I’m finally alone. I kick off my heels and sit down on the couch in my living room. I’m in New York, and the sounds of traffic and honking and sirens are muffled from the street below.
I close my eyes and lean back, resting my hands on my stomach. My black dress feels smooth under my fingers, and I lie back and let my body sink into the couch. I spent the whole day keeping myself together as people came to me one after another to offer their condolences. For the thousandth time today, I feel like I’m on the brink of falling apart. This time, I let it happen.
My father’s funeral was torture. I had to be the dutiful daughter when all I wanted to do was scream. Now that I’m alone, I don’t know what to do with myself. I just sit on the couch with my head leaning against the back cushion. My eyes are closed and my whole body feels heavier than it’s ever felt before. The first of my tears squeezes out of the corner of my eye and rolls down the side of my face.
I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to wallow and sit here alone and cry myself to sleep – only to wake up with a puffy, swollen face and a hollow chest. I don’t want to be here alone. I don’t want my father to be dead.
I open my eyes and let the tears fall out one after another. I don’t sob. I don’t move. They just pour out of my eyes one after another. I stare at the ceiling for a while, and then I lift my head and look around the room. It’s exactly how I left it before I went to Lang Creek, but somehow it feels different. It feels like something has changed. Like I’ve changed.
I look at the tasteful throws and complementary cushions on the high wingback chair. I look at the little mirrored boxes beside the orchid on my coffee table. I wiggle my toes in the plush rug under my feet and it just feels so fake. My apartment is gorgeous, and impeccably decorated, but once again I’m here alone.
My father has died, work is a disaster, and the first man I’ve ever loved has turned out to be someone I thought he wasn’t.
Why hasn’t he called me?
It’s been almost a week since I left Lang Creek, and I haven’t heard a word from Aiden. Ever since that morning when I confronted him at his cabin, he’s been completely silent. His silence has spoken louder than anything he could have said, it’s just not what I want to hear.
More tears fall out of my eyes and I take a deep breath. My chest feels heavy and I force myself to breathe in completely. What does Aiden matter? What does work matter or the fire or Barry or the petition when my father just died? The backbone of our family is gone. He’s the one person that I’ve been able to turn to, who believed in me completely even when I didn’t walk the path set out for me. And now he’s dead.
Over the past few days, I’ve learned to hate the euphemisms people use for dying. ‘Leaving us’, or ‘passing on’, ‘passing away’ and ‘crossing over’. It’s all bullshit. He’s dead. He’s not coming back. I don’t want anyone to be gentle with me. I don’t want anyone to coddle me and make me feel better by trying to call it something different. He died, and he’s not coming back. It hurts more than anything. Calling it something other than death just feels like a slap in the face.
I’ve seen the looks that people are giving me. I’m expected to step into his role – to stop my own career in environmental engineering and do what I was supposed to do from the start. The company is mine if I want it, and I don’t know what to do.
I don’t want it. I don’t want to run the company. I don’t want to build a hotel in Lang Creek. All I want is my father. I want his shoulder to cry on and I want him to tell me he’s proud of me and that everything will be okay.
I reach for my phone and hesitate before unlocking the screen. I take a deep breath and find Aiden’s number. It takes me a long time to type out a message, and even when it’s typed out, I don’t hit ‘send’. I throw my phone aside and finally get up off the couch.
I take a long, hot shower, and I warm up some leftovers in my fridge. I pour myself a tall glass of wine and take a sip, staring at my phone from across the room. It’s right where I left it on the sofa.
I know I shouldn’t send it to him. I know it’ll only open up the wounds and make me feel worse. What I should do – what everyone wants me to do – is to forget about Lang Creek and take care of my father’s company. I should put Aiden Clarke and the McCoys behind me and move on with my life.
But as I stand here, sipping dry red wine as I lean against the counter in my fancy kitchen, all I can see is my phone. Its blank screen is taunting me, calling out to me from across the room.
The microwave dings and I glance at it in disgust. Warming up those leftovers was ambitious of me. All I want to do is take them out and throw them directly into the trash. I glance from the microwave back to my phone and put my glass of wine down a bit too forcefully.
I make a bee-line directly for my phone and grab it off the sofa where I left it. I unlock it with a swipe and find the draft of my message. My hands are trembling but I hit ‘send’ before I can talk myself out of it. It takes a second for the message to say ‘sent’ and then another second for the word ‘delivered’ to appear underneath it. I sigh and read the message over and over and over until it’s burned into my mind.
My heart is thumping as I look at the text I just wrote. Part of me feels like I shouldn’t have said anything, but part of me feels completely satisfied with myself. I read my words one more time before dropping my phone down and heading back to my wine. They’re the exact words that I’ve wanted to ask him for almost a week, ever since the day I stood on the hill watching all my hard work burn to ash. They’re the words that I haven’t had the guts to say until now, until everything in my life has burned up with that hotel.
Did you do it?