didn't apply to his second wife; he really wanted his "rights" to my house and fought for it. So now, my cabin was placed in equity in the cheapest month of the year in Montauk housing market, and I have to work my ass off for years to pay it back. Oh, his lawyer also discovered my secret under-the-floorboards bank account and sifted half of it off me.

Three months into the marriage where every godforsaken weekend I was stuck with at least two kids occupying my home, I overheard him mumble to his youngest two kids how much he was missing their mom. The following week, he was bold enough to say it to my face directly.

He hadn't written a page for his book for weeks and his advance money was shrinking. I was bringing his food to the table but instead of being thankful, he was missing an old hag who controlled him? Fickle bastard.

The breakpoint was my grandmother's stroke. She was the only soul in this world who had ever felt a semblance of genuine, unconditional affection towards me. Her Alzheimer was getting aggressively worse even before the stroke. When I called Noah to come and support me, he politely declined. When I insisted, he hung up. Instead, my mom was there. The hospital apparently called her before they called me. She arrived early morning from a camp called Buddha and the Bible and looked for me first in the Lockhart Ranch. Cherry had the heart-to-heart she denied me with my mom instead. Then, Athena went to Jade and Oscar at the Roll. When she was finally at my cabin, she found it occupied by the tenant, my husband, who was packing to leave at that moment.

You could call my mom anything from selfish to callous, but you have to give it to her; she was smarter than most and she saw through people. Probably why she was so successful at her scam-work.

She leaned her shoulder onto my grandma's door and silently watched us for some time. I tried to ignore her but I couldn't. Damn my soft heart; I had missed her. I bet she hadn't missed me. When I looked at her, what I saw was a look of pity, not towards my grandmother but towards me. Her eyes piercing inside my fucking brain, she told me of her half-day adventure in this prison of a town (her words). How she covertly interrogated every fucking person she saw, collecting the whole story together.

"Your 6-month fake husband just moved out for good. Jade wants to visit your grandmother. Sweet kid, much sweeter than you. I could always see why you've loathed her so much. And you know what? She still held her head high about you despite all you've done. Not one defamatory word came out of her mouth. Your grandmother liked her a lot, so I told her she is welcome to say goodbye any time, because you and I will sign a do-not-resucitate order right now."

Athena's words… Each of them so artfully hurtful. And you say I am worse, Cole? I must be something nasty.

I said yes to everything Athena said, put down my signature that'd let Grams die, looked one last time at her, and left the hospital. I ate two John's Drive-In cheeseburgers in the parking lot, crying. Then I went back home and sat on the couch, looking around me. Everything looked exactly the same as it did 4 years ago, when Gabriel died. But before that, too.

It was as if Noah's move-in-move-out game affected nothing.

Cole had adored me, and it didn't matter that I coerced it out of him. The result was that I was treated affectionately. He could have left me and let me die in despair when we lost our baby, but he pulled me from that deep well every day, one day at a time. Thinking back, I don't know how he did it. How he put me first while he was in so much pain himself.

And now he was gone. To the woman my mother and my grandmother also preferred over me. The woman who would have put him first, cared for him and herself and come out stronger than before. Not half a woman like me. Jade was that awesome. Just two days ago I had seen them walking along the sidewalk on The Plaza and circled the roundabout twice to follow them a little. What kind of couple over 30 would tickle each other while walking on the street? A very happy one.

I actually, finally, had nobody. Because I finally pushed them all away, one by one. I took a big breath and puffed it out. I nodded "OK, enough." and texted Oscar that I quit my job at The Lobster Roll. I up-ended all the Vicodin, Valium, Xanax, and NSAID pills on the coffee table and chugged them all with a fifth of bourbon, taking a large swig after each pill. There were a lot of pills, and many of them increased the side effects of the others, especially with alcohol. With the warm, fatty burgers in my belly, I probably wouldn't puke.

I didn't.

The world was a worse place when I was in it.


EPILOGUE

Because Noah and her mother left the city and she quit her job, nobody had come to look for Alison the day she had committed suicide. She wasn't in the best of terms with any of the parties who would care enough to be involved in burying her, so it had taken three weeks to discover her body. A teenager had smelled something odd and called the police while delivering a flyer about a new home decoration shop, opened by yet another semi-retired rich summer tourist who never left. They probably started the business so the 45-year-old wife wouldn't get bored at home. They probably hired a freelance Managing Consultant to do the real work on the shop.

But here our heroes all were. Alison's funeral. Jade flanked by Cole and Oscar, the brothers and Cherry behind them. Noah standing next to another grave nearby, looking out of place. Athena smoking next to a tree not so close by. Earlier she had come by Jade to congratulate her for her pregnancy with a genuine expression. Jade was still at her second trimester then. She made it look easy.

When the priest asked, Athena didn't volunteer to speak about Alison. None of the others did either.

After everyone else was gone, Athena lit a candle on the soil of her daughter's grave and prayed to the goddess.

Goodbye, Alison.