In the Distance There Is Light (5 page)

Ian, Babe,

It has been two weeks and two days since I received the awful, dreadful news. Since you left me for good. I don’t cry all day, every day anymore, though the first few days, I truly believed I would never be able to stop. Because, do tell me, what the hell am I going to do without you? You were so much more than my boyfriend. You were my rock. My sounding board. The person who allowed me to become my true self.

Who will I be now? Without you, I’m not even sure I can be this person I worked so hard to become. I miss you every single second and your sudden, cruel absence is so big, so all-encompassing, there’s no room for anything else. There’s only this grief, bottomless and inevitable grief.

Most mornings, when I wake up, there’s this split second when I’m convinced it didn’t happen. You were not on Paterson Street when that truck started reversing. You didn’t lose your balance. You were wearing a helmet. I mean, it’s so unlike you to lose your balance like that. I just can’t imagine it. You must have been daydreaming, must not have had your eyes on the road like a hawk, scanning for danger. What were you dreaming of?

And fuck, Ian, there have been numerous times, more than I’d like to admit, that I wished I were religious, so that I could find comfort in my faith, and believe that you are up there somewhere watching me, but sadly, I don’t believe in any of these things. You’re as gone as you’ll ever be. I’m left behind. And, yes—and you won’t like this—I have been feeling mightily sorry for myself. But you know what? I’m allowed. Because I have nothing left. Not even a wedding ring. Yes, you heard that right. I’ve also been wishing we had married. Then at least I’d be your widow, a scandalously young one, but at least something in relation to you. Now, I’m just a woman whose partner died in a road accident so stupid it wasn’t even worth an article in a newspaper.

Well, fuck you, babe, for dying on me like that. How’s that fair? I’m left sitting here crying, writing this stupid letter to you, which no one will ever read, in your mother’s house. I’ve been staying with Dolores for a week now. It helps in a way to not be totally alone in this place of grief. We’ve managed to establish a certain coziness between us. She’s such a nice woman, your mom.

Oh fuck, Ian. Fuck this letter. What’s the point, anyway?

Sophie

Chapter Nine

“Are you ready for this?” Dolores asks. We’re sitting in her car outside the building where Ian and I used to live.

I huff out some air. “I’ll never be ready, but I can’t keep postponing it. I’ll need to go back in at some point.” It has been three weeks since Ian died. I’ve been living with Dolores for two of them. This morning, when we woke up together, she asked if I wanted to go home. At first, I thought she was kicking me out of her house, but she was merely inquiring about my state of mind and if it would allow me to go back to the apartment today, to grab some things, to sort through some mail, to stop putting it off.

We walk up to the second floor, climbing the staircase Ian used to maneuver his bicycle up. I suddenly wonder what happened to his bike. I never thought to ask and no one said anything. Maybe it’s evidence, although Ian’s death has been ruled an accident—as much his own fault as anyone else’s. His death caused so little legal fanfare, it amplified the feeling that it didn’t happen at all. Basically, he took a very unfortunate, nasty fall. A perfectly avoidable occurrence that happened nonetheless. As though someone somewhere pulled a string because his number happened to be up that day.

“Give me the key, sweetheart,” Dolores says.

I’ve been trying to slide it into the lock for seconds, but my hands are trembling too much.

Dolores opens the door and we walk in. I don’t break down as I might have expected, but that initial coldness wraps itself around my heart again. At the sight of our home, the place where we were so happy, I go back to being the woman who was just told that her partner has died. Three weeks don’t make any difference, anyway. They might as well just have told me today. Everything is still the same. His iPad is still lying on the kitchen table. His shoes are by the door. Two of his jackets are hanging on a hook in the kitchen. Ian still lives here, even though he’s no longer alive.

Dolores puts the mail she collected from the letterbox on the living room table. “You may want to sort through this,” she says.

I glance at the pile. There’s not that much. Jeremy has been coming by to collect the mail every other day and he stopped by Dolores’ house a couple of days ago with what he had amassed. It’s probably just bills, which will only remind me of how I should get back to work. But no subject can grab me to a degree that I’m willing to become passionate about it for a couple of weeks. Anything that needs investigating will need to be researched and written by someone else. Jackie O. will soon forget all about me, and I don’t care.

My glance catches the large painting on the living room wall. It was Dolores’ housewarming gift when Ian moved in, before I was his girlfriend. It’s by a Japanese artist; an eye-catching piece in bright turquoise of a girl with a disproportionately large head and eyes. It’s not creepy, just a little eerie, and anyone who ever visited this place could never stop staring at it. Ian loved that painting. He could go on and on about art, and he and Dolores often did.

I take a few steps and halt in front of our bedroom door. There’s no way I’m going in there. Maybe next time. Maybe never. Instead, I go into the next room: my office. It has two desks side by side, of which one was supposed to be Ian’s home office, but he always took his laptop into the living room. His desk is covered in remnants of my last project. A piece that I had just turned in about the industrial prison complex. It was the last time I spoke to Jacqueline. She called me after I emailed it through and wondered if I would be interested in doing more lifestyle-related pieces for the magazine, like interviewing celebrities, and writing about the latest diet fads. I respectfully declined. In hindsight, writing something a bit more breezy would be easier now—and better for my bank balance.

