What's Left Behind (2 page)

Celeste poked her head out from the kitchen and held a hand in the air, fingers outstretched. Five minutes.

Tears, watercolor black, streaked down the sides of Tessa’s face. “I’m wicked sorry!” Three sharp shrugs of her shoulders, and Tessa made a run for the couple she’d come with: a petite girl and her built-like-a-wall boyfriend. The girl embraced Tessa, and then, moments later, grabbed Tessa’s coat from the chair back.

Abby jolted forward, and Charlie took her by the arm.“Let her go, Abby.”

“She’s hurting!”

“So are we,” Charlie said, his voice barely a whisper. He looked down and shook his head.

“Charlie.” Abby brushed the dark-blond hair out of his eyes, her own self-soothing gesture, and her gaze caught on the photo display: Luke’s six-year-old grin pressed between her and Charlie’s sun-drenched faces, three look-alike blondes. They’d spent the day at Popham Beach, and a passerby had snapped the photo. Luke had insisted. “Just like a family,” he’d said, and Abby’s heart had bottomed out. Her little romantic.

“I loved him so much.”

Charlie followed her gaze to the photo board.

Their baby in his car seat, his eyes closed, pink lips pursed in his sleep. A blurred image of Luke on the high-school basketball court, nailing a jump shot. Luke on break from college, winter camping in the yard. The tent’s canvas framed his beaming face.

She gazed into Luke’s eyes. Luke stared back. Background conversations faded to a hum. Perspiration prickled her hairline.

Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

All day she’d cycled between the numb out-of-body experience of observing herself from afar and this strangling intensity of in-your-face grief. When the person you’d built your life around was gone, where did that leave you?

Last night, she’d lain in bed, doing the math. If she lived to eighty-six, she’d have another seventeen thousand six hundred and one days to endure. That was no way to think, certainly no way to live. She ached, as if someone had run her over with an eighteen-wheeler, thrown the rig into reverse, and ground her flattened remains into the asphalt.

If she didn’t find something else to build her life around, losing her son was going to kill her.

In her peripheral vision, the two lobstermen made their way to the front door. The ladies from the town hall crossed the dining room. A throng of Luke’s high-school basketball buddies who’d been hiding out in the library peeked into the dining room and then made their awkward exit. A dozen girls who’d spent their high-school careers adoring Luke and the last two hours hugging in the entryway sent Luke’s senior prom date to offer Abby their final condolences.

The room tilted on its axis. A slip of frozen white harbor. The sun glinting off the chandelier’s crystal prisms, glancing off the pale turquoise walls. Lily Beth across the room, and then her mother up close, Crock-Pot at her feet, shrugging into her wool coat. “Celeste’s going to follow me home, in case I need help shoveling my way to the front door.”

“Call if you need me.” Abby tried for a reassuring tone, but her voice came out foreign and far away, as though filtered through a bad phone connection.

Lily Beth leaned in for a peck on Abby’s cheek and then hurried for the door, leaving the earthy smell of snow and salt in her wake.

Celeste bustled into the dining room, wearing her puff jacket and smelling like powdered sugar. Her gaze honed in on Charlie. Arms folded, he stared out to the harbor, swallowing repeatedly. His breathing betrayed a ragged edge. “Oh, holy hell,” Celeste said, loud enough for Charlie to hear, and Abby walked her to the door.

“I can come back. I can stay. Really, no big deal.” The note of panic in Celeste’s voice was reminiscent of the first time Abby had gotten back with Charlie.

“Mama Bear.” Abby’s nickname for Celeste whenever she’d wax overprotective never failed to make them grin. “Don’t worry. I’ll give him tea and sympathy and send him on his way.” She sighed. “He needs me,” she said, and something deep inside her eased a tiny bit. She couldn’t build her life around Charlie, but she could keep herself busy a while longer.

Celeste’s eyes widened at the thought, and Abby hugged her. “Love you.” Abby slipped a piece of paper from her apron and edged it toward Celeste’s jacket pocket.

Celeste grabbed her wrist. “What’re you doing?” She pried open Abby’s fingers and shook her head at the spa certificate for Simple Indulgence. “I can’t accept this.”

