For Lucy

“Okay. I’m going to take one more look around upstairs. I’ll meet you there.”

“Lucy Loo … you coming with me?” Josh thinks his name for my daughter is cute. Me? Not so much.

“My car has stuff in the back, so I’ll follow you,” she says.

“See you there.” I give Lucy a wink.

When the door closes behind Lucy and Josh, I take a minute to look at my wife for possibly the last time standing in the living room of the home we built together. She can’t even meet my gaze. Her nerves and scattered emotions thrum through the room with a palpable beat like someone’s pulse as adrenaline shoots through their veins.

“I wanted you to make a clean break too,” she mumbles, glancing around the room. “I hope living here doesn’t haunt you. And if it does, I hope you can swallow your pride and just sell the place.”

“There’s nowhere I feel more at peace … more at home … than standing under this roof.”

Her gaze locks with mine. “How can you possibly say that?” she asks with the wind knocked out of her lungs.

My mouth opens to vomit a million reasons why I want to live here, but I clamp it shut and clear my throat. “Let’s have a look around and make sure you have everything you want. Of course, if you forget something, I won’t change the locks. You are always welcome here.” My effort to shift the conversation turns up fruitless.

I’m not sure she’s blinked since my confession. Now things are just really uncomfortable. We have very different needs. I need to continue my scavenger hunt, the one where I’m hunting for the pieces to my life so I can put them back together, holes and all.

Tatum still feels the need to pound her fists and stomp her feet until the remnants of the life we created are nothing more than dust.

“Did you empty the hiding spot in the closet?” I ask and it brings her out of her state of shock.

She shakes her head. “Totally forgot.”

I head toward the master bedroom on the main floor. We put a false wall in the back of the closet to hide important things, including Christmas and birthday presents. Tapping the upper right corner, it triggers the panel to release.

“Have you been in here since I moved out?”

When she doesn’t answer, I glance back at her gaze affixed to something in the space. When I turn back around, I see what has her focus. A box wrapped in blue and orange wrapping paper with a big silver and blue bow stuck to the top of it.

Austin died two weeks before his fourth birthday. That was his gift. I don’t know what’s inside of it, but I remember Tatum quickly handing it to me when Austin wasn’t looking. I rushed it to the closet and hid it here.

Aside from the gift, there are a few shoeboxes of photos and a box of things we received over the years after our grandparents died. I ignore Austin’s gift and nod to the other boxes. “Family photos? And I know that box has a quilt your grandma made.”

Not a blink.

She shakes her head slowly, all color fading from her face as she takes slow steps backward.

“Tatum …”

Turning, she runs into the bathroom and vomits in the toilet. I don’t know what to do. I did what I could when he died, short of having godlike powers to bring him back to life or rewind time to change the outcome. She doesn’t understand why I want to be here, but I understand why she needs to leave.

I wet the hand towel she left behind like so many other things in the house and press it to her forehead as I hunch beside her. She rips a wad of toilet paper from the holder and wipes her eyes and mouth before spitting into the toilet one more time.

“Sit back,” I say, keeping the cold towel pressed to her forehead.

She eases onto her butt and rests her back against the wall, closing her eyes and squeezing out more tears that I know are no longer from vomiting. Hunching in front of her, I wipe them with the pads of my thumbs.

This hurts.

It doesn’t hurt less than it did five years ago. Not for me. Not for her. I don’t think it will ever hurt less; we’ll just learn to navigate the pain better.

“It’s a Build a Bear,” she whispers while keeping her eyes shut, but it doesn’t hold in her tears. “H-he has a neon vest a-and a h-hard hat like … his daddy.”

Swallowing hard past the lump in my throat, I fight to hold back the emotion as my eyes burn. Austin was a daddy’s boy. He loved going to work with me and riding in the big equipment. His voice echoes in my head every single day. “Daddy!” My favorite sound in the whole fucking world. Without it, I sit at home waiting for my Lucy day, trying to imagine it’s real … his voice. Him. I imagine he’s really here and I just can’t see him because he’s hiding behind the curtains, in a closet, or under his bed. Without him, it’s a world without music. A life without color. An eternity of numbness.