Jeremy hasn’t touched anything in my office. Everything is exactly the way I left it. The magnitude of everything hits me again when I realize that I’ve been missing my big computer monitor, that my eyes have been hurting because of having to adjust to a much smaller laptop screen—and because of all of the crying—even though all I’ve been doing is writing letters to Ian. Because this is my life I’m standing inside of. Our flat, where we built our life together. And I’m going to have to start making some decisions.

One decision has been made already. I’m not moving back here anytime soon. I can’t imagine myself on the couch by myself, going to bed alone, eating dinner with only the television for company. I will stay with Dolores for a good while longer.

Even though Dolores said she would be going back to work, and has started going to the galleries again, she spends much more time at the house than I had believed she would. Moreover, I think she’s doing it for me. Even if only to check up on me, and to make sure I have something for lunch apart from the delicious cappuccinos her coffee machine makes. Except for the little chats about Ian we’ve started to have just before going to sleep, when she allows herself to break down a little, I’ve been astounded by Dolores’ strength. So much so, that I want to be around her as much as I can, so as to absorb some of it, or at least be near it and so I can perhaps, sometime in the future, follow her example.

I go back into the living room and, my legs feeble, sit in front of the stack of mail. There are two letters addressed to Ian, because all the utilities are in his name. One from the gas company and one from our internet provider, whom we’ve asked repeatedly to no longer send paper bills, but keeps doing so. I’ll need to sort that out. Let them know Ian Holloway will no longer be requiring their services.

The last letter in the pile is addressed to me. It’s from an attorney’s office so I immediately suspect it will be bad news. Quickly realizing no news can be worse than the one I received in this very place three weeks ago, I open the letter and start reading.

“Did you know Ian had a will?” I ask Dolores.

She comes to sit next to me and looks at the letter over my shoulder, then shakes her head.

“We invite you to set up an appointment at the office of Mr. Coates at your earliest convenience, to go over Mr. Ian Holloway’s last will and testament.”

“I had no idea; but Coates is the same attorney who handled Angela’s affairs,” she says.

“Will you come with me?” I ask without even thinking about it.

“Of course.” Dolores puts a hand on my shoulder, as she has done so many times in the past few weeks, and her touch, no matter how brief or small, moves something inside of me.

Chapter Ten

“Well, fuck me,” I say as we leave Mr. Coates’ office, forgetting for an instant that I’m swearing in front of Dolores.

“People
can
surprise you from the grave,” she says.

I just found out that the money Angela left Ian when she died was much more than he needed to buy his apartment eight years ago. That more than two years ago—around the time when Ian and I first started discussing marriage and decided against it—he had a will drawn up leaving the apartment and the money to me. And that he had taken out a generous life insurance policy leaving the beneficiary, meaning me, a quarter of a million dollars if he were to die.

“I always knew he was a sensible guy, but I had no clue about this,” I stammer, still trying to wrap my head around what I’ve just been told.

Dolores grabs me by the shoulders. “I’m glad he made that will, Sophie. I’m glad he took care of you.”

“I don’t know what to think.” I shuffle my weight around in Dolores’ half embrace.

“He should have told you. Things like this should not come as a surprise.” Her hands fall away from my shoulders.

“He knew I would never have agreed to it. None of this belongs to me.”

“It would have had you been married. And he may have believed I didn’t know, but I knew exactly why Ian didn’t want to get married. He could be really principled about some things. Some might even say stubborn. My best guess is that it was his way of continuing to grieve for Angela. He was a massive supporter of same-sex marriage. He wanted it so badly for us, but we never got the chance.” She puts her hands on my shoulders again. Money is all well and good, but it doesn’t bring Ian back. “I’m not going to lie, Sophie. I’ve been worried about you,” Dolores continues. “This means one less worry, okay? A big one.”

I nod. “You know what we should do? Go to Cooley’s, his favorite bar, and get drunk in his honor.”

“Then that’s what we shall do.” Dolores has been such a good sport, she’s been up for anything. Not that I’ve made many suggestions—this is my first. But she’s been kind enough to take me in and take care of me without expecting anything in return.

* * *

“This was Ian’s favorite bar?” Dolores quirks up her eyebrows.

We’ve just arrived at Cooley’s. Sports bars like this are a dime a dozen in this city. There’s nothing special about it, except that it’s two blocks from our apartment and, more importantly, it’s run by Ian’s first college roommate. Tommy grew up in the rural Midwest, in some godforsaken little town, and owning a bar like this in the city was his lifelong dream. Ian made a point of coming here from the beginning, a year before we met, and grew so fond of it, he became one of the regulars.

“I always believed my son was a hipster who hung out in coffee bars with his architect friends.” Dolores can’t seem to get over it. This is a day of surprises for both of us then.

“Don’t worry, he did that, too.” We take a seat at the bar. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and I feel out of place, but anything I feel these days that isn’t that huge mass of despair bearing down on me is a welcome enough sensation.

“Did he bring you here?” Dolores has trouble finding a comfortable position on the stool.

“A couple of times, but I prefer hanging out with Jeremy in uptown wine bars, where they charge you at least double for the same amount of alcohol.”