The only thing I knew was that as I sat writing on a clear nondescript day, my daughter died twenty-two feet away from me without calling my name or making a noise. I knew that in the middle of the afternoon, without any warning and within an hour, it was possible to lose your life.
Those first months after she died were a blur. My mother flew up from Florida the day after we lost her. She stayed for two weeks, and then went back to Florida, to her own life. It was a process she repeated nearly every month. And somehow, the year passed and here we were.
It seemed we were through the worst of it—I could breathe again, at least. I could open my eyes in the morning and take a breath without feeling like a slab of granite rested on my chest. I lost track of the number of days this past year, I simply closed my eyes again, let that crushing weight sink my body deeper into the mattress.
Jack was the opposite. He got up every single morning—sun or rain or snow—and went to the boat. As if his sanity depended on it. And maybe it did. Perhaps in his own mind, putting one foot in front of the other suggested forward motion. Perhaps his inability to talk about any of it, to cry even, was the very thing that allowed him to get up and get moving.
Not that his grief wasn’t as far-reaching as my own—it was. I saw it in the weary lines tugging at the corners of his eyes, and in the pounds melting off his already lean frame. But movement seemed to heal Jack, or at the very least, keep his mind occupied.
There was a part of me that knew I deserted him, left him to his own grief, his own way of dealing with it. He didn’t dwell on the moment like I did. He didn’t obsess over how things might have gone differently. How she’d still be here if I hadn’t been writing, if I hadn’t given Kat the necklace. Stop, he’d say to me, with his hand up, not wanting to listen. Not willing to live in a moment that was gone. Irretrievable. But I was still there, on that day, and we were moving farther and farther away from each other.
I’d put life on hold for a year.
I hadn’t been back to work since she died. My editor, Josie, kept the column filled with ads—she was giving me time, encouraging me to come back, insisting our readers missed the column. But when I sat down to write, I was back on that day. Had she called out for me, and I hadn’t heard her because I was occupied? Why hadn’t I checked her crib, knowing that Kat had played in there? There must have been some noise . . . some indication of her struggling. Why didn’t I have a video monitor?
These weren’t just random thoughts. They were comments posted online after the local news ran a short article about her death. The article wasn’t specific—just the facts—her name, age, a short blurb about how choking was the cause of death. One sentence revealing she had been put down for a nap in her crib and was found unresponsive by her mother. At the end of the article was a Comments link. I’d clicked on it. I can’t say why. Perhaps only because the link was there. I’d stumbled across the article as it was, only online for the first time in weeks to send my coworkers at Parent Talk an email thanking them for the dinners that showed up on our doorstep every night.
Jack had walked in the room and found me wide-eyed at the computer. He leaned over my shoulder, glanced at the screen. Internet scum, he growled, and yanked the power cord from the wall so hard, the pins on the plug bent at odd angles.
I waited until the following day, when Jack was at work, to turn on the computer again and search for the article. I scrolled down to the Comments section.
Most were condolences, well wishes, an occasional OMG! or Devastating!
Then there were the others. Not many. Enough, though. Enough to confirm every fear, every voice in my head.
Where was the mom? Ever hear of a monitor??? Video monitor maybe?! Morons!
Sh*tty parents! NOTHING should EVER be in crib to choke on! WTF-they desrve everything they got! Poor baby!!!!!Wouldn’t happen in my house!
Nice parenting-NOT. RIP sweet baby!!!!!!!
I hadn’t written since that day.
When I got on Jack for working so many hours, he’d look at me like I was living in some imaginary world where mortgages didn’t exist.
We’d taken out a second mortgage last year to renovate the Salt House, a dilapidated farmhouse across town passed down to us from Jack’s grandfather. Nothing to look at except for the view. Water as far as the eye could see. The view at our house now wasn’t anything to shrug off, but the street was busy, full of triple-decker homes built almost on top of one another.
We were supposed to be living in the Salt House now. The plan had been to rent out this house and move across town once renovations were complete.
But I hadn’t been back since she died.
There wasn’t an inch of the house that didn’t remind me of her. The screen porch where Jack and I had made love. The bathroom upstairs where I’d peed on a stick and watched the plus sign appear while Kat and Jess played on the lawn below. The sunflower garden in the backyard, where she’d crawled while I weeded and pruned.
Jack had been patient, given me time. But our savings were gone. The money we’d taken out to renovate the Salt House was gone—we were close to finishing the renovation before she died—and we were paying two mortgages now. I’d mentioned putting the Salt House on the market months ago. Letting someone else finish the renovation. He’d looked at me, and the look on his face made my cheeks burn, my insides twist.
But we were out of time, and money.
Over the years, I’d built up a handful of women’s magazines I contributed to on a regular basis—articles for Ladies’ Home Journal, Family Circle, Glamour, and SELF. Tips on how to lose the baby weight, or the best places to vacation with toddlers in tow. But I hadn’t taken a freelance job since she died.
And even though my work at Parent Talk clocked in at typically less than twenty-five hours a week, it was twenty-five hours’ worth of income that had disappeared from our weekly budget. For more than a year.
Josie had called last week and asked, in a gentle tone, if I was thinking about ideas for the column. I told her I’d have something for the September issue, and apologized again. She’d shushed me, telling me the column wasn’t going anywhere. I’d felt my face flame anyway, feeling as though I’d been taking advantage of our relationship.