What's Left Behind Read online

  Abby touched Charlie’s shoulder and turned her back to the photo display. Charlie swung his hair from his eyes, a gesture meant to appear carefree. His left eyelid twitched, a tell Abby doubted Tessa had noticed. “You doing okay?” Abby asked Tessa, but she kept her hand on Charlie’s arm.

  Abby attempted to see beyond the girl’s heavily made-up face. Black lined her top and bottom lashes. Gold gilded her lids. And highly reflective gloss shellacked the center of her lower lip. Only the very young would intentionally try to look so hard.

  “Uh-huh.” Tessa tried for a nod, but then her dark eyes filled, and she shook her head. “I didn’t want to let him go.”

  The back of Abby’s neck broke into a sweat, like when that first Luke contraction had clenched her body. She hadn’t wanted to let Luke go then. She didn’t want to let him go now. She never wanted to let him go.

  Abby wiped Tessa’s tears. Black mascara smudged her thumbs. Up close, only the insides of Tessa’s irises were brown. Green and gold constellations brightened the outer halves. “Luke cared a great deal for you.” Abby’s voice tangled around her son’s name, and she took a slow breath. “He would’ve been thrilled you kids drove up from Amherst. And thank you so much for forwarding me the article about the UMass memorial.”

  Celeste poked her head out from the kitchen and held a hand in the air, fingers outstretched. Five minutes.

  Tears, watercolor black, streaked down the sides of Tessa’s face. “I’m wicked sorry!” Three sharp shrugs of her shoulders, and Tessa made a run for the couple she’d come with: a petite girl and her built-like-a-wall boyfriend. The girl embraced Tessa, and then, moments later, grabbed Tessa’s coat from the chair back.

  Abby jolted forward, and Charlie took her by the arm.“Let her go, Abby.”

  “She’s hurting!”

  “So are we,” Charlie said, his voice barely a whisper. He looked down and shook his head.

  “Charlie.” Abby brushed the dark-blond hair out of his eyes, her own self-soothing gesture, and her gaze caught on the photo display: Luke’s six-year-old grin pressed between her and Charlie’s sun-drenched faces, three look-alike blondes. They’d spent the day at Popham Beach, and a passerby had snapped the photo. Luke had insisted. “Just like a family,” he’d said, and Abby’s heart had bottomed out. Her little romantic.

  “I loved him so much.”

  Charlie followed her gaze to the photo board.

  Their baby in his car seat, his eyes closed, pink lips pursed in his sleep. A blurred image of Luke on the high-school basketball court, nailing a jump shot. Luke on break from college, winter camping in the yard. The tent’s canvas framed his beaming face.

  She gazed into Luke’s eyes. Luke stared back. Background conversations faded to a hum. Perspiration prickled her hairline.

  Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

  All day she’d cycled between the numb out-of-body experience of observing herself from afar and this strangling intensity of in-your-face grief. When the person you’d built your life around was gone, where did that leave you?

  Last night, she’d lain in bed, doing the math. If she lived to eighty-six, she’d have another seventeen thousand six hundred and one days to endure. That was no way to think, certainly no way to live. She ached, as if someone had run her over with an eighteen-wheeler, thrown the rig into reverse, and ground her flattened remains into the asphalt.

  If she didn’t find something else to build her life around, losing her son was going to kill her.

  In her peripheral vision, the two lobstermen made their way to the front door. The ladies from the town hall crossed the dining room. A throng of Luke’s high-school basketball buddies who’d been hiding out in the library peeked into the dining room and then made their awkward exit. A dozen girls who’d spent their high-school careers adoring Luke and the last two hours hugging in the entryway sent Luke’s senior prom date to offer Abby their final condolences.

  The room tilted on its axis. A slip of frozen white harbor. The sun glinting off the chandelier’s crystal prisms, glancing off the pale turquoise walls. Lily Beth across the room, and then her mother up close, Crock-Pot at her feet, shrugging into her wool coat. “Celeste’s going to follow me home, in case I need help shoveling my way to the front door.”

  “Call if you need me.” Abby tried for a reassuring tone, but her voice came out foreign and far away, as though filtered through a bad phone connection.

  Lily Beth leaned in for a peck on Abby’s cheek and then hurried for the door, leaving the earthy smell of snow and salt in her wake.

