Chapter Thirty-Seven

ELLIE FLEW ALONG the highway, her stomach turning with each empty overpass. Clearing a long curve, she spotted the Subaru parked up the next hill, but as she pulled in behind it, blank sky framed the empty bridge. A sour bubble of fear popped in the back of her throat. She threw herself out of the car and ran to the railing. Counting one breath, then another, then a third, she finally peeked over the edge. Olivia’s blonde hair swirled in the wind, and panic roiled before Ellie’s mind could register that she was alive, sitting on a large rock next to the river.

With clumsy fingers, she texted Arti. Found her. Going to talk. Give me time. She silenced her phone and walked to where the railing stopped. Wet grass slithered beneath her feet as she skidded down the steep ditch. Olivia had talked about the car rolling, but now, standing at the bottom, Ellie couldn’t imagine how it had held together at all. She picked her way to the rock. A litany of hurt and fear and anger surged against her lips, but Olivia’s sorrow-ravaged face stilled her. Grief had carved new creases onto her serious features with ruthless efficiency. Silence pressed in, broken only by tires hissing on pavement overhead.

“The patrolman said we were lucky.” Olivia sneered at the word, her voice a rusty croak. “If I hadn’t clipped the railing, we might have crashed in the river, and we all would have died. I wanted to claw his eyes out. He knew Sophia was dead, and still he said…lucky.”

“When I saw the empty bridge I thought you—” Fear smothered the rest of Ellie’s thought.

“I was sitting on the hood of the car, but I needed to get closer. I’ve never climbed down here before.” She shook herself roughly as if waking from a dream. “How did you—”

“Ben called when he couldn’t reach you.”

Olivia dug in her pocket for her phone. No service sat in the corner of the screen. “Fuck. I lost track—”

“It’s okay. I texted Arti when I got here. She’ll tell him.”

“He must be freaking out—” Olivia rolled onto her hip, but Ellie stopped her momentum with a hand on her shoulder.

“He can wait this one time.” Coiled muscles trembled under her palm like Olivia might resist, but then she sank back.

“I’m sorry. This isn’t what you need.”

“What I need is to understand.”

The bridge rumbled with the thunder of a passing semi. A crow’s caw split the air.

Olivia’s reticence, that brittle enemy they’d fought this past month, asserted itself until finally she lifted her head and pinned her gaze to the horizon. “Sophia was an early riser. She would poke me awake, call me her hibernating bear.”

Ellie snorted with false humor to keep the story from dissolving into silence.

“We’d lived together awhile when one morning I woke up to find her still in bed, staring at the ceiling. She’d been doing it more often, saying she couldn’t sleep in, but she wasn’t ready to be apart from me yet. I asked her what she thought about in those quiet moments. And she told me. It became a private daily ritual. I loved it.” Olivia squinted and rubbed her mouth. “The morning of the accident, she was already gone, letting me sleep in while she prepped for the trip. It happened occasionally, no big deal.”

How many last moments had passed unnoticed, camouflaged by the monotony of daily life? How many nights did a grieving Olivia sift through uncertain memories, hoarding as many precious “lasts” as her mind could conjure?

“I’d give anything to ask her what she was thinking about one last time. Like her answer could make the rest of that terrible day make sense.”

“Is that why you’re here? To make sense of it?” Ellie asked the safe question, unable to voice her grimmest thoughts.

Olivia clenched and unclenched her hands. “Those first months, I couldn’t escape the idea of killing myself. It was always there, lurking. It got to the point where it affected my focus on Ben. I needed somewhere to put those thoughts, some way to deal with them. One day, when it was really bad, I snuck out here. I stood at the railing and made myself imagine what it would take to actually end it. To leave everything. To leave Ben.”

“You didn’t tell your psychologist?”

“No. If he hospitalized me, it would’ve devastated Ben. And it helped, being here. It made it a concrete thing. In middle of the night, when you’re drowning in grief, the idea can feel seductive, like a release.” Olivia’s eyes drew a lazy arc from the railing down to the sluggish water. “But here, in broad daylight, it became a choice. So I set a date, once a month, to come here and confront that choice. Anytime a stray thought intruded, I tucked it away in a corner of my mind where it could wait for the next visit.”

“Did you ever come close? To doing it?”

“The one-year mark was especially hard. I thought I hadn’t loved Sophia enough if I could live a year without her.”

