Diane kissed Kate’s temple and smoothed her hair the way she had when Kate was a little girl.
“He was the one I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with. When people talk about a once-in-a-lifetime love, I thought I knew what they meant. But I didn’t. Ian was the man I didn’t know I needed until I met him. The whole time I was with Stuart, Ian was out there, waiting. And we found each other, but then I lost him.”
“I promise you’ll get through this.”
Kate wiped her eyes. “Right now I’d settle for not feeling quite so much pain.”
“It’s going to take time,” Diane said gently.
Her mother spoke the truth. It’s what Kate would have said to anyone who had suffered a similar loss. “I think I’ll go to bed,” Kate said. “I don’t want any more of my wine.”
She kissed her mother and then went into the bedroom and lay down on Ian’s side of the bed, clutching her phone and listening to his voice mail message as she cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Diane went home a week after Ian died. Kate had convinced her mother she’d be okay on her own, not that she actually believed it. But she couldn’t keep using her mother as a buffer, a crutch. It was time to see if she would sink or swim.
“I can come back in a few weeks,” Diane said.
“We’ll see,” Kate said. “I love you, Mom. Thank you so much for being there for me.”
After Diane left, Kate continued with the routine Diane had set for her: sleep, shower, dress, try to eat. Now she added work, and walking through the door of the food pantry on her first day back was the most difficult thing she’d had to do since losing Ian.
She owed it to her clients not to look like she was at death’s door and to try to function like a real human. But her eyes were constantly swollen and red-rimmed, surrounded by dark circles. She kept a bottle of eyedrops in her desk drawer, and she stopped wearing eye makeup. Her complexion, normally so healthy and bright, looked dull and ashen. Styling her hair in anything other than a ponytail seemed like a waste of time. Acting as if nothing was wrong took a monumental amount of energy, and she felt physically drained by the end of the day, a brittle shell of her former self.
Her smiles were forced and she could only maintain them for so long, but she tried her best, especially for new clients. She didn’t want them to think there was something wrong with her although many probably wondered if there was. When Samantha came in with the kids, Kate held Georgie on her lap and tried not to cry. Only Helena knew what had happened to Ian, and she treated Kate like one of her own daughters, fussing over her, hugging her, doing whatever she could to help.
Two weeks after Ian died, Kate was having a particularly hard day and had been hiding out in the back room so no one would see her cry. That morning, she’d found a note Ian had once left for her and that she’d shoved into a drawer in the kitchen and forgotten about. But then her smoke alarm had started to chirp while she was getting ready for work—the relentless, grating noise almost sending Kate over the edge—and the note was in the drawer where she kept the batteries.
Picking up dinner. Back soon, baby. xoxo
She’d put the note in her pocket and had reached for it throughout the morning. It had the same effect as Ian’s voice mail message, which she listened to constantly. It only heightened her sorrow, but Kate couldn’t stop reading his words, couldn’t stop rubbing her fingers across the paper. She promised herself that tomorrow she’d leave the note at home.
Helena stuck her head into the back room. “Kate?” Her tone was gentle, the way it always was with Kate now.
She looked up. “Yes?” Her voice sounded raspy and hoarse.
“A client is asking for you.”