Page 50 of Love Resurrected
“That’s impossible. I keep at least twenty thousand in this account all the time. And I have a six-thousand-dollar overdraft line attached to it. How can it be overdrawn?”
She clicks some buttons and wiggles her computer mouse around, then tells me I’ve made purchases all over Tennessee in the last few days, along with cash advances. I assure her I was not, and am not, in Tennessee. She refers me to her manager, who reviews my account history and sees I’ve kept a healthy minimum balance all the time and have not traveled since opening the account before she finally offers me fraudulent purchases paperwork to fill out.
Two hours later, I’m finally on my way home. They should restore some money to my account in seventy-two hours, but it could take up to fourteen business days to get the entire amount back, which I just love. Someone steals my identity, can spend over twenty-five thousand dollars in a matter of days, but I have to wait almost three weeks to get it back.
It isn’t until I’m pulling into my garage, I remember I didn’t stop by Sadie’s. I grab my phone from my purse to call her, and then remember about my missing credit card. I call the credit card company first to cancel the card, then call and cancel my store-based cards. Then call to transfer money from a few investment accounts to my checking account since that will be faster than waiting for the bank.
By this time, it’s after four o’clock. I call Sadie to tell her what happened and why I won’t be bringing her a little gift today, but she’s sleeping. So, I relay the message to Ethan and flop down on my couch, exhausted.
My phone dings with a text.
NEIL: We still on for six?
Oh god, I’m not in the mood to be social. I want to sit on my couch with a pint of ice cream and watch re-runs ofSay Yes to the Dress.
ME: Can I get a raincheck on tonight? I’ve had a really crappy day.
NEIL: All the more reason to go out. I’ll cheer you up.
ME: I’m really not good company.
NEIL: It will be great, I promise.
Fine.
ME: Where should I meet you?
NEIL: I’ll come pick you up, that way you don’t have to worry about anything. Just send me your address.
I text him my address, albeit a little reluctantly. One because I don’t really want to go anywhere. And two, because I prefer not to be stranded without my car. But he was harmless last night, and he works with Ethan and Brad.
So, what could go wrong?
16
Brad
I was too full to go to the gym after breakfast, so instead, I headed home and did some yard work. Then, I took a nap. Now I’m going to a late afternoon grief support group meeting for widows/widowers. I’d stopped attending my cancer care-giver support group as soon as Kat passed. I didn’t start coming to these grief support meetings until about a year ago.
I think they help, but I’m not sure. At the very least, much like the cancer caregiver group, everyone knows what I’ve been through because they’ve experienced it. And since it focuses on the spouses left behind, I don’t have to deal with any parents with dead kids or kids with dead parents, because they don’t get it. At all. Their experience couldn’t be more different. Regardless, it’s all just a fuck-ton of tragic.
I enter the room just as the meeting is starting and grab a seat in the back row. The group facilitator is speaking from the front of the room about the general rules of the group, then asks for a volunteer to come up and share. A guy a few rows ahead of me stands and moves to the podium at the front of the room. He looks to be about my age, maybe a little younger, but similarly built. He takes a moment to adjust the microphone to his height, which is tall, and clears his throat before he begins.
“Hi, my name is Andy. I lost my wife, Maureen, to breast cancer almost three years ago now. It came on fast. We had just celebrated our youngest daughter’s eighth birthday. We have two daughters. A now eleven-year-old, Tasha, and a thirteen-year-old, Trina. So, you know, the perfect age to not have a mother.” He sighs as the group chuckles uncomfortably.
“Anyway, Maureen went in for her annual check-up and the doctor felt a lump. They had it biopsied a week later, and it was stage four, triple negative breast cancer. Maureen was gone within three months.” Andy chokes up and pauses, clearing his throat before taking a drink from the bottled water he’d brought up to the podium with him. “We barely had time to process the diagnosis, and she was gone. I couldn’t even grieve properly because I had to take care of the girls. It’s been hard on all three of us. Despite missing her desperately, my daughters have been encouraging me to date.”
Mixed murmurs of opinion spread through the room. Andy holds his hand up. “I know, I know. Some of you are thinking, ‘Finally!’and some are thinking, ‘How could you?’I get it. I do. And in all honesty, I feel both sentiments equally. But I did it anyway. Because I promised my wife I would before she died, and I never broke a promise to Maureen. And because my daughters want me to be happy. Hell,Iwant me to be happy. So, a little over a month ago, I started dating a woman.”
He pauses. I let his words resonate a bit in my head and lean forward in my chair, eager to hear how his story turns out. It’s a similar story to mine, just enough, to make me wonder if a good outcome could ever come of this.
Andy continues, “Last night, I had sex for the first time since Maureen passed.”
Gasps of shock echo around me. Surprisingly, I’m one of them.
“It was . . . good. I mean, it was awkward and certainly not my best performance.” We all laugh at that, including Andy. “But it was also good. I woke this morning feeling a lightness in my chest that hasn’t been there in a really long time. There is some guilt, but there’s also calm and assuredness. I don’t know what will come of this relationship—the woman knows all about Maureen—but I know that for the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to the future, and that feels good.”
Andy nods slightly at the group and steps away from the podium, returning to his seat. A light smattering of applause follows.