“Olivia…”

“I only came yearly after that. It scared me, how much I had come to need this place. How connected it made me feel to her.” Olivia’s eyes slid to Ellie’s for the first time before gliding back to the river. “I never truly considered it again until today.”

“But why? It was going so well.”

“Too well.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I pretended my feelings for you weren’t as intense, as real as they were with Sophia. It was safer. But that night in the shower there was a moment when you filled every space, every thought. For the first time, I couldn’t imagine not having you in my life. Then Sophia popped into my head, and it all came crashing down. Your presence is built on her absence. To be happy with you meant I had to be okay with her being gone. What kind of person does that? Who pushes aside the love of their life?”

“You didn’t push her aside. You took a step toward a new life. A life Sophia would want you to have. Her death was a tragedy, for you and Ben, but you’re allowed to come to terms with it and find some peace.”

“I can’t have peace. Not after losing her the way I did.”

The bleak tone under the words stopped Ellie’s protest. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve never told anyone about the accident, not even Arti.” Olivia released a shaky sigh. “I blacked out after we rolled. When I came to, Ben was screaming in the back. I couldn’t get to him—the steering wheel had me pinned. Each breath was fire. When he went silent, I couldn’t tell…I didn’t know…

“Then I heard him breathing, shallow and soft, and I knew he was still with me. Sophia, though…she was so still.” Olivia dug her fingers into her knees until the knuckles went white. Her wedding band glowed on her clawed hand. “And then her head moved. I wanted to laugh with relief, but the pain was too much. I could just reach her hand, and I grabbed it. She turned slowly, like she was underwater. She was in so much pain, but she held my eyes. She tried to talk, but when—” A dry heave bent Olivia, and she spit into the grass. The story tore itself from her throat as she continued. “When she opened her mouth, it was full of blood. Her teeth were stained this terrible bright red. She was choking on it, choking to death. It poured out of her mouth in this thick stream—”

Horror fixed Ellie’s tongue to her mouth.

“All I could think was, ‘She’s dying, and I can’t help her. I’m right here, and I can’t help her. I’m a fucking nurse, and I can’t help her!’” Olivia shouted the last sentence, and Ellie’s heart wrenched. “She touched my hand with one thumb, looked right at me, and then she was gone. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t there. I shook her, yelling, trying to bring her back.” Olivia’s jaw rippled as she fought tears, and Ellie wrapped her in a hug, grateful she allowed it. “I still see her face—blood rushing over her chin, down her neck. Sometimes…sometimes it’s the only way I can remember her.”

Ellie buried her face in Olivia’s hair. “How long were you there before the ambulance came?”

“I have no idea. I passed out for good as they cut me out of the car. When I woke up in the hospital, I told them I remembered the drunk driver’s car. Nothing else.”

“And they told you Sophia died instantly. She didn’t suffer.”

Olivia let out that horrible, dark laugh, the one Ellie had come to hate. “I wanted to scream at them, ‘But she did suffer. And all I could do was watch!’”

“When you dream about the accident, this is what you dream—her death.”

Olivia nodded, and Ellie cradled her again. The wind blew through them as the minutes passed, until Olivia’s shoulders released, and her clenched hands slacked.

Ellie kissed Olivia’s temple. “You don’t have to struggle alone. It might feel hard, and dark, but we can get through it. I can wait as long as you need.”

“You don’t understand. The night you found me in the shower? I’d had the dream again, more intense than in years. It was all the same, the wheel crushing me, Ben screaming, but when I grabbed Sophia’s hand, it was you who looked at me.” Olivia grabbed her shoulders with painful intensity. “Your mouth filled with blood, your eyes with that dead stare.”

“It was just a dream. I am right here.”

“But I’m not! Part of me is forever in that car. I barely survived losing Sophia. If I lost you…there wouldn’t be anything left.”

“I’m not going to—” Ellie couldn’t make that promise, not to this woman. “So you’re closing yourself off from me, from anyone, because of what might happen?”

“I’ve lived what might happen. It’s agony. If I could go back, I would never—”

“Never what? Meet me? Meet Sophia?”

Olivia’s eyes widened, and Ellie grabbed her forearms. She saw a chance now, a way to cut through this fog of grief. “Tell me you’d give it all up—kisses in the dorm, Sophia taking you to bed for the first time, her pregnant body. You spent twenty years with her, and you’d sacrifice all of it, you’d sacrifice Ben, to avoid this pain?”

Olivia yanked away, pushed herself off the rock, and stalked toward the ditch.