The sudden look of reproach in Celeste’s eyes tugged at Abby’s resolve. “Come on. You deserve it. I know how hard you work. Wouldn’t hand and foot massages feel great?”

“You’re losing money this week.” Celeste glanced at the spa certificate. “Those don’t come cheap.”

“I get a discount.”

“Discount doesn’t mean free. Besides,
you
could use a massage. When was the last time you treated yourself? Wouldn’t a massage make you feel better?”

“No.” Lying exposed on a massage table and letting a stranger dig fingers into her tangled muscles was not Abby’s idea of a treat. Bad enough she’d let Celeste see her at her worst. Abby pressed the spa certificate into Celeste’s hand and turned her toward the door. “Don’t make me grovel,” Abby said, earning a half giggle.

“Don’t let Charlie move in,” Celeste said over her shoulder, and the front door clicked shut. Two consecutive engines revved and screeched in protest of the cold. Snow tires ground from her driveway. When Abby returned to the dining room and caught sight of Charlie, she could’ve sworn she heard the crash of the surf from the open ocean, pacing the roar of her heart.

Charlie rocked on his heels, the same unconscious tick he’d displayed at Tuesday’s burial until Abby had held his hands in hers.

She took his hands now, held tight, and settled the movement. For a long moment, he pressed his lips to the top of her head. Then he stepped back. The look of regret in his hazel eyes, Abby knew all too well. He was such a great dad Abby sometimes forgot he’d slipped in and out of Luke’s life those first three years. Right when she’d thought she’d gotten it together on her own, he’d slipped in and out of her life, too.

“I miss him every second,” Charlie said. “Kept thinking I’d see him sitting with his high-school friends, you know? Kept looking for him at the church . . . at the cemetery . . .”

Luke’s swim team and basketball trophies lined the entire top shelf of the library’s bookcase. His old Matchbox cars collected in a wicker basket to entertain the B&B’s younger guests. Three concrete handprints sat sentry before her perennial garden: Luke’s hands at five, small and pudgy; stretching out at twelve; man-sized on his eighteenth birthday.

Wind rattled the windowpanes, but the cold couldn’t touch her. She had the urge to kick off her shoes, traipse through the snow-covered yard, walk straight into the iced-over bay, and let the frigid water numb her heart.

“Everywhere I look—” Charlie said.

“Stop it!” Abby wasn’t sure whether she was talking to Charlie or herself.

Charlie’s eyes clouded, the color darkening from green to gray. His lips gently shut. He mouthed,
Okay,
and lowered his gaze.

When he pulled her against him, she rested her head on his chest. The unique-to-Charlie musk of his skin filled her nose. If she closed her eyes, she could make herself believe they were seventeen years old again, their whole lives ahead of them, nothing decided. The heady beat of his heart thrummed through her head and resurrected a string of major life firsts. First kiss, fast and fumbling and stolen, by her, in the tide pools at Joe’s Head. First sex, equally fast, and initiated by Charlie in his parents’ den, while his little sister slept upstairs. First-breakup heartbreak: ongoing.

And now this.

Abby shifted her head, and his breath hit her in the face, hot with a sting of Scotch, one of Charlie’s occasional indulgences. To his credit, Charlie would never have sneaked a nip from her liquor cabinet if he were planning on driving himself home.

Abby’s stomach muscles convulsed. The edges of her mouth twitched upward. Nothing was funny, nothing at all. Yet her shoulders shook, and she struggled against the grip of hysterical laughter.

Charlie pulled away from her. “What is it?”

Tears wet her cheeks. “Johnnie Walker,” she said, a reed-thin squeak.

“Ah, you got me. Did a couple shots.” Charlie nodded, rubbed her arms until her hysterics subsided. His chin dimpled, but he did not cry. Scotch could do that.

She sighed, wiped her cheeks, held a hand to Charlie’s face. His handsome, heartbroken face. “Presumptuous of you.”

Charlie took her hand and kissed it, slow, heated pressure reminiscent of the time she’d taken him in after his divorce. He gilded her with his warm gaze. His I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself gaze. His Abby-can’t-say-no-to-Charlie gaze. His maybe-this-time-will-be-different gaze. “Was I wrong?”

