I sighed. ‘Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.’
‘I tried that, and you did what you wanted anyway.’ She picked up a ceramic plate, angrily slapping slices of cheese and crackers on it. ‘I asked you to say no but you didn’t. Now she’s already friggin’ moved her stuff in and my stuff out. I’m going to have to move my winter clothes into the attic. That dank, musty air is going to ruin the fabric, Lane! And there might be mice up there, ready to chew holes in everything.’
I tried to take her seriously, but it was impossible when she was complaining like a raging teen.
‘You’re more concerned about your clothes than your family?’
‘Not my family. Yours.’
‘My family is part of the package, Candace. And what you’re asking of me is pretty selfish.’
‘Selfish? Because I want alone time with my new husband? Because I want my own space in my own house?’ She continued slicing cheese in a trembling rage.
‘Yes. Putting your needs above the needs of others is the very definition of selfish.’
With a rush of motion, she whipped the plate across the room, sending a spray of broken ceramic and crackers along the floor. I jumped with shock … and fear.
‘I’m just going to warn you, Lane. You made a mistake. A big one. Maybe the biggest one of your life, because this might cost you everything. You know what I’m talking about.’
I did know, and it was a horrible threat. One I would never forgive her for if she followed through with it. As a man, I knew better than to fight back; growing up with a sister and mother taught me that much about women. I’d do what I always did: Bend. Cave. Plead. Make everything better … somehow.
Only, I wasn’t sure if this was fixable, because it was the worst kind of ultimatum. The kind that would cost me something important no matter what. Harper or Candace, my blood or my heart. I couldn’t live without either.
‘I’ll figure out a way to get Harper to leave,’ I vowed, grabbing her hand and kissing her fingertips. ‘Give me two weeks, that’s all I need. I’ll find her an affordable place and get her set up. Okay?’
‘Fine.’ It clearly wasn’t fine. ‘You can have it your way.’ But it wasn’t my way. ‘Two weeks, Lane. That’s it. Or else I’m gone.’
Candace brushed past me in a huff, storming through the kitchen doorway between two small eavesdroppers I hadn’t noticed until now. Elise and Jackson looked up at me, Jackson’s eyes vacant, Elise’s filling with tears. The kids had heard everything.
‘You don’t care about us!’ Elise sobbed, then ran past me and out the back door.
Jackson simply stood watching, then slowly turned and slipped upstairs.
‘Elise, come back!’ I called after her.
I’d never felt like such an ass before. My wife had a temper, my sister was helpless, and my niece and nephew felt unwanted. Five people forced to share four walls, each at their wits’ end – how much worse could it possibly get? And this was only the beginning …
Chapter 5
Harper
One month ago today I buried my soul under the weeping willow Ben and I had planted together in the backyard, and I had been digging at the patch of dirt ever since. Technically, Ben wasn’t buried where I had rested a stone plaque honoring him, because the police hadn’t released his body to me yet. A couple more weeks, they kept telling me the autopsy would take. By the time they finished, I wondered if there would be anything left of him to bury.
We had called it a memorial service, but I didn’t want to remember. I wanted to forget. Forget that he was dead. Forget the lies, the cheating, the hollow left inside of me that led him to kill himself. If only the past year had never happened, I wouldn’t be standing in the bedroom that we had shared, packing up our things for storage, wishing I could erase Ben’s death from my mind and replace it with our happy life before.
I was exhausted from missing Ben. It felt as if I had set down my heart and forgotten where I left it.
I stood beneath the only picture that remained on our Hendricks Way bedroom wall, the one taken at our wedding. Both of us were barefoot, walking hand-in-hand down Sunset Beach, my white dress flowing behind me as it caught on the salty breeze, Ben’s hair ruffled into curls. A perfect day. The absolute best day.
I lifted the frame off the hook and stared into the past. How could he strip me of all the good memories by leaving me with only the bad ones? All the hungry kisses, gone. The passionate nights as we explored each other’s bodies, gone. The weekend getaways and night swimming and reveling at each child’s birth, gone, gone, gone. Holding the frame above my head, I threw it across the room, watching with a morbid satisfaction as the glass shattered and wood splintered.
‘Mom, what was that?’ Elise’s voice echoed from down the hallway.
‘I, uh, I just accidentally dropped something, sweetie,’ I called back, stuffing the tremor in my voice down.
The person I was before was different from who I became after. That’s what grief does, steals every ounce of joy and exchanges it for sorrow. It robbed me of my future and turned me hateful. I couldn’t even tell you what I was angry at. Myself? My kids? The mailman who accidentally switched my mail with the neighbor’s? The waitress who mixed up my dinner order?
I yearned for my old life – the one where I didn’t grieve or lose my husband to another woman. But reality has a way of eroding such hopes. This vacant bedroom was the daily reminder that I was a widow too young, with no one to share my friends’ secrets with, or to make fun of television shows with, or to tease me about
