Eating dinner with Dad stopped the tears. I situated Hank’s food and litter in the mudroom while Dad reheated everything, and we laughed between bites once it was ready.
Afterward, I spent the first night crying in the loft, doing my best to stifle sobs in my pillow. Darkness rubbed salt in the wound, the full-size bed impossibly empty. Hank abandoned me, but Bruce appeared a little while later, and I hugged the shepherd all night, crying softly into his fur until I drifted off.
I thought I was successful at concealing the sorrow when Dad didn’t bring it up over breakfast, but I found my tear-stained pillowcase replaced after my shower. He hadn’t prodded, giving me space to decompress. He was never an emotional man. I never saw him get anything more than misty-eyed. He spoke with such love and happiness about Mom, despite her death being the worst time of his life.
I used him as motivation, allowing myself a slice of sadness before moving on. I cried for two days, and that was enough. I focused on finding the silver lining. I was in paradise with my father, finally able to enjoy an uninterrupted stretch of time together. I had a chance to start over, leaving behind the misery of the corporate world for a new leaf.
Hank was similarly chipper about the situation, making himself at home. He lounged in the windows, swishing his tail at each feathered visitor. He had lush scenery to take in, the birds more appealing than concrete. Bruce joined in the festivities, and the two were apparently making plans for a bird massacre based on their vigilant watch.
I checked in with Lee, who assured I was in the clear from Jason. He showed up at her place like a raving lunatic, only to be turned away by Lee wielding a pair of bolt cutters. As expected, he tried denying it all.
He called dozens of times. He texted too. I didn’t read them. I couldn't. There was no point. I missed him. I missed us. I missed the late-night talks and ramblings. I worried about him, worried what could happen because I left, worried he’d do something crazy. But then I’d remember the lies. I’d remember the pain. I’d remember that I was a side piece. Maybe that was another lie.
I was ready to face the new horizon alone. No more lies. No more secrets. I was starting over, where I belonged all along.
Jason
Loss was an interesting journey. The five stages don’t have a set pacing. You don’t trickle through them in order, or in perfect chunks of time with alarm informing you the next one is due. Sometimes you bounce around. You go from denying reality to enraged, smashing everything around you until you’re left in a pile of what-ifs. I hadn’t reached the final stage, and I wouldn’t. I would never accept that Elena was stolen from me.
I spent the first few nights without her working through bottles of Bowmore, racking my brain for hints of where her father lived. That’s where she had to be. I retraced every conversation, every memory for a spark. All I knew was he lived in Vermont in a small town on a mountain. I searched the internet, but everywhere in the state fit the fucking description. I knew it took seven hours to get there. But a lot of places fit that description too.
She hadn’t mentioned her father’s name, so I put my detective hat on and searched online for any link to her past. A family member. A school announcement. Anything. But I found nothing.
Next, I went broad, researching the last name Julian. There were over seventeen-thousand people in the United States with the surname, over a hundred in Vermont. I narrowed it down by description, finding seven people that fit the demographic, all scattered throughout the state. No big deal. I mapped it out, and the distance between each of them was only four-hundred miles.
But then I realized she could have a different last name than her father. That’s where Bowmore came to the rescue. I couldn’t lay in bed with the empty space beside me, the spot where she belonged.
But if she loved me, why did she leave me? Why didn’t she give me a chance to explain? Was it because I was so distant? So hesitant about my own feelings? I was so focused on work, on Chicago. I was so preoccupied with the end game I missed what I had all along, wasting precious time that should have been spent telling her how I felt.
I laid there in agony, a pain nothing could touch. Not even morphine could dull it. Knowing I’d be without her for an undetermined amount of time, maybe forever, was unbearable. I was cold for so long. I hadn’t tried to feel in years. Now that I could, I was desperate for it to end, the pain all-encompassing and raw, but I almost didn’t want it to stop. I needed the burn to keep going, to fuel the long road ahead.
I laid in the fetal position in a luxury hotel bed I would leave in the morning as a new chapter started. I would be a mess in the beginning. Tired. Hungover. Emotional. But I was starting it.
I came too far to give up. I worked so hard. I couldn’t throw it away with booze, but I didn’t have the self-control not to. She was taken from me because someone lied. Someone stole my word and shredded it, robbing me of the woman I loved.
I sacrificed a lot of things and was weak so many times, but I never thought I’d walk away from my first true love. Yet I was doing just that come morning.
* * *
As expected, the morning was brutal, compounded by moving all my shit out of the hotel and into the back of my Rover. A bottle of soda from a vending machine helped, but something told me I’d be
