II. After
They bury him in Pennsylvania on his family's plot. Addison is wrapped in wool and a soft looping scarf - it's nearly fall, the days getting shorter - the heels of her leather boots sinking into the ground. Naomi stands next to her, shoulders rigid, Maya tucked protectively under her arm.
Amelia and Derek are both there, huddled closer than Addison has seen them stand in years. Funerals do funny things to people.
Addison stands alone, extracting her arm gently from Amelia's every time the other woman reaches out. She stares at the ground and tries to ignore the empty rectangle of undisturbed earth next to his.
She knows it's for Naomi.
There's no resting place earmarked for her, of course, no word for what she was. Maya cries and Naomi holds onto her and Olivia; three generations of grief entangled as only family can be. They let the baby down and she takes a toddler-sized handful of earth; Maya helps her throw it on top of the coffin.
It's a funeral: they're all the same, the differences too painful to analyze.
"I'm sorry," Derek says to her at the airport, before he leaves. "I'm so sorry."
She just blinks at him. She'd almost forgotten they were taking different flights. They'll only see each other for tragedy now: the people Derek can save and the people he can't. He's not a god. Under the harsh fluorescent lights of the airport he looks older, more tired than she remembers. A web of lines have sprouted at the creases by his eyes and mouth. There's more grey than black in the hair she used to clench in her fists.
"Addie." He touches her shoulder.
"Thank you for coming," she says woodenly. She doesn't even need a box for him anymore. As he walks toward his gate - his flight leaves first - he's already tiny.
Charlotte approaches her on her first day back at work. "This is a bit awkward," she begins and Addison prepares herself with some annoyance for another chorus of the inarticulate sympathy that's been thrown at her all day.
This is something different. She has a sheaf of papers, a story, and a small glass vial.
"He knew how much you wanted a baby. He wanted to do this for you."
Addison shakes her head. "No, he - he wasn't lucid, Charlotte."
"At times he was," she counters simply. "At the beginning. There were lawyers involved, Addison. I can assure you everything was done according to protocol."
She steps back, burning heat behind her eyes. The edges of Charlotte are shimmery, like she's not real.
"I don't want-"
"It's yours, to do with what you want. We can hold onto it for you. It's here, whenever you want it."
There are guidebooks for grief, some better than others, but none for this. This is new. This is crazy, but then so is her life.
She considers it. She actually considers it, lying on one side of the big bed they used to share, naked - the way he preferred for her to sleep - her hand drifting unconsciously over her stomach, across her hips. She could hire someone. Extract what eggs she has left and mix herself a baby in a lab. Or find a surrogate. She lets her mind wander, pretends this is normal.
The vial is preserved at the practice. "There's no rush," Charlotte said. So she doesn't rush.
She waits a year.
There's something about a year: it's a measurable, careful amount of time. Grief likes time, likes the tangible spans of it and the neat way it packages pain.
A month: that's how long she and Naomi wait to clean out his house.
Three months: that's how long it takes to stop sleeping on her side of the bed.
At seven months, she has sex again. Kevin. He calls her when he hears, and that's all it takes. She cries the whole time, begging him not to stop, knowing how much she needs it. Comfort, that's all it is. It doesn't happen again, but he calls her almost every week, takes her to coffee, tells her he's around if she needs him. He's a good guy, better than she realized.
At nine months, she considers erasing his name from her phone, but changes her mind. Naomi confesses, after a few glasses of wine, that she hasn't done that either.
Eleven months: she agrees to a blind date, then cancels at the last minute. She calls Kevin instead and they sit on her balcony and look out at the water. It's always more comfortable for her with men she's already slept with. No mystery, no tension. He takes her hand in a friendly gesture and tells her it's okay to still miss him. He's a cop, he's done his share of grief counseling. She just nods, like it helps.
And then it's a year. She retrieves the vial from the practice and takes it home.
She walks on the beach, alone, in shorts and a loose, flapping tee shirt. His shirt. She's awash in guilt no one understands, because she didn't even like him that much at the end and maybe she could have saved him if she'd figured out why he was acting that way and because ultimately he didn't make her happy. Not when he was alive. Not now. Not with this last benevolent gesture that somehow encapsulates all that was wrong with their relationship: how little he understood what she truly wanted from him. He always thought he could map her life better than she could, that he knew her better than she knew herself. She wanted to swoon and let him but she never quite could and now she'll never get to. Never have to.
What kind of person is relieved to lose someone they love?
The sea is mild today, a poor reflection for the turmoil that rocks her. She shades her eyes from the low-hanging sun, feeling dark and ugly, undeserving of life. She wades in up to her knees. Waves slosh around her legs, smelling of salt and tickling her with seaweed. The horizon is far and close, all at once. She sinks down, slowly, until the water is at her shoulders, then licking at her chin. Then the tips of her ears. She's always been comfortable in water. She lets her knees bend more, until her lips are moist, then wet.
She uncaps the vial and tips its contents into the ocean. Then she ducks fully underwater, tastes him one final time, apologizes for all she couldn't say and all she can't help feeling and, when her lungs are full to bursting and her head is starting to fizzle and pop with the pressure she stands up, draws a desperate mouthful of air and is free.
She looks in the direction of his house - a family lives there now - as she tromps through the sand toward her own. Because she can be more than one thing at once; she contains multitudes, as it is said: she's the widow and the ex, she's everything and nothing, she's grieving and she's relieved. In the end she never knew him, because he wasn't him. Sometimes she'll miss him. Even when she stops thinking about him, eventually, a part of her will still miss him. She accepts this as she accepts the only piece of him she had left floating away with the movement of the ocean.
I'm sorry, she says again, and because she wants it to be true she adds: good-bye.
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