  Celeste bustled into the dining room, wearing her puff jacket and smelling like powdered sugar. Her gaze honed in on Charlie. Arms folded, he stared out to the harbor, swallowing repeatedly. His breathing betrayed a ragged edge. “Oh, holy hell,” Celeste said, loud enough for Charlie to hear, and Abby walked her to the door.

  “I can come back. I can stay. Really, no big deal.” The note of panic in Celeste’s voice was reminiscent of the first time Abby had gotten back with Charlie.

  “Mama Bear.” Abby’s nickname for Celeste whenever she’d wax overprotective never failed to make them grin. “Don’t worry. I’ll give him tea and sympathy and send him on his way.” She sighed. “He needs me,” she said, and something deep inside her eased a tiny bit. She couldn’t build her life around Charlie, but she could keep herself busy a while longer.

  Celeste’s eyes widened at the thought, and Abby hugged her. “Love you.” Abby slipped a piece of paper from her apron and edged it toward Celeste’s jacket pocket.

  Celeste grabbed her wrist. “What’re you doing?” She pried open Abby’s fingers and shook her head at the spa certificate for Simple Indulgence. “I can’t accept this.”

  The sudden look of reproach in Celeste’s eyes tugged at Abby’s resolve. “Come on. You deserve it. I know how hard you work. Wouldn’t hand and foot massages feel great?”

  “You’re losing money this week.” Celeste glanced at the spa certificate. “Those don’t come cheap.”

  “I get a discount.”

  “Discount doesn’t mean free. Besides, you could use a massage. When was the last time you treated yourself? Wouldn’t a massage make you feel better?”

  “No.” Lying exposed on a massage table and letting a stranger dig fingers into her tangled muscles was not Abby’s idea of a treat. Bad enough she’d let Celeste see her at her worst. Abby pressed the spa certificate into Celeste’s hand and turned her toward the door. “Don’t make me grovel,” Abby said, earning a half giggle.

  “Don’t let Charlie move in,” Celeste said over her shoulder, and the front door clicked shut. Two consecutive engines revved and screeched in protest of the cold. Snow tires ground from her driveway. When Abby returned to the dining room and caught sight of Charlie, she could’ve sworn she heard the crash of the surf from the open ocean, pacing the roar of her heart.

  Charlie rocked on his heels, the same unconscious tick he’d displayed at Tuesday’s burial until Abby had held his hands in hers.

  She took his hands now, held tight, and settled the movement. For a long moment, he pressed his lips to the top of her head. Then he stepped back. The look of regret in his hazel eyes, Abby knew all too well. He was such a great dad Abby sometimes forgot he’d slipped in and out of Luke’s life those first three years. Right when she’d thought she’d gotten it together on her own, he’d slipped in and out of her life, too.

  “I miss him every second,” Charlie said. “Kept thinking I’d see him sitting with his high-school friends, you know? Kept looking for him at the church . . . at the cemetery . . .”

  Luke’s swim team and basketball trophies lined the entire top shelf of the library’s bookcase. His old Matchbox cars collected in a wicker basket to entertain the B&B’s younger guests. Three concrete handprints sat sentry before her perennial garden: Luke’s hands at five, small and pudgy; stretching out at twelve; man-sized on his eighteenth birthday.

  Wind
rattled the windowpanes, but the cold couldn’t touch her. She had the urge to kick off her shoes, traipse through the snow-covered yard, walk straight into the iced-over bay, and let the frigid water numb her heart.

  “Everywhere I look—” Charlie said.

  “Stop it!” Abby wasn’t sure whether she was talking to Charlie or herself.

  Charlie’s eyes clouded, the color darkening from green to gray. His lips gently shut. He mouthed, Okay, and lowered his gaze.

  When he pulled her against him, she rested her head on his chest. The unique-to-Charlie musk of his skin filled her nose. If she closed her eyes, she could make herself believe they were seventeen years old again, their whole lives ahead of them, nothing decided. The heady beat of his heart thrummed through her head and resurrected a string of major life firsts. First kiss, fast and fumbling and stolen, by her, in the tide pools at Joe’s Head. First sex, equally fast, and initiated by Charlie in his parents’ den, while his little sister slept upstairs. First-breakup heartbreak: ongoing.