She could make Charlie a care package of sandwiches, teas, and muffins. She could drop in one of her hand-sewn lavender sachets encouraging soothing thoughts, sweet dreams, and smooth sailing through life. She could drive him home and make him promise to call her in the morning.

And left to her own devices, she could walk straight into the iced-over bay.

Abby took a deep breath and rubbed her forefinger against her thumb, skin-on-skin friction loud enough to hear. She shook her head, and brushed Charlie’s hair from his eyes. Her fingers wove into his hair, thick and silky, and boyish, just like the rest of him.

Charlie’s eyelids drifted to half-moons. He edged closer, his gaze lighted on her lips. His shadow fell across her vision.

She turned her head, and Charlie’s lips brushed her cheek.

Abby hadn’t lied to Celeste. She wasn’t about to invite Charlie to move back into her home or her heart.

“Okay,” Charlie said, and he sounded not like himself, strangled and small and unsure. “Okay,” he repeated, and a sob muffled his voice.

“Shh, shh, shh.” Abby hugged him close, wrapped her arms around his waist, slid her hands along his perspiration-moist lower back.

Abby hadn’t lied to Celeste. But she hadn’t told Celeste the truth either. She couldn’t send Charlie on his way.

She didn’t trust herself to be alone.

Abby’s hands shook, her fingers numb at the tips, as though ice shards had jammed beneath her nails. She closed her eyes, absorbed the shock of Charlie’s sobs.And then a different sensation rippled through her. Charlie’s stomach rumbled, growled, convulsed, but not in laugher.

Charlie jerked away from her. He slammed his hands on the dining table, hung his head, and retched into a discarded soup bowl.

Three fingers of Scotch could do that to you, too.

“Sorry, Abby,” he croaked. “Sorry.”

She took him by the hand and led him from the dining room, past the library, and down the hallway to one of her vacant guest rooms. She sat him down on the bed, wriggled off his shoes, plumped the pillows beneath his head. She made him down two ibuprofens and laid an ice-water-soaked washcloth across his fevered forehead.

Abby hummed under her breath, the way Sadie sometimes purred to comfort herself. But her fingers were no longer shaking. Her breathing came even, the air flowing unobstructed for the first time in days. Focusing on Charlie had taken the edge off her pain. Way healthier than walking into the frozen bay.

Charlie’s eyes drifted shut, blond lashes settling against the curves of his cheeks. His breathing softened. His chest rose and fell beneath the quilt’s wedding ring pattern. Abby pressed her mouth to the warm pulse of Charlie’s temple, the way she used to kiss Luke good night.

I want my son back.

The backs of her knees spasmed, and her legs went out. She leaned against the bed.

On the day Luke was born, she’d reached between her legs and placed her hands on the top of his head, so he’d feel her touch when he took his first breath. So he’d never be alone. She’d once told Luke that someday, in the impossible distant future, when she was old and gray, she wanted him to hold her hand when she breathed her last.

Yet she’d been miles away from her baby when, alone, he’d fallen. And she hadn’t even known. She hadn’t felt a thing.

Fully clothed, she turned down the quilt, slid in on top of the blanket, and switched off the lamp. She crossed her arms. In the dark, her teeth chattered. Beside her, Charlie snored. She got up on one elbow and set a pillow between them, in case Charlie woke in the night with renewed energy and the wrong idea.

As if sex were the only way Charlie could get to her.

Charlie was to Abby as partying with the boys, poor investments, and broken promises were to Charlie.

Oh, holy hell. Celeste was right.

Abby was going to hate herself in the morning.

R
ob Campbell refused to look at Bella’s dog run.

Instead, he backed his truck into the driveway that was no longer his driveway, jogged up the no-longer-his walkway, and fumbled for the key he’d returned to Maria back in February. Then, remembering, he cursed and rang the bell.The beautiful woman who was no longer his wife opened the door. “It’s time,” she said, and stepped back to let him pass.

Inside the Victorian’s formal entryway, he gave his spring-muddy boots a cursory stomp on the mat, but didn’t bother taking them off. He wouldn’t be staying long.

