I wasn’t so sure about that.
Perhaps a buried side to me would never be sure.
My therapist had helped me, but not in time to salvage our marriage. Our life together had been built around my falling pregnant, around prenatal yoga classes, celebrating ultrasound images, baby showers, baby shopping, a gender-reveal party, readying Chloe’s room, fretting over breastfeeding and introducing solids, reserving a preschool spot . . . just being parents. We were a family of three planning to grow into four, or maybe five. Then suddenly we weren’t. The mother, the wife, the me, no longer existed. I slowly lost my friends from my mom-and-tot groups. I had no one to read all those beautiful kids’ books to. Doug would never get to take the training wheels off Chloe’s little bike and teach her to ride like a pro. My job was illustrating children’s books, and I was suddenly no longer able to do it, and had to step away.
I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. It was January. Winter. The hell that was Christmas was over. New year. Soon it would be spring. Fresh start. New me. New Ellie.
Doug had remarried last fall. While it had cut me in two, Doug being with his new woman no longer enraged me. I no longer harbored feverish dreams of doing them both violence. Doug’s wedding had shaken something loose. I suddenly abhorred the idea of holding on to this shell of a house and what I’d shared with him and Chloe here while he was busy making a home and babies with someone else on the other end of town. I was suddenly free—desperate, in fact—to let it all go.
I was moving into an apartment downtown next month. It was one of my father’s properties, so if it didn’t work out, it wasn’t as though I’d be committed to a long-term lease or anything. I’d picked up some freelance work to ease back into the illustrating business. I could eventually get more contracts, or I could take off and travel, do anything.
I shut the lid of the suitcase and pulled the zipper closed. The sound was satisfyingly final. As I hefted the case off the bed, I glanced at the pillows on the side where Doug used to sleep, and I was slammed with a need to be held again. For a moment, as sleet pelted the windows and the clouds pressed down low and dark, I tried to recall the last time I’d actually had meaningful contact with another person—a lingering hug, a heartfelt squeeze of my hand. My heart twitched with an ache so basic and raw it made me think of abandoned dogs in cages at a pound, waiting to be adopted, to be touched and loved, and how they paced or pined and withered and died if they were not. A loving touch to an animal, a human, was like sunshine and water to plants.
I shook the feelings and rolled the suitcase toward the door. The movers would be here tomorrow. I was ready for them. At my final therapist appointment she’d said that packing Chloe’s last things away was not a move toward forgetting my baby girl, but rather a sign that I was finally finding ways to cohabit with my loss. And I should not expect my loss to be an easy or forgiving roommate. The Grief Monster would still trip me up in unexpected ways, she said. Over and over. Unpredictable. Fickle. Mean. Beguiling. Deceptive. The thing, she’d said, was to try to recognize it for what it was when it struck—the Monster—and to be kind to myself and not expect others to understand what I was going through because there was no decreed chronology of phases or trials to pass through . . . it truly was different for everyone.
Later, when I left the house to meet my father for a special birthday dinner, just him and me, I was dressed in new knee-high boots with very high heels, a black jersey dress I’d not been able to fit into for ages until now, and dark-red lipstick. My hair was brushed to a shine and fell below my shoulder blades. I felt solid. Bold. Confident.
This time, I promised myself, things would go well between me and my dad.
THEN
ELLIE
The lobby of the Hartley Plaza Hotel at the Vancouver waterfront was busy—mostly people in business attire bearing name tags, apparently all here for the AGORA convention being sponsored by the Hartley Group. AGORA was another of my father’s brainchildren. A pitch-fest that sought to match monied venture capitalists with dreamers who needed financial backing for their projects. I made my way through the throngs to the Mallard Lounge.
The lounge was no less busy. Patrons sat deep in leather chairs around low tables with flickering candles. A bar of dark wood and mirrors ran along the far wall. A pianist played muted, jazzy tunes at a baby grand, and a fire flickered in the lodge-style hearth. Floor-to-ceiling windows afforded a view over the floatplane harbor, and outside the sleet was turning into fat flakes of snow.
I waited at the hostess stand, trying to spot my dad among the patrons. I saw him almost immediately. Tall, with a shock of silver hair against a dark tan that screamed of yachts and travel and exotic locales. He was hard to miss, the distinguished Sterling James Hartley.
The hostess took my coat, and I adjusted my sweater dress over my hips. As he saw me he surged to his feet, raising his hand. People turned. Looked. Always. Whenever my father moved, people watched. His was that kind of energy. He took up that kind of space. I felt a flicker of a thrill.
“Ellie! Over here.”
I smiled and wove eagerly through the tables toward him, conscious of his gaze upon me. I’d made an effort and hoped he’d
