10 Days Before the Storm
It’s the anniversary of Nick’s disappearance.
A vigil is being held in Red Fox Lake. I am not invited, and while I envision going there anyway, I don’t. Because he was my husband, my love, and as much as those people care, they have no idea of the bone-deep aching that comes from living in this house without the man who built it.
Instead of attending the vigil with all its bullshit prayers, I decide to open the boxes, stacked in our unpainted bedroom, with his name Sharpied across the sides.
I sit cross-legged on the floor and gingerly pull over the first box. The packing tape has lifted a few inches at the side from when I’d started to tug at it previously before abandoning the task over and over again.
But this time when I draw back the tape, I don’t drop it and walk away. It rips through the silence and some of the cardboard comes with it, as if eager to give up its treasures. The lid drifts open like it’s relieved.
I reach in and take out the first item my hand touches—it’s one of many t-shirts. Nick was one of those men who made anything look good, as handsome on our wedding day in a suit as he was sexy in grubby work clothes. I’d first seen him in a worn Led Zepplin t-shirt and jeans, at a pub in Whitehorse. He was having a drink with a few people and I was new in the city, sipping a virgin cocktail with dinner because I was pregnant. Seven months, but it was hard to tell—I’d gained weight everywhere, and baggy layers of clothes concealed a lot. We made eye contact a few times before he came over, this guy in scruffy clothes, silky hair in a ponytail, and the kind of smile that made everyone around him grin. He was easy to talk to, funny and earnest, and we’d sat there until the bar closed that night, well after his companions left.
He walked me to my car and asked if he could give me his number. Didn’t ask for mine—left me to pursue it if I wanted. I’d been in Whitehorse a month and was nowhere near used to the frigid February air, but I unzipped my ski jacket and pulled my shirt tight against my swelling belly since he clearly didn’t realize. I gave him an out, which I expected him to take even though he knew there was no father in the picture.
I’d still like to give you my number...? Hesitant, like he wasn’t sure how I’d react—if I’d want to even bother. I thought maybe he was just being nice, but I didn’t know anyone in Whitehorse beyond my landlady. At least I’d then have a local friend, I figured.
But when I did end up calling him two days later, there was no looking back.
Later, I understood: Nick longed for a family. He was an only child, his parents had passed, and the idea of dating a pregnant woman—or single mother—didn’t scare him. He loved me for me, yes, and I’ve no doubt we would’ve dated regardless. But he didn’t shy away from a girl two months from giving birth because he yearned for a family and here was a potential instant one. He never pushed, always left the ball in my court, never came on too strong—he just made it clear he wasn’t deterred.
We married when Nadia was five months old, but when she was only twenty-eight days, I finally submitted her birth certificate application, Nick listed as the father with his blessing. Her middle name is even Lisse, after his mother. It felt like a dream, this perfect man I’d found myself with.
A dream I eventually woke from a year ago when he went missing.
I hold the t-shirt up to my face and breathe it in. I remember packing it, remember every time the past year I’d pause to cling to his clothes and breathe them in. I remember when all his things still smelled like him.
I can’t smell him anymore.
I can see him clear as day in my memory, meeting my eyes across the bar—there was me thinking I was hiding from the world in my bulky clothes and fake glasses, head bowed. But Nick kept meeting my eyes, like he saw me, that easy infectious smile stealing my resolve to remain anonymous. Beautiful sweet Nick. My memory is blurring around the edges and I know eventually it’ll fade until it becomes feathery haunting wisps. I can feel Nick here in this house, like he’s never really gone, and I can see that wide laidback smile.
But a year’s absence is enough to leech the smell of him from his clothes and I’ll never get that back again.
Tears fall heavy and hard, unlike they have in a year because there’s a finality to it, which part of me has denied all this time against logic.
I know Nick isn’t coming home.