But his mother loved him since birth. She carried him inside of her, loved and protected him since the day he was born. Maggie couldn’t compete with that. And she couldn’t bear knowing his mother’s grief might be greater than hers, when hers remained so all consuming. It was simply more sorrow she couldn’t manage, so their relationship had faded like many others.
She slid the lid of black coffee onto the base of the headstone. “Today marks two years.”
Did time matter where he was? Or did time simply stop?
“There wasn’t a parade yesterday.” She bit her lip. “I went to O’Malley’s.” Another betrayal. “I met the people who own it now. Well, some of them. There’s like a hundred of them. They didn’t know who I was. I told them my last name was Harris. But they were so nice to me, Nash. You would have liked them no matter what happened between your families.”
She sipped the coffee from the thermos. “There’s something else.”
Her stomach knotted. “Remember that neighbor I told you about? His name’s Ryan. He’s a Clooney, and his dad was there when they took O’Malley’s.”
Maybe that was enough. Did it really matter if she said it out loud? For all she knew, she was just a crazy widow who talked to herself every morning in a cemetery.
No, she needed to hear herself say it, or the guilt would eat her alive. “I had a panic attack yesterday. I haven’t had one in over six months, but it was a bad one. It happened at the pub in front of a bunch of strangers.”
Remembering how awful it was, she took a deep breath and reminded herself it was over. “I almost lost it completely, but my neighbor was there. He works there, and he got me out of the crowd before it got too bad.”
Her voice lowered as she thought back to how kind Ryan had been. “I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t shown up. Things probably would’ve gotten really bad.”
She swallowed against a lump in her throat. “Then last night … I drank … a lot. He came by to check on me, I guess, and…”
She looked away. What did it prove if she said the rest? Nash was dead. He was gone. No confession or shame could bring him back.
Her regret shifted to anger and frustration. She resented how many mornings she spent talking to herself, knowing there was a very real crazy part of her that still hoped one day he’d answer.
Two years. It had been two excruciating years, and her life was just as broken as it had been the day he left her. It wasn’t supposed to be like this! She wasn’t supposed to be alone!
“You said you would get new tires on the car that Christmas,” she snapped.
Her chin trembled as the accusing words tumbled from her tight lips. “I think of that all the time. You knew those tires weren’t safe for winter, and you just kept putting it off. Then you bought that damn Fender guitar—like we needed another instrument. We needed tires!”
She hadn’t meant to come here and yell at him, but she couldn’t navigate the swift shift from guilt to resentment. “I need my husband and you’re gone! You just left me here, and I don’t know what the hell to do without you.”
She sniffed and dashed away her tears. Her confession didn’t matter. None of it did. He didn’t matter anymore and neither did she.
Snatching the lid to the thermos, she sloshed the coffee onto the grass and screwed the top in place. Standing on shaky legs, she glared at his tombstone.
“I’m dead inside. People look at me, thinking they can somehow bring me back to life, but there’s nothing left anymore. Everything I was, died with you two years ago. All because of a burnt-out lightbulb and shitty fucking tires.”
With that, she marched back to the gate and threw her thermos into the basket. She had one leg over her bike before crushing guilt consumed her. Her vision blurred as the tightness of her ribs suffocated her.
Dropping the bike to the ground, she raced back through the gate, careening onto the ground in front of his headstone and crushing several hyacinths as she pressed her frozen fingers to her lips and pushed them over his name.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean any of that. I’m so sorry. I’m a fucking mess. I don’t know why I said that stuff. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
She spent several minutes crying and apologizing, trying to fix the flowers she’d trampled. Like always, no reply came. The comfort she always hoped to find there never existed. And it never would.
She spent countless mornings talking through the emptiness. There was nothing there for her, yet she continuously returned with the hope that something might change. Wasn’t that the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?