Ellie dashed to catch up and flung herself in front of her. She slapped a palm on her chest. “Tell me! Tell me you’d lose twenty years with Sophia to wipe that image from your brain. Tell me you’d give up twenty years, or forty years with me!” Tears of frustration scorched her cheeks. She pushed Olivia hard. “I wasn’t in that car! Please don’t walk away from me, from us.”

Olivia’s heavy breath chopped through the swirling wind. She dragged watery eyes from the ground and back to Ellie. “Ever since I dreamed about you instead of Sophia, I can’t keep things straight. In the nightmare, I never know whose face I’ll see. Sophia’s in my head, but in the house, there’s only you.” Tears slipped from her cheeks and stained her shirt. “I don’t know how to let her go.”

“You don’t need to let her go. You just have to let yourself truly start living without her.”

“That’s why you should walk away. From me, from this. I don’t know how to stop being afraid so I can—” The wind tossed Ellie’s hair in front of her face, and Olivia reached out to tuck it behind her ear. “You deserve someone who can give you everything.”

Ellie grabbed Olivia’s hand and kissed the palm. “You are everything I want in life, which is the most anyone deserves. You’re so hard on yourself. The trauma you experienced, trapped in a car, forced to watch your wife die… You are so much stronger than you realize.”

“You see things in me that aren’t really there.” Olivia choked on a sob.

“I see all the incredible things you won’t let yourself see.” Ellie wiped damp tracks from Olivia’s cheeks. “You said once you didn’t have room for anger because there was only grief. And no wonder. You were so busy caring for Ben and the demands of his grief you never dealt with your own. But it can’t be only grief, stretching out to forever. Maybe that’s what you’ve been doing these last few months—making room for something else.”

Olivia turned from her to face the river. She clenched her fingers around the back of her neck. “I thought this was the place of my biggest fear—watching Sophia leave me, but today I realized how wrong I was. The worst fear came later. The first night in the house, Ben clutching my shirt with a nightmare, alone. That was terror. How could I ever parent without her? And the first time I laughed again, I was so afraid. Afraid I was losing her. The grief made me less afraid. Because if I was grieving, she was still with me. But if I was happy…she truly was gone.”

Her hands dropped, and she stuffed them into her pockets. “You could meet a woman your own age, maybe have your own children. Why choose me, and Ben, and this screwed-up life I’ve made for us?”

Ellie finally took a real breath. Olivia tossed the old argument out there, but her heart wasn’t in it. Ellie came up behind her and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Because I love you. And I love Ben.” Her voice broke on his name. “Sophia will always be with you, with us, but let me help you. Let me love you. We can get through this together.”

Olivia stood stiff and brittle in her arms for long seconds. Then she unraveled, resting her temple against Ellie’s with a sigh. Ellie reveled in this soft intimacy, one body fused to the other, and waited. Rustling grass streaked the silence. The river’s damp, mossy scent licked their skin. When a flock of birds burst from a tree, Olivia’s head shifted to follow them. Her ribs expanded under Ellie’s arms as she took in a deep breath, then she leaned forward, pulling her fists from her pockets. The gold band shone on her left hand.

“I took this off after Sophia’s service. I wore it on these days in case I went through with it. I wanted a piece of her with me.” She removed the ring. “But it’s time to let it go.”

Ellie guessed at Olivia’s intent. “If you do this, you might regret it, years from now. Or maybe Ben will want it later.”

“I saved Sophia’s in case, one day, he wanted to give it to someone. Sophia would want me to have that dream for him.” She rolled the ring between her fingers. “Mine represents something I used to need, but not anymore.” With those words, she tossed it. It winked in the light as it spun before splashing into the muddy river. Ellie didn’t know what to think, but it was already done.

Olivia turned her back on the dark ribbon of water and took Ellie’s hands. “I kept returning to this spot, but I never jumped. Because of Ben, of course. And because deep down, I knew Sophia wouldn’t want me to. Each time I came here, Sophia helped keep me safe. But today was different. Do you know why?”

She shook her head.

“Because today, I knew you wouldn’t want me to. You helped keep me safe.”

Olivia cradled her face, and the warmth of that touch sent fresh tears down Ellie’s cheeks. “I love you, Ellie. I love you with all I have. I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner. If I had, maybe it wouldn’t have come to this. I love you more than I thought would ever be possible again.” She brushed a gentle kiss against Ellie’s wet lips and buried her face in her neck. Ellie wrapped her arms around her, wanting to never let her go.