Page 2 of The Rest is History

She comes to stand next to me. I think she wants to say something, but whatever she wants to say is interrupted by the roar of trucks coming up the driveway. The movers. There is enough furniture in this house to require three moving trucks.

I have to pull large amounts of oxygen into my lungs to keep this unbearable sadness from bursting through my chest. Deep breaths, dragging in and out of my body.

It’s just stuff. Just couches my daughter will never jump on. Just TVs – the bedroom one and the living room one – she will never watch her favorite shows on. Just blankets we won’t be able to cuddle up under on cold nights while Julie makes hot chocolate in the kitchen – extra cream for Abigail because maybe she would’ve liked extra cream.

I can hear her voice in my head – the voice I have never heard, and will never hear – yelling, “More cream, Mama.” How can I know the sound of her voice when she never even whimpered after Julie bravely brought her into this world?

It’s just stuff.

“Julie texted. She asked how you’re holding up.”

I hear the moving staff outside, directing their drivers into the parking spaces. Our house is big with ample parking, but lining up three giant moving trucks will be complicated with the trees that go with the wrap-around garden.

“Swing left!” someone yells.

How am I holding up? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m holding up at all.

“She says she’s sorry she’s not here. She just—” Again, Elaine’s voice is steeped in sadness.

Elaine isn't just my realtor. She started off as my friend in college but, over the years, I couldn’t compete with how much she and Julie had in common. They became best friends, and we all remained close. She’s the one who has held Julie together these last four months. I wish it could’ve been me. I wish I could’ve been the one to console my wife when we lost our daughter. But I was so lost, and I couldn’t find my wife in this sea of grief, and she couldn't find me.

No one should lose a child. Ever. Under any circumstances, Elaine told me over and over. Sometimes I thank her for being with us. Other times, I hate her because she has two sets of twins. Four healthy girls, born three years apart. Four healthy, alive girls. Julie and I wanted only one healthy, alive girl. We wanted only Abigail.

“She just can’t take it, Reece. Being here. Watching them pack everything up. Don’t hate her for it.” Her voice is soft, conveying her respect for the gravity of our situation.

“How can I hate her, Elaine? If anything, she should hate me.”

“She asked for the divorce, remember? She’s not resentful. Please believe that.”

“I know. Still, I feel like I’ve abandoned her.”

“She understands you, Reece. The truth is the very best thing you could have offered her. She knows that.”

“She won’t be able to conceive again.”

“Staying together won’t change that.”

“Still, I promised to be with her through all things.”

“She knew where you belonged.”

Not that it matters now, where I belonged. The place where I thought I would always belong – with Asher – belongs to someone else now. A man named Sawyer Reed, according to the one and only Facebook update Asher ever made.

“Julie will be okay,” Elaine says. “You’ll both be.”

I swallow the rocks jammed inside my throat. “Thank you.”

“What’s your father saying about everything?”

I shrug. “The usual.”

Elaine sighs, but there’s nothing that can be done. My father tried to turn me into the man he wished I’d become. I just couldn’t live up to the expectations. I wasn’t smart enough. Not popular with the in-crowds. Not strong and manly enough.

Eventually, after struggling through college and barely graduating, my father gave me a job as an accountant at his construction firm. It’s the only job I’ve ever had and if I’m being honest, it’s all for decoration. My father’s pity. “Weak like your mother”, he always says.

“We’ll leave the nursery for last. We probably won’t get to it until tomorrow or maybe even the day after. The trucks will stay overnight,” Elaine says, looking around the yellow room. She’d spent many nights here too, before and after . . . Julie’s pregnancy . . . before and after Abigail’s birth and death. I don’t know what to call it.

It seems impossible that the higher powers would let a person live only fifteen minutes on this earth.

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