Page 29 of This Is How It Started
Campbell picks up on the third ring. “Hey, Rachel. Good to finally hear from you.” He doesn’t say it as a rebuke. He says it like he’s genuinely happy that I’ve called.
For some reason, that makes me break down. The speech I’ve carefully prepared turns to racking sobs, and now snot is dripping down my nose onto my upper lip. My throat clogs, and everything that comes out of my mouth sounds choppy and nonsensical.
“Rach,” Campbell says in a soft voice, “you want me to come over?”
“No,” I manage, trying to get control of myself. “I’m good.”
“You don’t sound good,” he says in that even, steady deep voice of his.
And that makes me cry even worse. “No, really, I’m good,” I blubber. “But I need to borrow your truck.”
“Okay. When do you need it?”
“Tomorrow.” I wipe my nose on my sleeve and try to get hold of myself.
For a long time, Campbell doesn’t say anything, but I can hear him breathing on the other end of the phone.
Finally, he says, “What do you need my truck for?”
“I’m moving home.”
Another long silence. Then, “Home? You mean Vallejo Street?”
“Uh-huh.” I choke on a sob.
“Okay,” Campbell says, and I can hear him mulling over the sheer bizarreness of it. He was there when things fell apart between my parents. He watched me...all of us...lose our collective shit. “Does Brooke know you’re moving in?”
“Of course.”
“Wow,” he says, obviously thrown. “Yeah, okay. What time tomorrow?”
I manage to pull myself together. “Morning, I guess. Does that work for your schedule?” I look for something to blow my nose into, but I’m in the bedroom and my tissue box is empty.
There’s another long pause from Campbell, and then, “Yeah, I can make it work.”
So, another thing about losing a spouse is it apparently makes you a self-centered bitch. For more than four months, I’ve ducked Campbell’s phone calls, pretended not to be home when he rang my buzzer, and couldn’t be bothered to reply to his many emails. Yet, when I do finally contact him, it’s for a favor. A favor to drop everything on a dime and help me move my crap across town.
“How are you?” I ask in an impossible effort to redeem myself. “How is Jess?”
“Good. We’re both good.”
I can’t bring myself to ask about the engagement party. As far as I know, it went on as planned. By the time they found out about the accident, about Josh, they were probably waving goodbye to their last guest.
“I’m glad.” Conversation between Campbell and me has never been this awkward. There was a time when we used to talk for hours about everything under the sun. Even before he became my everything, when he was still just my big brother’s best friend, he was the one I went to with all my secrets.
There was the time I lost one of my mother’s favorite sterling silver earrings. She’d lent them to me to wear to Mary Bixby’s fourteenth birthday party and would’ve killed me if she knew that somewhere between Rock ’n’ Rollarena and Yank Sing for dim sum, it fell off my ear. Campbell, holding my hand the whole way, rode with me on two Muni buses to the gift center on Brannon Street to have a jeweler perfectly replicate the one I didn’t lose. To this day, he and I are the only ones who know.
“How ’bout you, Rach? I’m worried about you,” Campbell says.
“Nothing to worry about.” What I want to say is my husband is dead, killed in the blink of an eye by a twenty-eight-year-old, texting while driving, whose only punishment was a few scratches and community service. I’m entitled to not return phone calls. But I know that’s not why he’s worried about me. Adam, Josie and probably even Hannah have likely exaggerated my state of mind, which, granted, isn’t good but not as bad as I’m betting they told him.
By the time he buzzes my intercom the next morning, I’ve actually showered and put on real clothes, even a bra. Josie brought by a couple of wardrobe boxes the other day, and I spent much of the night loading them up with my clothes. I’m only bringing the bare essentials. The rest, I’ll hire movers to put in storage until I come up with a plan.
“Did you find parking?” I call down.
“A loading zone, two buildings down. You got coffee up there?”
“Of course. Come up.”
