“Professor Hunky,” Bree said out loud to herself, remembering that day.
She had been radiant, knowing that her future lay before her, bright and shining. Her friends laughing, believing her because she had so often known things before them and was so often right, but mostly because it sounded like a fairy tale.
They had all believed in them back then, devouring Disney movies and happy endings like candy. They would whisper to each other about their dreams of a fairy tale life during their many sleepovers.
But that was then. This was now. And now Bree knew there were no such things as fairy tales. She knew they had all missed the fact that the stories never told you what happened after the prince and princess got married. Now she knew what happened. They get old and one of them dies. After all, that’s what happened to her.
What really made her mad was the fact that she hadn’t died. It should have been her. It would have been easier for Paul. He had friends, work, and travel, and women would be again crawling out of the woodwork if Hunky Professor was free again.
Instead, he had died, and she had nothing. Instead, here she was still sitting with her back up against the door, holding the letter with stickers all over it to make sure she noticed and didn’t throw it into the junk pile.
Did he expect her to keep going on as usual? Did Paul expect she would continue to get the mail every day, go through it, sorting, filing, and taking care of things? Perhaps he did. On the other hand, he made sure his letter stood out, just in case she wasn’t wholly herself after he died.
Idiot, she thought. Of course, I wouldn’t be.
Yes, she had married Professor Hunky, who had let her down and died. And now she had nothing and nobody. It was the same story she had been telling herself every day for the past month. While he was sick, she didn’t have time to think. She had him to take care of, and then he took that away too.
But that letter was making her curious. And she knew Paul would have counted on that. Her curiosity and her need to solve puzzles in life. So now, despite herself, she could feel a desire to do something returning. She tried to will it away. This dreamy, depressed, lonely state had become a safe place to live, and she didn’t want it to slip away all because of the letter.
Sighing, Bree leaned back against the door, still on the floor surrounded by mail and a letter that wouldn’t leave her alone. She would have to open it at some point. Just not now. She wasn’t ready.
Besides, she had to go to the bathroom, a much more current problem than the one she was stuck in. Plus, she was hungry. That she was hungry was also new. She had forced herself to eat something every day, knowing that despite her complete lack of desire to do anything or see anybody, she wouldn’t be dying anytime soon.
But hungry had not been part of the equation before. However, hungry or not, she knew she didn’t have the energy to eat anything other than the food bars and frozen vegetables she had been eating for the last month. And she was sick of them. She finally wanted something different.
As Bree shuffled to the bathroom, she knocked over a pile of mail, and it irritated her. There it was again, a feeling she hadn’t had since Paul had died. Dismay over disorder. And also the pain.
The pain that she had deadened, hiding from it, was sticking its head up, reminding her that although Paul had gone away, the pain was still there. What was different was now she was ready to admit that perhaps it was possible to feel the pain and live again.
Leaning against the sink in the bathroom she had so carefully designed, she stared into the mirror at herself and started to cry again. Perhaps she had died but had gone to hell. Her hair, usually short, sassy, and silky, now looked like straw pieces.
And her skin, to which she had so carefully applied creams and lotions, was gray and covered with little red bumps, probably from not washing it for days. Dark blue circles lay under her eyes, and her eyes were now so bloodshot they looked red. All that work, keeping herself beautiful for Paul, had disappeared along with him.
However, the unfamiliar feeling of hunger was growing stronger. Bree knew she couldn’t go out looking like this, but she could order pizza. Opening her office door—where she had once spent most of her days but hadn’t seen since she had taken care of everything she needed to do after Paul died—she found her phone charging by her computer. Thanking her past self for at least taking care of that bit, she pulled up their favorite pizza shop and ordered—a whole pizza just for her, something new. Also new, no meat on half of it.
Just that realization was almost enough to send her back to the floor, but the letter was waiting. And she needed to be ready to read it, which meant a shower and food.
Thirty minutes later, feeling marginally better, Bree handed the pizza delivery woman enough money to cover the pizza and a generous tip and was grateful that it wasn’t the usual boy who delivered when Paul was alive.
Bree almost asked where he was, her curiosity driving her again, but instead ducked her head and mumbled thank you. But not so soon that she didn’t notice the dismay in the young girl’s eyes as she glimpsed the mess lying on the floor behind her and Bree’s gray face.
Before she could say anything, Bree stopped her by saying, “I’m fine, just getting over something.”
The girl nodded, said thank you, and turned away. But Bree, watching through the peephole, saw her turn back to the door as if she wanted to knock again and make sure, but shook her head and headed back to her car.
Of course, the girl knew what had happened. She and Paul were regulars at the pizza shop. Someone would have told them why they had stopped coming in. She should have thought to order from someplace else.
Paul had remained the hunky professor, and even though he wasn’t the best conversationalist, often in his head figuring out something or other, he was always kind and ready to help others. He had told her they remembered them because of her. She was outgoing and curious. She didn’t believe him.
But there it was again, the feeling of curiosity, waking her up and moving her forward into life. To defeat it, at least for now, she put the letter on her desk, made sure the phone volume was still turned off so she would not hear or see the messages that she knew had piled up, and closed the door again.
All of it could wait until after she ate and maybe watched a movie, just like they used to do. For the past month, she had felt nothing. Now she felt hunger, pain, and dread that the letter would tell her something she didn’t want to know. She would put it off for a few more hours.