The Silent Widow

Nikki watched as Johnson got awkwardly to his feet and lumbered over to the center of the podium to receive his award. To the left and right of her, the audience clapped and cheered and within a few seconds most got to their feet. Nikki stood and joined them, cheering the man who had saved her life and who she’d belatedly come to see as more than just a redneck – although that side to him was still alive and well. She was glad they’d buried the hatchet, but at the same time she wouldn’t be sorry to see the back of Detective Johnson and the rest of the LAPD, and all the other small, daily reminders of this terrible case.

Slipping out early, Nikki walked along Grand Avenue in the direction of Union Station. She would take an Uber back to her hotel, rather than a train, but it was a beautiful old building and it gave her somewhere to walk to on this hot, dazzling day.

Passing a flower stall, she bought an overpriced bunch of peonies to take back to her hotel room. Recently she’d been taking Gretchen’s advice and trying to appreciate the little things, like fresh flowers or a warm, blue-skied day. It might be corny, but Nikki knew from her own practice it was as good a way as any to fight depression. Tiny step by tiny step.

To the left and right of her, gleaming tower blocks in glass and concrete and steel rose like the behemoths of wealth and status that they were. Some were banks or insurance companies. Others were law firms. In and out of them, like tiny termites, scurried well-dressed workers, the women coiffed and uncomfortable-looking in their pencil skirts and high heels, the men simply overheated in their formal suits and ties.

Out on the sidewalks, directly in the shadow of these buildings, homeless people sat or stood or lay, some pushing shopping carts laden with blankets and clothes and their other meager possessions, others ragged and dirty and even barefoot. It felt to Nikki as if America was at war, a war between the haves and have-nots, and that these people were members of the losing army. If such a war really existed then Los Angeles was surely its front line. So much wealth and fame and glamour here, so much luxury, and yet at the same time so much despair.

Veering off down a narrower street about half a mile from the station, one young woman caught Nikki’s eye. She was skinny, with lank, thinning blond hair and striking high cheekbones beneath her sallow skin. She wore the prostitute’s uniform of frayed denim hot-pants, tank top and cheap plastic wedge sandals, but she didn’t seem to be looking for work. Slumped against a garage wall, she stared vacantly ahead of her, there but not there. In other circumstances, this girl would probably have been pretty. As it was, Nikki saw the tell-tale green, swollen forearms of the Krokodil addict. Her legs had not yet turned gangrenous, but the skin peeled from them like dried paper, or the bark from a eucalyptus tree.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Nikki would have tried to help this young woman. When she would have walked over and asked her name and tried to get her into some sort of rehab program. But not now. Now she knew better. Her compassion was still there. It was the hope that had gone. That, and her faith in her own judgment.

Who am I to try to help anyone? a voice in her head reminded her relentlessly. Most days I can’t even help myself.

She hurried on to the station, but she no longer felt any pleasure in the walk, not even in the sunshine on her back. Climbing into an Uber, still clutching her peonies like a talisman, she gave the driver the address of her hotel in Malibu – if she had to be back in LA, Nikki decided, she wanted to be by the ocean and as far away from all her old stomping grounds as possible – and gazed mindlessly out of the window.

Her depression came in waves, ebbing and flowing, and she’d learned to live with it, welcoming the sadness that was now a part of her like an old friend. She imagined her mental state as being something akin to the pains of childbirth – a powerful, all-consuming pain that you could feel coming, and peaking and then fading away. Like a contraction you could either try to resist it, which made the pain worse, or accept it. Breathe through it, as all the childbirth books said. Of course, Nikki would only ever know about the experience of childbirth from books, and from her imagination. It was too late for motherhood now, as it was too late for so many things.

Some days she felt a thousand years old.

‘Actually, could we make a quick stop first? Would you wait for me?’ She gave the driver a different address.

‘We’re not really supposed to make stops,’ the man said. ‘I’ll take you there and then you can call for a new ride when you’re done.’

‘I’ll only be a few moments,’ Nikki assured him. ‘In and out, I swear.’

The graveyard was small and perfectly manicured, with neatly trimmed box hedges lining winding gravel paths, enabling mourners to meander through the headstones. Doug’s stone was simple and understated, as he would have wanted it, a plain gray slab inscribed with his name and the dates of his birth and death.

Nikki laid her bunch of peonies down in front of it and brushed away a couple of stray dead leaves. Then she stared for a moment at all that was left of her old, happy life and the love that had once been her everything.

I’ll always love you, Doug.

But I don’t think I’ll ever forgive.

Turning around, Nikki Roberts walked to her waiting car without looking back.

She knew she would never return.