  And now this.

  Abby shifted her head, and his breath hit her in the face, hot with a sting of Scotch, one of Charlie’s occasional indulgences. To his credit, Charlie would never have sneaked a nip from her liquor cabinet if he were planning on driving himself home.

  Abby’s stomach muscles convulsed. The edges of her mouth twitched upward. Nothing was funny, nothing at all. Yet her shoulders shook, and she struggled against the grip of hysterical laughter.

  Charlie pulled away from her. “What is it?”

  Tears wet her cheeks. “Johnnie Walker,” she said, a reed-thin squeak.

  “Ah, you got me. Did a couple shots.” Charlie nodded, rubbed her arms until her hysterics subsided. His chin dimpled, but he did not cry. Scotch could do that.

  She sighed, wiped her cheeks, held a hand to Charlie’s face. His handsome, heartbroken face. “Presumptuous of you.”

  Charlie took her hand and kissed it, slow, heated pressure reminiscent of the time she’d taken him in after his divorce. He gilded her with his warm gaze. His I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself gaze. His Abby-can’t-say-no-to-Charlie gaze. His maybe-this-time-will-be-different gaze. “Was I wrong?”

  She could make Charlie a care package of sandwiches, teas, and muffins. She could drop in one of her hand-sewn lavender sachets encouraging soothing thoughts, sweet dreams, and smooth sailing through life. She could drive him home and make him promise to call her in the morning.

  And left to her own devices, she could walk straight into the iced-over bay.

  Abby took a deep breath and rubbed her forefinger against her thumb, skin-on-skin friction loud enough to hear. She shook her head, and brushed Charlie’s hair from his eyes. Her fingers wove into his hair, thick and silky, and boyish, just like the rest of him.

  Charlie’s eyelids drifted to half-moons. He edged closer, his gaze lighted on her lips. His shadow fell across her vision.

  She turned her head, and Charlie’s lips brushed her cheek.

  Abby hadn’t lied to Celeste. She wasn’t about to invite Charlie to move back into her home or her heart.

  “Okay,” Charlie said, and he sounded not like himself, strangled and small and unsure. “Okay,” he repeated, and a sob muffled his voice.

  “Shh, shh, shh.” Abby hugged him close, wrapped her arms around his waist, slid her hands along his perspiration-moist lower back.

  Abby hadn’t lied to Celeste. But she hadn’t told Celeste the truth either. She couldn’t send Charlie on his way.

  She didn’t trust herself to be alone.

  Abby’s hands shook, her fingers numb at the tips, as though ice shards had jammed beneath her nails. She closed her eyes, absorbed the shock of Charlie’s sobs.And then a different sensation rippled through her. Charlie’s stomach rumbled, growled, convulsed, but not in laugher.

  Charlie jerked away from her. He slammed his hands on the dining table, hung his head, and retched into a discarded soup bowl.

  Three fingers of Scotch could do that to you, too.

  “Sorry, Abby,” he croaked. “Sorry.”

  She took him by the hand and led him from the dining room, past the library, and down the hallway to one of her vacant guest rooms. She sat him down on the bed, wriggled off his shoes, plumped the pillows beneath his head. She made him down two ibuprofens and laid an ice-water-soaked washcloth across his fevered forehead.

  Abby hummed under her breath, the way Sadie sometimes purred to comfort herself. But her fingers were no longer shaking. Her breathing came even, the air flowing unobstructed for the first time in days. Focusing on Charlie had taken the edge off her pain. Way healthier than walking into the frozen bay.

  Charlie’s eyes drifted shut, blond lashes settling against the curves of his cheeks. His breathing softened. His chest rose and fell beneath the quilt’s wedding ring pattern. Abby pressed her mouth to the warm pulse of Charlie’s temple, the way she used to kiss Luke good night.

  I want my son back.

  The backs of her knees spasmed, and her legs went out. She leaned against the bed.

  On the day Luke was born, she’d reached between her legs and placed her hands on the top of his head, so he’d feel her touch when he took his first breath. So he’d never be alone. She’d once told Luke that someday, in the impossible distant future, when she was old and gray, she wanted him to hold her hand when she breathed her last.

  Yet she’d been miles away from her baby when, alone, he’d fallen. And she hadn’t even known. She hadn’t felt a thing.

