Since You've Been Gone
PROLOGUE
My Granny Ruth says we always have choices about falling in love. So maybe you and I should have just fallen in like.
That would have been less painful and less expensive. Because, of course, the wedding and the reception still have to be paid for, even if nobody shows up.
Well, the rest of us showed up. But not you.
That qualifies as grounds for legitimate bridezilla anger.
When the phone shrilled at five o’clock that evening, there was a wisp of hope. Like the scent of perfume after someone’s walked through a room and, for as long as the fragrance lingers, you look around to see who’s there. But then it’s gone, and you know hope’s a memory.
An unrecognizable voice from an unrecognizable phone number said you’d been found.
Dead.
Fifty miles away. Headed in the opposite direction of the church.
And on the backseat of your car, a package wrapped in blue.
Baby-blue sailboats.
CHAPTER 1
Some people lead charmed lives. Lives that unfurl like endless bolts of silk.
I’m not one of them.
My hopsack life had snagged upon disaster. And, for the past month, the threads frayed faster than I could stitch them together.
The appointment I’d just finished left no doubt about the tangled mess ahead.
I found a bench outside the side entrance of the West Shore Medical Building, wished it wasn’t the middle of heatstroke-humidity June in New Orleans, and called Mia. Mia of the upscale bohemian wardrobe, wildly curly hair the color of wet sand, and funky rectangular violet eyeglasses. My best friend, who moved six hours away to Houston, has abandoned me in yet another crisis.
Please answer. Please answer. Please . . . don’t go to voicemail. By the fifth unanswered ring, I’d mashed the cell phone against my ear, jamming my earring post into my neck. My silent pleadings were on the verge of running out of my mouth when I heard her voice.
“Hey, Livvy. I’m with a client. When can I call you back?”
The more her design business increased, the more our ability to have conversations decreased. I couldn’t bake outside much longer. I was sweating in places I didn’t know existed. My mother would be mortified to know I was even thinking about such unladylike bodily functions.
“Sweetie, ladies don’t sweat,” she’d tell me, the word sah-wet dripping off her tongue like sour grape juice. “We glisten.” I learned to expect Gone with the Wind flashbacks from the woman whose mother named her Scarlett Ellen.
But sah-wetting would soon be the least of our lady issues, considering the news I was about to drop on Mia.
“I’m pregnant.” I held my breath, willed my somersaulting heart to steady itself, and waited for a sign of life on the other end of the phone.
“Hold on,” said Mia, her voice less chirpy. “Wait, no.” Her tone now impatient, her fingers probably drumming her desk. “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
My anxiety on pause, I stood and peeled my damp cotton skirt away from my legs where the bench’s wrought iron slats had embedded themselves in my thighs. The nearby glass door groaned open, and a gaggle of scrub-dressed people spilled out, yammering about lunch options. The receptionist in Dr. Schneider’s office who’d scheduled my next appointment waved to me. I nodded and produced a suggestion of a smile. The least I could do for a woman I’d never met until an hour ago, who now knew more about me than my best friend and my parents.
Mia’s name flashed on my phone. I perched on the edge of the bench, and before she could speak, I said, “I’m pregnant.” Only this time the weight of the words settled in my throat like broken glass. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t believe this is happening to me. My life’s already a mess. Isn’t it somebody else’s turn?” I sounded like a person in the complaint department of humanity attempting to return a defective life.
If God were as compassionate as my mother believed Him to be, then He’d dole out tragedy on a rotating basis. You’d stand in line, then He’d reach into His bushel of adversity, hand one over, and you’d go to the back of the long stretch of mankind. You’d have time to deal with it, dress it in different clothes, ignore it, shove it someplace in your heart before your number was up again.
But no. God dished the trifecta of trials and tribulations in my life. In the past month, Wyatt died on a highway (without leaving a clue as to where he was going), I traded wedding white for funeral black, and now, instead of being a wife, I was going to be a mother. I stopped wearing mascara twenty-eight days ago because I woke up every morning with a tear-stained pillow, cried during the day any time I thought of Wyatt (which was about every ten minutes), and cried myself to sleep at night. After today’s revelation, I didn’t expect I’d need eye makeup anytime soon.