“How’s she doing?”

“Hardly ate yesterday, trouble sleeping last night, kept waking up howling.” Maria’s bottom lip trembled.

He held up his hands. “Wait a second. What’s this ‘hardly ate’? I thought you said she didn’t eat. A bad day doesn’t translate to ‘it’s time.’ ” When two people loved each other, a bad day didn’t mean you should get a divorce either. Campbells never gave up. Too bad his ex-wife didn’t share his born-and-bred philosophy.

Maria sighed and shook her head, her gaze weary, yet determined. “Not one bad day, many bad days. Can’t remember what a good day looks like anymore.”

He could.

Coming home after dark had never bothered him. He liked finding his way to the front door by the post light, the satisfaction of creating one of his landscape designs giving him a natural high. The ache of hard work humming through his muscles. Bone-tired, he liked bounding up the stairs, climbing into bed, and finding his college sweetheart, Maria, by his side.

Pretty much summed up Maria’s reasons for divorcing him.

Tears shone on the tips of her lashes. Rob jammed his hands in his pockets to quell the urge to brush them away. No longer his wife.

“You promised. We’re not putting her through a third round of chemo. We’re not prolonging her suffering.”

“I know what I said.” He also knew Maria had fought him on the first two rounds, each yielding months-long remissions.

“Where’s the old girl?” he said, expecting Maria to head into the kitchen, where Bella’s flowered doggie bed sat next to her food and water bowls for easy access.

Maria let out a laugh and angled her chin toward the stairway.

“Grace?”

“Yeah, couldn’t stop her. Freakishly strong, like her father.” Maria sliced her face away from him and started up the stairs, as though she were embarrassed by the expression’s association with Rob. Pride in their daughter was a given.

“Hope that doesn’t earn her a freakishly strong hernia,” he said, imagining his eighteen-year-old daughter trudging up the stairs, carrying their seventy-pound golden retriever in her arms like a baby.

Rob followed Maria up the stairway he could navigate in the dark. His hand skimmed the salvaged mahogany banister he’d sanded and buffed until it shone. At the landing, morning filtered through the reclaimed stained glass he installed days after they’d closed on the property. The sunlight cast ruby and gold diamonds against Maria’s long dark hair, down the curves of female topography his hands knew by heart. If he reached out to touch her, would she stop him?

After twenty years of marriage, how did you remember to forget?

He walked past Grace’s hall-of-fame photo gallery, her favorites in a row. Grace’s senior prom photo, his daughter beaming in a frilly blue dress, arm linked with her just-a-friend date. Grace in her various sports team group shots: field hockey, basketball, and track-and-field players Rob knew by name.

And then, right before Grace’s closed door, instead of Rob and Maria’s eight-by-ten wedding portrait, a giant empty space.

“What the hell?”

Maria flushed and held a hand to her cheek.

Rob brushed his fingers across the lighter-than-the-rest rectangle. “Ought to cover it with one of the graduation photos.”

Maria offered him a tight-lipped half smile, the same condolence-laden expression making the rounds in answer to news of their divorce. “You’re right.” She gave the door a single tap with her knuckles and then turned the knob.

A blast of sour-sick dog odor hit him in the face, and his eyes watered.

Grace sat cross-legged on the floor, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and unlaced Converses. Same outfit she was wearing last night when he’d taken her out for Chinese. Grace’s dark hair fell around her shoulders; Bella’s face lay in her lap. The old dog opened her eyes. Her brown gaze trained on Rob, as if she’d chosen him from all other humans, same as the day he’d taken her home curled on his lap.

Rob knelt on one knee, offered Bella his hand. “Hey, girl, how you doing?”

“She seems real sad.” His daughter’s shadowed eyes told him she was speaking about herself as much as their dog.

Worst feeling in the world.

Rob nodded and stroked Bella’s head. He thought of the day he’d handed the warm bundle to Grace, the joy in her six-year-old eyes.

Best feeling in the world.

Rob breathed through his mouth. “Call the vet?” he asked Maria.

Maria leaned against the doorway, arms crossed. She chewed her bottom lip, a nervous habit that had worn away the center pigment. Any other day, lipstick would’ve covered the blank spot. “He’s waiting for you.”

