I was so certain he was mine when I was small, and I assumed, because the feeling never went away, that it meant something. That I was meant to save him and he would save me at the same time.
But no one is going to save me.
And Caleb never wanted that from me in the first place. He just wanted his wife to return, and now she has.
38
CALEB
My chest aches when I reach my desk. I have a thousand things to do before I go home to pack, and I don’t give a shit about a single one of them.
This was supposed to be the most important weekend of my life, but it’ll be entirely meaningless without Lucie there at the end—without her laugh, her smell, that soft skin at the base of her wrist, the arch of her foot, and her head resting on my chest. It’s meaningless without the kids too. Without Henry’s slow smiles, without Sophie’s crazy vocabulary and sentences spoken in code.
I miss all of those things and I’ve been missing them, but it wasn’t until I saw her in the auditorium this morning that I wondered how I’d survive without getting them back.
Beck calls and I answer reluctantly. He’s probably going to yell at me again. At least now we’re on the same page.
“You gonna see Lucie before you leave town?” he asks.
I sigh. “I told her we needed to talk at the meeting today, but she didn’t wait.”
His laugh is short and unhappy. “Let me guess. You said you needed to talk without ever suggesting you were sorry, but you’re shocked that she wasn’t waiting with bated breath to hear from you.”
His words grate. In part because he’s being an asshole and in part because he’s right. I didn’t apologize. I didn’t tell her I haven’t been able to eat or sleep or function since I saw her last. That I forgot my laptop as I walked through airport security and then tried to board the wrong plane because I’m so out of it. That when I got home, I stayed awake for hours, staring at her house and trying to figure out how to fix this.
I’m completely fucking lost without her. I have no idea how to get through the coming weekend leaving things the way they are, but it looks like I don’t have a choice. She didn’t wait.
“I went by her office and she was gone—she had something at her kids’ school, apparently.” I run a hand over my face, fatigued by this day already. “Swearing I’ll work less when I’m on my way out of town for work seems like it might fall a little flat. I’ll get through this meeting and try again when I’m home.”
“Caleb,” he says slowly, “that’s not good enough. You fucked up, dude. Like, you really, really fucked up. She thought her kid was dead last week and you basically shrugged like it wasn’t your problem and left town.”
“That’s not what—”
“I know,” he says, cutting me off. “That’s not what you meant to do, but ever since Hannah died, what you intend and what you actually do are not the same thing. Which brings me to my point…telling Lucie you’ll work less isn’t going to solve anything. It’s probably not even true.”
My temper is starting to fray—I’m operating on very little sleep, I’m pissed that I didn’t get a chance to talk to Lucie and the only thing keeping me from hanging up is that he’s right again. Why would Lucie believe a promise that I’ll work less? I don’t even believe it myself. I’ll be good for a few days or a week, and then I’ll start to backslide. “Okay, since you know so much, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Quit my job? Wait tables at your bar, morning shifts only?”
He sighs. I can picture him pushing a hand through his hair out of frustration. “Caleb, the issue isn’t how much you work. It’s that you blame yourself when anything goes wrong, and you abandon the people who need you most when it happens. You abandoned Kate because you felt guilty about Hannah, and what happened with Lucie last week sure seemed to follow the playbook, didn’t it? Until you deal with your guilt, I’m not sure how you fix anything.”
I push away from my desk, grabbing my keys. “Thanks for the armchair psychology, Beck,” I snap, walking out of my office and ignoring Kayleigh entirely. “You haven’t had a single relationship in at least five years, yet you’re able to diagnose all my problems, it seems.”
“Diagnosing your shit doesn’t require a degree, asshole,” Beck says as I push through the front doors. “Everyone knows what’s going on with you, except for you. Everyone knows that you freaked out after Hannah died and acted like it didn’t matter in the first place. You’re forgetting we were all there. You kept her ultrasound pic in a frame on your desk. You had her car seat professionally installed twice because you were worried it wasn’t secure enough. You fucking cared, and you’re the only person in the world who doesn’t know it. Go to Hannah’s grave for once in your life and then come tell me I’m wrong.”
He hangs up and I keep walking to my truck, my jaw grinding.
Why the fuck would I go to the grave? I can’t bring her back. What good would it do to remember how it all was? To remember everything I hoped for and how it ended?
But when I reach the turnoff for the lake…I keep driving. The cemetery isn’t far from here, though I’ve only been once. Beck thinks I can’t go to her grave? Of course I can. I’ll go and it will be every bit as meaningless, as performative, as I knew it would be.
I park in the cemetery, and there’s an odd, leaden weight in my stomach as I climb out. The last time I was here was at the burial. We didn’t have a ceremony. It was just me and Kate. She wrapped her arms around the tiny casket, choking on her sobs, and the longer it went on, the more dead I felt inside. I was removed and robotic as I pulled Kate away.
She couldn’t eat and she couldn’t sleep, and all I wanted in the entire fucking world was to go to the office, which I did as soon as humanly possible. Beck was right. I abandoned her. I fucking abandoned her.
I walk toward the grave, which sits at the top of the hill because Kate demanded Hannah have a view. Kate had been the most rational person I’d ever known until Hannah died, and after that…she was barely sane. I’d catch her in the middle of the night, trying to go to the cemetery. I’d find her online researching meconium aspiration, as if she could find a way to change what went wrong.
And I…did nothing. I spent a few days assuring her things would feel better and ran off to work. And soon there were nights, then weeks, when she didn’t come home, and I was worried, but I was also fucking relieved. Relieved that someone else was helping her because I didn’t feel like I could. Relieved she was crying to someone else because I couldn’t stand to hear her reference Hannah one more time, couldn’t stand to have her ask me if I thought Hannah knew we loved her, if she was cold now, and alone.
I reach the grave at last, crouching low and brushing a long-dead bouquet away to stare at the plaque.
Hannah Jane Lowell. October 24, 2020.
And I don’t want to remember, but suddenly I do. I remember how tiny she was in my arms, tiny but solid, and how some bizarre part of me thought that maybe the hospital had made a mistake.
That was the first and last time I ever held her. And the nurse reached out and I knew what she wanted—that she wanted me to hand Hannah over because Kate wouldn’t—and I wasn’t ready.
I wasn’t fucking ready, and I didn’t know what to do, so I chose to believe it didn’t matter. That I couldn’t have cared all that much because if I had, I’d have been there sooner, and that one of us had to be rational and it would have to be me. So I handed Hannah over, and when Kate screamed and tried to lunge from the bed, I was the one who kept her from following.
I was wrong. I’m not sure what I should have done. But I should have done more than I did.