No one had planned for a reception at their house after the service. But with everything that had happened, there’d been an unspoken, collective compulsion to gather. It seemed no one wanted to be alone after the scene with Phillip at the church. After the sheriff shooed the reporters away, she’d called Marie and asked her to come over, then Daniel had called a few people. The word had spread.
People from the community had showed up. They brought food, and Tabitha and Daniel pulled out the food that was already there. Others fired up the grill and threw on various cuts of meat they brought from their refrigerators. They dragged in coolers filled with every drink imaginable from punch to Pepsi, wine to whiskey. In the midst of their grief, they sought shelter in each other.
Someone put a glass of red wine in Tabitha’s hand and she took it gratefully, downing a big gulp just as one of her grandchildren whizzed past her. She sidestepped and saved the wine. Whoever she was talking to—the faces had become a blur by that point—praised her agility and foresight. She was taking a silly little bow, the wine making her lightheaded and punchy, when another child came barreling through the den.
This time she wasn’t so agile. Her grandson made impact and the wine splashed all over the green dress she’d worn to the service. Davy had loved green; she had worn it for him. She stood there, a dark stain on the front of her dress, red wine seeping uncomfortably into her bra as everyone stared, silent.
She wanted to make a joke, to say something witty and carefree. She did not want them feeling sorrier for her than they already did. But she could feel the tears pricking, so she set down the now empty wineglass and fled upstairs to her room.
Behind her closed bedroom door, she stripped out of the stained, stinking dress, stomping on it for good measure as it puddled to the floor. Then she kicked it too. She took off her bra, then slipped into the nightgown she had shed that morning, still hung over the footboard of her bed. She longed to climb back into that bed and pull the covers over her head.
Instead she went into the bathroom to run her bra under cold water. And that was how Daniel found her, clad in a nightgown, rinsing red wine from a bra, her tears mingling with the cast-off water in the basin. He came up behind her and shut off the tap, pulled the bra from her hands as he turned her toward him, which made her cry harder.
“I miss him,” she wailed into his chest.
“Yes,” Daniel said. “So do I.” Then, quieter, he added, “I miss you too.”
For a moment neither of them said anything. They just held on to each other.
Finally, she said, “I think I’d like to go.”
“Go?” Daniel asked.
“Away from here. Somewhere else. Now that he’s been found, I think it’s safe to leave.”
Daniel smiled into her hair. “What did you have in mind?”
“Kristyn’s been saying she’d love for me to come to California.”
She could feel Daniel’s heart beating. “I could go with you.” It was a loaded statement with so many implications. But today was not the day to examine them. “We’d be near our grandkids,” he added.
She laughed in spite of herself. “You mean the ones that knocked my glass of wine on me?”
“The very same,” Daniel said.
There was a knock on their door, and they stepped away from each other as if caught.
“You guys ok?” Thaddeus asked. He was back from whatever mystery errand he’d gone on.
“Yes,” Tabitha and Daniel said in unison, and how familiar this felt, how ordinary. Them together in this bedroom while one of their children stood on the other side of the door.
“We’ll be out in a minute,” Daniel said. They listened as Thaddeus’s footsteps faded away.
“I guess we better get back out there. Face the hordes,” Tabitha said.
Daniel pointed to the bathroom. “You go change and I’ll wait for you. Then we’ll go back out together.”
Silently, resolutely, she changed her clothes and they left the room to find that the party had moved outside. Their granddaughter was singing a song and a small crowd had gathered to watch her. The child had motions that went along with the song, hamming it up as Kristyn held a camera to record it all. Around them, children shrieked and ran, and people ate and drank, and voices chatted and laughed. It almost felt like a party.
Tabitha and Daniel stood side by side as the melee swirled around them. She took a step closer to him, needing the nearness of the one person who’d experienced it all. She and Daniel were lovers and strangers, whole and broken, weak and strong, jaded and optimistic. The trick, she was beginning to understand, was to let the jumble of emotions exist inside her without working to understand or validate them. She didn’t have to sort out her feelings. Not yet, and maybe not ever. She could just let them be. There, in her heart, all together.
All at the very same time.