My Granny Ruth says we always have choices about falling in love. So maybe you and I should have just fallen in like.
That would have been less painful and less expensive. Because, of course, the wedding and the reception still have to be paid for, even if nobody shows up.
Well, the rest of us showed up. But not you.
That qualifies as grounds for legitimate bridezilla anger.
When the phone shrilled at five o’clock that evening, there was a wisp of hope. Like the scent of perfume after someone’s walked through a room and, for as long as the fragrance lingers, you look around to see who’s there. But then it’s gone, and you know hope’s a memory.
An unrecognizable voice from an unrecognizable phone number said you’d been found.
Dead.
Fifty miles away. Headed in the opposite direction of the church.
And on the backseat of your car, a package wrapped in blue.
Baby-blue sailboats.
CHAPTER 1
Some people lead charmed lives. Lives that unfurl like endless bolts of silk.
I’m not one of them.
My hopsack life had snagged upon disaster. And, for the past month, the threads frayed faster than I could stitch them together.
The appointment I’d just finished left no doubt about the tangled mess ahead.
I found a bench outside the side entrance of the West Shore Medical Building, wished it wasn’t the middle of heatstroke-humidity June in New Orleans, and called Mia. Mia of the upscale bohemian wardrobe, wildly curly hair the color of wet sand, and funky rectangular violet eyeglasses. My best friend, who moved six hours away to Houston, has abandoned me in yet another crisis.
Please answer. Please answer. Please . . . don’t go to voicemail. By the fifth unanswered ring, I’d mashed the cell phone against my ear, jamming my earring post into my neck. My silent pleadings were on the verge of running out of my mouth when I heard her voice.
“Hey, Livvy. I’m with a client. When can I call you back?”
The more her design business increased, the more our ability to have conversations decreased. I couldn’t bake outside much longer. I was sweating in places I didn’t know existed. My mother would be mortified to know I was even thinking about such unladylike bodily functions.
“Sweetie, ladies don’t sweat,” she’d tell me, the word sah-wet dripping off her tongue like sour grape juice. “We glisten.” I learned to expect Gone with the Wind flashbacks from the woman whose mother named her Scarlett Ellen.
But sah-wetting would soon be the least of our lady issues, considering the news I was about to drop on Mia.
“I’m pregnant.” I held my breath, willed my somersaulting heart to steady itself, and waited for a sign of life on the other end of the phone.
“Hold on,” said Mia, her voice less chirpy. “Wait, no.” Her tone now impatient, her fingers probably drumming her desk. “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
My anxiety on pause, I stood and peeled my damp cotton skirt away from my legs where the bench’s wrought iron slats had embedded themselves in my thighs. The nearby glass door groaned open, and a gaggle of scrub-dressed people spilled out, yammering about lunch options. The receptionist in Dr. Schneider’s office who’d scheduled my next appointment waved to me. I nodded and produced a suggestion of a smile. The least I could do for a woman I’d never met until an hour ago, who now knew more about me than my best friend and my parents.
Mia’s name flashed on my phone. I perched on the edge of the bench, and before she could speak, I said, “I’m pregnant.” Only this time the weight of the words settled in my throat like broken glass. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t believe this is happening to me. My life’s already a mess. Isn’t it somebody else’s turn?” I sounded like a person in the complaint department of humanity attempting to return a defective life.
If God were as compassionate as my mother believed Him to be, then He’d dole out tragedy on a rotating basis. You’d stand in line, then He’d reach into His bushel of adversity, hand one over, and you’d go to the back of the long stretch of mankind. You’d have time to deal with it, dress it in different clothes, ignore it, shove it someplace in your heart before your number was up again.
But no. God dished the trifecta of trials and tribulations in my life. In the past month, Wyatt died on a highway (without leaving a clue as to where he was going), I traded wedding white for funeral black, and now, instead of being a wife, I was going to be a mother. I stopped wearing mascara twenty-eight days ago because I woke up every morning with a tear-stained pillow, cried during the day any time I thought of Wyatt (which was about every ten minutes), and cried myself to sleep at night. After today’s revelation, I didn’t expect I’d need eye makeup anytime soon.