Their family therapist had said something similar. That they should be finding ways to relax and even have fun together again, just the three of them. That it wasn’t disloyal to Abbey to find joy again. Which was complete and utter bullshit.
He ignored all the Abbeys he saw. The Abbey in the purple jacket and pink cheetah print helmet riding a Razor scooter beside her mom. The Abbey as she might look twenty years from now—wheat-colored hair pulled back, wearing jeans and a stylish black poncho, holding hands with her hipster boyfriend, whom Wolf was sure to despise. The Abbey as she had been, a little pink peanut in a stupid-expensive stroller (It’s a pram! A car seat! A high chair! A booster!) with Mom jogging behind trying desperately to lose weight she didn’t need to lose.
All the Abbeys that were and would never be because of his careless, shitty brand of fatherhood. The smart phone dad—always taking pictures and posting beautiful filtered shots on Facebook and Instagram for others to admire, forgetting almost entirely to look with his own eyes.
He saw Jackson standing outside the school, resting against the gray brick wall and staring at his iPhone. It was the perfect fall -afternoon—cool but not cold, leaves shedding, street full of kids and parents heading home from school, not yet crushed with commuters rushing to and fro.
His kid looked like a scarecrow, balancing on one thin leg, blond hair spiky all over, so fragile as if he could blow away or burst into flames. All of this was hardest on the kid. Wolf thought for a moment that Jackson had ditched the crutch he was still using. As Wolf drew closer, he saw it leaning against the wall next to Jackson.
“Hey, buddy,” he called. “What are you doing out here?”
Maybe it was progress. Usually Jackson wouldn’t step outside without one of them. Though what help the kid thought his useless father would be, Wolf couldn’t imagine.
“I don’t know,” said Jackson as his dad approached.
Wolf bent down with effort and took Jackson’s book bag. In doing so, he caught a glimpse of Jackson’s phone. The New York Times app was open to a breaking story about a school shooting in Texas.
“Jacko,” said Wolf. “Come on. You’re not supposed—”
“I know.”
“The doctor said—”
“I know.” He almost yelled—the sweetest, most gentle kid that ever was. An angel baby, Merri had called him. Sleeping through the night by two weeks old, rarely a peep out of him. Softer: “I can’t help it, Dad. I just can’t.”
Wolf ran a hand along the back of Jackson’s silky, beautifully shaped head, fighting back a powerful rush of sadness and pain. Was there no end to it?
“I get it,” he said. “I get it. Let’s go get a smoothie at Papaya King.”
A longish walk that would do them both good. He hoped.
EIGHT
Something was different. Something had shifted. The air had a peculiar scent; the gray of the sky was darker punching against the bright white of the high clouds. Something. What was it? Eloise watched Finley go—the girl’s thin form crouched over the roaring machine, speeding away. That girl thought she owned the world; maybe she did. She didn’t believe that she could make a mistake, get hurt. Eloise envied her arrogance a little, even as she cautioned against it. As Finley turned the corner out of sight, Eloise smiled, in spite of herself.
It had been on the tip of her tongue, the thing Eloise wanted to say. “Finley,” she almost said. “Can you be late today? We should have a talk.” But she’d never found the courage to push the words out. What point was there, really? What good would it do?
Back inside the house, the old clock ticked, the floorboards creaked, the pictures of her family stared at her from the wall. All these things seemed real and solid, permanent. Of course, it wasn’t so. Everything tended toward breaking down, entropy. Time and gravity were immutable forces that pulled the world apart. If not for constant vigilance, the fabric on the sofas would mold and rot, the roof would start to sink, shingles and shutters would fall. The house would be a ruin one day. And that was right, as it should be. Nothing is forever.
Eloise took her bag from the hall table and headed out the door.
In the car, she drove down the road. So many years later, she never failed to remember the day Emily and Alfie died whenever she passed the place where the tractor-trailer drifted into their lane, forcing them all into a head-on collision. After which: Alfie and Emily were gone; Eloise and Amanda were left to go on; and Eloise began to hear the dead—their voices, their stories. It had been a day like any other day, not the shade of any warning, not a tingle, not a sense of anything to come. Lives lost, lives altered from one moment to the next. Other people would have moved, left this place, at least not forced themselves to drive the same road every day. But Eloise was not other people. She didn’t want to forget, to move on. You didn’t have to do those things to let go.