Page 3 of A Different Kind Of December
So yeah, today is a different first of December than the previous seventeen. I won’t be curling up in a ball and hiding away from the rest of the world wishing things were different. I won’t be running around our house, maniacally hanging Christmas decorations on anything that stands still long enough, in an attempt to ignore the guilt I feel for moving on.
Today, I’m gonna be a functioning mother to my kids and a put together wife for my husband...that’s the plan anyway.
I pull my feet underneath me in the big chair and lean across the arm to push the button on the patio heater. It lights instantly, casting a glow all around me and competing with the sky, which is starting to change colour. There is a blackbird singing in the distance, and if I listen hard enough, I can hear the horses in the stables.
The couple buying Lu’s horse are coming tomorrow. They have a ten-year-old daughter and want to get her a horse for Christmas. Lu isn’t interested anymore. She whines and complains constantly about the early mornings and rarely rides these days.
She doesn’t have a boyfriend yet, but I know it’s gonna happen soon. I close my eyes and smile when I think back to being her age. I’d been obsessively in love with Sean McCarthy for four years when I was fifteen.
My stomach flip-flops around inside me as I think about the fact that I was exactly the age the girls are now when I lost my virginity to him.
He was my life.
The other half of me.
A loud sob takes me by surprise as it escapes my chest, travels up my throat, and forces its way out into the cold, early morning chill.
So much for this year being different.
“I’ll let you off that one, G. Now get your shit together. You’ve got this.” I hear Sean’s voice in response.
I wonder why this happens? Why I sometimes hear him, dream about him? Maybe I’m a little bit insane, perhaps I’m totally mad, and no ones noticed it yet. Perhaps they have, and I’m just such a nut job that I’m delusional.
I mean, what sane person sits outside at seven in the morning when it’s below zero and has a conversation with herself and her dead husband?
The timber door opens, and I jump.
“Fuck me!’ Tallulah gasps, her hand goes to her chest, and she stills.
“Lula!”
“What? You scared the shi...z outta me. What you. ..” She trails off and studies me for a few seconds. “You all right?”
My daughter isn’t stupid, neither of them are. Lu might not be as sensitive as Kiks, but she’s highly perceptive, and just like her dad, she can read people like a book.
She’s also probably aware of the date.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
“Should I get Dad?”
“No, let him sleep. I’m okay, I promise.”
She tilts her head to the side and chews on her bottom lip.
“One day, will you tell me about him?”
Air whooshes from my lungs and exits my nose with a puff of condensation, making it visible.
“Sean?”
“Yeah.”
“What would you like to know?”
“What it was like being married to someone so famous, being so young, and ya know...everything that happened.”
I swallow.
