Page 1 of Adrift

Prologue

Darian – One Year Ago

“No!”

This can’t be happening.

This has to be a nightmare. There’s no other explanation.

“No.” My heart rattles violently before coming to an abrupt stop. I shake her by the shoulders. “No, no. This is not how this was supposed to be. Wake up, right the fuck now, Sonia!” I cup her cheeks, taking in her expressionless face. “Please. I can’t do this without you. I can’t raise him without you, sweetheart.”

I feel the gentle caress of someone’s fingertips–the doctor, maybe–on the back of my arm before she squeezes my elbow softly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Meyer. We did everything we could.”

A tear lands on Sonia’s face and I track it down her neck. It creates a damp spot on the hem of her hospital gown before I realize it’s mine. My vision blurs as the knot in my throat threatens to cut through my skin. “Please. Please wake up.”

“We’ll step out and give you a private moment with her before . . ..” I hear the doctor’s voice trail off behind me before the entire team shuffles through the door.

Private moment? This wasn’t the private moment I’d ever anticipated. One with my wife’s lifeless body after celebrating the happiest moment of our lives together–her giving birth to our son.

Our son.

The wish we made together. Our hope. Our fucking prayer.

And now he’s sleeping alone in the nursery, without the comfort of his mother’s arms around him. He’ll never have the comfort of his mother’s arms around him.

How could this be happening? How could a day that was meant to be the happiest in our lives turn into a nightmare? A catastrophe?

I’m not a stranger to nightmares, the vivid dreams that have me waking up in a cold sweat right before daybreak. The kind that feel so real, so intense, that long minutes pass before I figure out where I am and how I got there. I’ve learned to jolt myself out of them before they have me facing the worst part. Before I hit rock bottom.

Before I find his lifeless body floating in the river again.

So why can’t I do that this time around?

I run a hand over Sonia’s forehead, caressing her hairline and feeling her clammy skin under my fingertips. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, hoping that somewhere, somehow, she might still hear me. A sob pulls from my throat. “I’m so fucking sorry, sweetheart. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. We were supposed to leave here as a family, remember?”

Today was supposed to be our new beginning. A fresh start after the months of confusion and strain between us.

Sure, we’d been more distant than we’ve ever been over the past ten years, but this baby was supposed to change our trajectory. He was going to renew us . . . fix us. It’s why we decided to name our little boy Arman. A name with the same Persian origin as my own, meaning ‘hope.’

But I feel nothing but hopelessness seep in.

The doctor said it was a pulmonary embolism–a blood clot that likely started in her leg and traveled up to block an artery in her lung. They weren’t able to get to it in time to save her.

Or the new beginning we were supposed to have together.

I lift her cold hand and press a wobbling kiss over the backs of her long, listless fingers, staring at her face, completely devoid of its usual animation. I used to tease her that even when she wasn’t speaking, her face would do all the talking for her. I’d know exactly what mood she was in by the shift of her eyes and the twist of her lips. She never needed to utter a single word, and everyone would know exactly what she was feeling. She was loud without being so.

God, what I’d give to hear her complain about my shitty dishwasher loading technique or my inability to disconnect from work.

I puff out a trembling breath. Where do I go from here? How do I cope with something like this? Nothing and no one prepares you for this day–a day where you have to walk over the jagged rubble of your shattered life and accept this new war zone as your home from here on out.

Bile rises to the back of my throat and I lift myself off the side of her bed, falling into the vinyl-covered excuse for a chair beside her inside the delivery room. Another sob emits from the depths of my stomach as I take in her lying form on the bed once again.

Rubbing a hand over my mouth, I press my fingertips into the edges of my jaw before rolling Sonia’s phone in my hand a couple of times. Taking in a shaky breath, I stare at the picture of us on her lock screen–the one we took six years ago at the foot of Heavenly before we went up to spend the entire day skiing and celebrating. We’d just secured a loan for our own ski and kayaking school that day, and we wanted to commemorate the occasion in the only way we knew how–on the mountains.

In fact, this was the same mountain we’d met on almost ten years ago, when I was just a twenty-two-year-old ski instructor with nothing to my name besides my beat-up old truck and my skis. I lived for those damn mountains, like a snow leopard who refused to venture anywhere close to the warm land.

Sonia and a couple of her college friends had booked a private skiing lesson with me as a graduation present for themselves, and by the time our three hours were up, I’d found myself asking her to dinner.

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