Grace’s mouth fell open. She shook her head, a subtle side-to-side motion, hinting at the horror of understanding. “No.” She clutched Bella, and the dog’s forelegs splayed beneath her. A yip scratched from Bella’s throat.

Rob tilted his head, peered beneath Grace’s hair. “Shh, it’s okay. Don’t scare her.” Grace pumped her lips between her teeth. Rob lowered his voice to a whisper. “If we’re calm, Bella’s calm. Isn’t that right?” Bella rewarded him by licking his hand. “There you go.”

Grace’s eyes turned glassy with unshed tears, and she nodded.

A picture of Rob’s mother flashed before him, Dad taking her by the hand for her last trip to the hospital. “No worries,” Rob had promised his mother. “Maria and I will watch out for Dad while you’re gone,” he’d said, even though everyone—Mom included—had known she wouldn’t be returning. Not sure whether the lie had made leaving easier for his mother or those left behind.

Rob eased his hands under Bella’s belly, scooped her up. The dog’s ribs pressed against his chest, her heartbeat
lub-dubbed
through him, and she let him take her down the stairway.

At the open door, Rob turned, intending to ask Maria and Grace whether they were coming with him. Instead, Grace lifted her house keys from the hook, and Maria scrambled up the stairway, leaving him to deal with the mess. He didn’t mind. But he suspected their daughter secretly wanted both parents along for this heartbreak. Grace couldn’t hold a grudge forever.

Eight minutes later, Rob and Grace were sitting side by side in the vet’s waiting room with Bella at their feet. The dog sat to Rob’s left, the way he’d trained her. The reason she’d graduated first in her class, same as Grace.A bitter knot tickled the back of Rob’s throat, and he coughed to dislodge it.

Grace stiffened and sucked in a breath, removing all the air in the room. Rob’s heart hammered, trying to escape through his ears.

Last chance, last chance, last chance.

They were doing the right thing. They were putting an end to the suffering.

Same melodramatic reason Maria had given him for wanting a divorce.

Grace swiped at a tear, and her hand jazzed across her cheek. She rested her hand on Bella’s head. Rob placed his hand on Grace’s, and their hands rode the waves of Bella’s breath, their dog comforting them.

Rob remembered the first time Grace had strode into the vet’s office with Bella in her gangly six-year-old arms and deposited the pup on the metal examining table, proud as a new parent. “Dr. Anderson, look at my puppy!”

Thing was, when Rob looked at Bella, he still expected to see an eight-pound bundle. When he gazed at his daughter, he expected a little girl.

Rob had brought Bella home, ostensibly as a present for Grace. At the time, he’d thought Maria needed the puppy more. She’d wanted to have another baby, about four years after he’d given up trying to convince her. For a while the puppy had worked, and Maria had seemed content. She hadn’t complained. He hadn’t looked for trouble.

Grace’s face paled under the fluorescent lights.

“You okay?” Rob asked.

Grace nodded, but she didn’t answer.

Rob’s legs stiffened, as if he’d been kneeling, setting pavers and plantings from sunup to sundown. He stroked the dog’s back, avoiding her sensitive patches. By the time he’d noticed a swelling in Bella’s neck, the cancer had already migrated to her bones.

Silent, insidious killer.

Grace gave Bella a kiss on her head.

Hammering in Rob’s ears, hammering through his chest. His whole body ached with warning.

Last chance, last chance, last chance.

Rob’s fierce-on-the-field girl struggled to maintain her composure. Her teeth chattered. Grace rubbed the dog’s ear, and Bella sighed.

Rob stroked the length of Bella’s back, warm beneath his sweaty-cold hands. He took hold of Grace’s right hand, and his daughter squeezed. Freakishly strong, just like her father.

Crazy, but Rob silently asked Mom to look out for his dog, as if Bella were headed for an eternity catching Frisbees and chasing seagulls along a dog-friendly beach. Power of suggestion, the hammering in his ears softened. He inhaled through his nose, deep and measured.

Through Grace’s long hair, the tips of her ears glowed red. She rubbed Bella’s ear, squeezed Rob’s hand.