  Fully clothed, she turned down the quilt, slid in on top of the blanket, and switched off the lamp. She crossed her arms. In the dark, her teeth chattered. Beside her, Charlie snored. She got up on one elbow and set a pillow between them, in case Charlie woke in the night with renewed energy and the wrong idea.

  As if sex were the only way Charlie could get to her.

  Charlie was to Abby as partying with the boys, poor investments, and broken promises were to Charlie.

  Oh, holy hell. Celeste was right.

  Abby was going to hate herself in the morning.

  CHAPTER 2

  Rob Campbell refused to look at Bella’s dog run.

  Instead, he backed his truck into the driveway that was no longer his driveway, jogged up the no-longer-his walkway, and fumbled for the key he’d returned to Maria back in February. Then, remembering, he cursed and rang the bell.The beautiful woman who was no longer his wife opened the door. “It’s time,” she said, and stepped back to let him pass.

  Inside the Victorian’s formal entryway, he gave his spring-muddy boots a cursory stomp on the mat, but didn’t bother taking them off. He wouldn’t be staying long.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Hardly ate yesterday, trouble sleeping last night, kept waking up howling.” Maria’s bottom lip trembled.

  He held up his hands. “Wait a second. What’s this ‘hardly ate’? I thought you said she didn’t eat. A bad day doesn’t translate to ‘it’s time.’ ” When two people loved each other, a bad day didn’t mean you should get a divorce either. Campbells never gave up. Too bad his ex-wife didn’t share his born-and-bred philosophy.

  Maria sighed and shook her head, her gaze weary, yet determined. “Not one bad day, many bad days. Can’t remember what a good day looks like anymore.”

  He could.

  Coming home after dark had never bothered him. He liked finding his way to the front door by the post light, the satisfaction of creating one of his landscape designs giving him a natural high. The ache of hard work humming through his muscles. Bone-tired, he liked bounding up the stairs, climbing into bed, and finding his college sweetheart, Maria, by his side.

  Pretty much summed up Maria’s reasons for divorcing him.

  Tears shone on the tips of her lashes. Rob jammed his hands in his pockets to quell the urge to brush them away. No longer his wife.

  “You promised. We’re not putting her through a third round of chemo. We’re not prolon
ging her suffering.”

  “I know what I said.” He also knew Maria had fought him on the first two rounds, each yielding months-long remissions.

  “Where’s the old girl?” he said, expecting Maria to head into the kitchen, where Bella’s flowered doggie bed sat next to her food and water bowls for easy access.

  Maria let out a laugh and angled her chin toward the stairway.

  “Grace?”

  “Yeah, couldn’t stop her. Freakishly strong, like her father.” Maria sliced her face away from him and started up the stairs, as though she were embarrassed by the expression’s association with Rob. Pride in their daughter was a given.

  “Hope that doesn’t earn her a freakishly strong hernia,” he said, imagining his eighteen-year-old daughter trudging up the stairs, carrying their seventy-pound golden retriever in her arms like a baby.

  Rob followed Maria up the stairway he could navigate in the dark. His hand skimmed the salvaged mahogany banister he’d sanded and buffed until it shone. At the landing, morning filtered through the reclaimed stained glass he installed days after they’d closed on the property. The sunlight cast ruby and gold diamonds against Maria’s long dark hair, down the curves of female topography his hands knew by heart. If he reached out to touch her, would she stop him?

  After twenty years of marriage, how did you remember to forget?

  He walked past Grace’s hall-of-fame photo gallery, her favorites in a row. Grace’s senior prom photo, his daughter beaming in a frilly blue dress, arm linked with her just-a-friend date. Grace in her various sports team group shots: field hockey, basketball, and track-and-field players Rob knew by name.

  And then, right before Grace’s closed door, instead of Rob and Maria’s eight-by-ten wedding portrait, a giant empty space.

  “What the hell?”

  Maria flushed and held a hand to her cheek.

  Rob brushed his fingers across the lighter-than-the-rest rectangle. “Ought to cover it with one of the graduation photos.”

  Maria offered him a tight-lipped half smile, the same condolence-laden expression making the rounds in answer to news of their divorce. “You’re right.” She gave the door a single tap with her knuckles and then turned the knob.