Page 6 of On the Line

“No!” The word hurtles from my mouth before I can stop it. “No,” I say more calmly, “It’s too soon.”

When we disconnect the call, I sit there with my head on my knees for a few more minutes. The thought of having to talk to Lauren about Josh, seeing her devastation—it’s more than my virus-addled mind can handle.

Fuck, I think to myself. In my whole portfolio of clients, there’s only one person whose significant other I would do just about anything to avoid. And now I have no choice but to go see her.

The thought of coming face-to-face with her after all these years is apparently more than my stomach can handle, and I barely make it to the toilet in time.

CHAPTER3

LAUREN

Park City, Utah

Petra scoots past Aleksandr, where he stands blocking me from the crowd of people milling around the restaurant, to hand me a glass of water.

“Here you go, sweetie,” she says, taking up residence on my other side. Together, they’ve made it their mission to shield me from everyone as much as possible.

The last two weeks since I got the news about Josh have been a hellish blur of phone calls and funeral plans and paperwork, and at this point I am too mentally and emotionally exhausted to talk to people any more than I already have today.

I’m barely holding on. I’d prefer to have some time alone with just my closest friends and family, but I need to get through this next hour, because I know it makes people feel better to be here supporting each other and giving me their condolences, no matter how heartbreaking they are for me to hear.

Such a tragedy. Such a beautiful young family. So many more memories for you two to make. A true loss. You deserved a lifetime together.

All of those are true, and none of them are helping reconstruct my shattered heart.

Today I also heard the incredibly unhelpfulAt least he died doing what he loved.

I’m still trying to let that one go, because what he should have been doing was loving his family from the comfort of the beautiful home we built together in Park City.

Instead, he was chasing the high of skiing out of bounds after a massive early-season snowstorm, and it killed him. He was too smart for that. He was a ski racer, not a backcountry skier, and I will never know or understand why he took that risk when he had to have known the avalanche threat. I may never even know why he was in Sun Valley, Idaho instead of in eastern Washington, and all this not knowing is its own special kind of hell.

My eyes burn from crying so much, but I scan the room, checking on everything. There is still an enormous amount of food along the bar where the buffet was set up. However, people have mostly finished eating and are chatting in small groups.

Josh’s parents are holding court at a large table at the front of the restaurant, surrounded by family and friends. I cannot imagine their pain, losing their only child.

They were parents, and now they’re not.

I was a wife, and now I’m not.

And still, we can’t connect, even over this tremendous loss.

Josh was always the only link between us. In the four years we were married, they never made the slightest effort to get to know me, to make me feel welcome, to treat me like a daughter. Instead, I was more like an accessory he brought along to family functions.

“You’re staring at them,” Petra says, her throaty voice so low she’s barely audible.

I glance over at her and sigh. “Do you know they haven’t said a single word to me today?” Not an ounce of compassion, even in our moment of shared suffering. They sat next to me in church and never even spoke to me. Four years married to their son, the mother of their only grandchildren, and all I got was a nod of recognition.

Petra readjusts the long, black cardigan that’s slipped off her bare shoulder to reveal the thin strap of the black, knee-length bustier dress she’s wearing. Even at my husband’s funeral she’s her natural sex goddess self, which at least tugs a small smile from my lips. God, I love her and all her unshakable confidence.

“You know,” she says, “it’s possible that they’re so wrapped up in their own grief that they can’t acknowledge your suffering.”

“Probably true,” I say, my voice low so no one can hear me. “Except they’re always like this.”

The pain of losing Josh is magnified by how totally alone I feel now.

All my family is in New England, and now that Jackson and Sierra both live in Blackstone, NH, and with Petra now in New York City, my friend group in Park City has shrunk to the small moms’ group I joined when the twins were babies. Those women have been wonderfully supportive about parenting and over the past twenty months we’ve grown together as new moms, but our kids are really the only thing I have in common with them. We’re friends by circumstance more than choice. It’s just not the same as having my best friends and family surrounding me, and right now I need their love and support more than ever.

In this moment, it becomes crystal clear to me that with Josh gone, there’s nothing left for me in Park City.

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