Good-bye, old girl.

“Do you think she knows I love her?” Grace said.

“Oh, yeah. She knows. She definitely knows.”

Grace’s right foot shook. The reverberations trembled against Rob’s chair, up through his body, tingled the chords of his neck.

“Do you think she’s scared?”

“No, sweetheart, she’s not scared.”

“Do you think—?” Dr. Anderson’s vet tech angled in the door between the waiting room and the hallway to the examining rooms.

Rob and Grace startled, exchanged a look.

The vet tech tucked her short blond hair behind one ear. Rob caught her eye, and her expression morphed: open and curious, glad to see you, sorry to hear the news.

Story of his life.

Rob stood and turned to Grace. “You coming?”

Grace shook her head. She examined the vinyl flooring. Her right leg trembled, but her left foot pointed toward the door to the examining rooms.

“Sure?” he said. “I think you’ll regret it if you don’t. I think you’ll wish you had,” he said, borrowing the theme from his daughter’s valedictorian address.

Less than a week ago, he and Maria had sat next to each other in a row of sticky plastic folding chairs strung across the Morse High School football field and listened to their amazing daughter urge her classmates to dream big, no regrets. According to Grace, a boy who graduated last year from Hidden Harbor High, one town away from Bath, had inspired her speech. Kid had lived his whole life in Hidden Harbor and then died tragically over the winter in western Massachusetts, a freshman in college.

Among the clamor of applause, ladies dug in their purses for tissues and men cleared their throats. Even Rob, a transplant from New Hampshire, had taken a moment to glance to the sky and thank God for his good fortune.

He couldn’t think of anything worse than losing a child.

Bella may not be human—he sometimes wondered—but she was a member of their family.

At least he and his daughter could be with Bella at the moment of her passing. At least they had the choice.

Grace raised her gaze to Rob and stood. “Okay.” She nodded, chewed at her lip, same spot Maria had worried to white. “I’ll come in, for Bella.”

“All right, then.” A turn of his left hand, and Bella stood. Head held high, she strode through the doors. The vet tech gave Rob a pulled-across-the-face smile, and he passed before her brown scrubs, cartoon drawings of cheerful cats leaping over flowers with fat petals.

He was not a fan of cats.

The vet tech handed Rob her clipboard. “Some papers for you to sign,” she said.

Without reading a word, he scrawled his signature, agreeing to the euthanasia of his dog. A few months ago, he’d signed a similar paper to dissolve his marriage. Same as before, he tried to wrap his mind around what was happening, but couldn’t get a handhold.

The vet tech took the clipboard and led them down the hall.

Rob placed his open hand against Grace’s back—sticky and throbbing with heat—and they followed.

He wished he could make this hurt all better. Wished he could take away the pain of losing Bella. He was really going to miss their sweetheart of a dog.

And in the fall, his sweetheart girl was headed to Plymouth State. He was really going to miss her, too.

Rob’s mind trundled to an argument with Maria, one of their many disagreements.

She’d claimed his work was the only thing he cared about.

Wasn’t true then, wasn’t true now.

Yet, after Maria had served him with the divorce papers, he’d tossed a mattress into the bed of his truck and headed to his office, a second-floor walk-up in town. A couple of rooms above a bakery suited him just fine. Every morning, he woke to the smell of coffee and muffins wafting through the floorboards. And in the moment before he opened his eyes, he imagined he was home. Maria and Grace making breakfast in the kitchen. Bella darting around their legs. He imagined the footfalls in the shop below were the sounds of Maria headed up the staircase to bring him coffee in bed. Because after twenty years of marriage, they were still like two kids, crazy in love.

The last part always jolted him to reality.

Then he’d open his eyes, take in the bare walls, his mattress squeezed beside a bank of filing cabinets. He’d peer out to the main office. Monitor and keyboard sitting on a yard-sale-find desk he’d refinished, drafting table he’d had since college. He’d remind himself he should talk to Maria about putting their dream house on the market. And he’d wonder what the hell had happened. What came next? Because everything he’d worked for, everything he cared about, was either slipping away from him or already gone.