Page 134 of At the Heart of It
Kendall shook her head, and Meg could see she was biting back the urge to argue, or to call Matt a cheating, spineless dickhead. Now was hardly the time for that, so Kendall settled for handing her another napkin.
“Between the cheating and the debt, don’t you think that cancels out the runaway-bride thing?” Kendall asked.
“I have no idea. Where’s the manual on the checks and balances of adultery and aborted weddings?”
Kendall gave a small smile and tucked a curl behind Meg’s ear. “I keep it on a bookshelf in my living room. It’s right next to the wine cabinet. Come on, I’ll show you. But first, get out of the car.”
“What?”
“You’re in no shape to drive. Give me the keys.”
Meg looked down at her hand and realized she was holding the keys in a death grip, along with the strings to the damn balloon bouquet. She dropped the keys into Kendall’s palm, then unraveled the ribbons from around her hand.
“Holy cow,” Kendall said, poking the deep rivets furrowed into the flesh of Meg’s fingers. “What were you doing with these?”
“Practicing my skills with a garrote, apparently.” Meg winced as a fresh wave of guilt surged up her throat. Making a wisecrack about strangulation mere minutes after her ex-fiancé’s death had to be up there on the list of things that would get her a one-way ticket to hell.
Meg let go of the ribbons, releasing the balloon bouquet into the backseat before pushing open the driver’s side door. Her legs trembled as she made her way around the car while Kendall scooted over the gearshift and got into the driver’s seat. Meg slipped into the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt, numb to the motions of it all as Kendall cranked over the engine.
“It’ll be okay, honey,” Kendall said as she backed out of the parking spot. “Is there anyone you need to call? Mutual friends or his college roommates or something?”
Meg thought about it, then shook her head. “It’s not really my place, is it? I’m not part of the family.”
Not anymore, she thought, recalling the coldness in Sylvia Midland’s eyes when she’d spotted Meg outside her son’s room. Even the aunts and uncles she’d met only a handful of times had looked like they wanted to drag her down the hospital hallway by her hair. She could hardly blame them. The last time she’d seen them, they’d been dressed in suits and summer dresses, watching slack-jawed as she turned and bolted from the church, knocking down pew bows as she ran.
They looked like they hated me, she thought. Then and now. The idea was hardly surprising. Wasn’t that why she’d kept her distance all this time?
On her own side, Meg’s family and friends had few kind words to say about Matt. When she was still reeling from his confession and desperate to explain why she’d fled her own wedding, she’d told them about Matt’s affair. It was the sort of thing she’d normally keep private, not wanting to air their dirty laundry or add fuel to her own fear she’d done something to drive him to cheat in the first place. But she’d told her whole family in a moment of weakness, and the story spread as quickly as their new disdain for Matt.
So they’d drawn the battle lines cleanly between her family and his, unfriending each other’s colleagues and cousins on social media and cutting each other’s faces out of family pictures.
The thought gave her a momentary pang of sadness. Part of her had missed the Midland family Christmas cards and his mother’s coq au vin and the quilt rack she’d felt obligated to return.
But she’d never told anyone what she’d missed the most about being cut off from the Midland family.
Kyle’s face floated through her brain and she pulled in a shuddery breath. He’d looked so stricken standing outside his brother’s hospital room. She closed her eyes, flushing a fresh wave of tears down her cheeks. She opened them again to let the emotion flow.
Kendall reached over and squeezed her hand. “I’ll take a shortcut. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Thank you,” Meg whispered.
A purple and black polka-dotted balloon bopped her on the side of the head, and Meg shoved it away, crowding it into the backseat with the rest. The motion pushed more balloons forward, creating a burst of brightly colored Mylar shapes bumbling their way toward the front of the car.
“Stop!” Meg shouted.
“It’s okay,” Kendall said, ignoring a shark-shaped balloon that bumped her head as she turned down the side street leading away from the hospital. “It’s not bothering me.”
“No, stop the car.” She felt frantic now, desperate to get rid of the cheery orbs pushing and bobbing and reminding her that nothing would ever be the same again. She grabbed the ribbons as Kendall slowed the car.
“What are you doing, Meg? You can’t just let them go. They’re hazardous to wildlife.”
“I know,” she said, pushing open the car door before Kendall brought the car to a full stop in the bike lane. “I just need to get rid of them.”
She staggered onto the sidewalk with her fistful of balloons, thinking this was how people went crazy. One minute you’re making friendly overtures to your ex and the next minute you’re stumbling teary-eyed down the road with a balloon shaped like a banana beating you in the back of the head.
Meg looked around while Kendall sat silent in the driver’s seat, waiting. She couldn’t pop them. All that racket seemed inappropriate as they idled here less than a mile from where Matt took his last breath.
Off to the side, a metal bench sat waiting for bus passengers. Meg hurried over, kneeling on the asphalt to cinch the ribbons around one of the legs. Her fingers felt numb and useless, but she managed to tie the knot and stand up again, her knees still wobbly.
