Out and Back

The days and weeks that followed blurred together in Simon’s mind. He remembered very little except taking care of only his most basic needs and those of the cats. Get up, make coffee, eat breakfast, feed the cats, scoop the litter box, shower, dress, work, eat, sleep. He repeated that truncated to-do list to himself daily, like a mantra, because failing to adhere to it would surely mean losing the last shards of sanity he had left. Each day was a sojourn to the threshold of crippling anxiety and each day he fought mightily to pull himself back from the brink. His doctor had taken him off of the sleeping pills and instead prescribed Valium to help him stay calm. Simon wasn’t fond of the grogginess that came as a side-effect, but he did love the way his dose each evening seemed to make everything just go away. Nights were still the hardest.

Paradoxically, Simon found it harder to shake his distress as the days passed. He had thought that with time he might start to feel better, but with each day he seemed to feel worse. The knowledge that his wife had had feelings for someone else gnawed at him, and he vacillated between wanting to confront Matt and wanting to forgive Sunny. He had mailed all of Sunny’s letters except for the one to Matt. That one still sat in the top drawer of his desk. In spite of his anguish, Simon couldn’t bring himself to destroy it. Not until he got some answers. Her journal still lay on the living room floor in roughly the same spot it had landed when he’d thrown it, although he had scooped up the papers and photographs that had spilled out of it and tucked them back inside.

He hadn’t told anyone about his unfortunate discovery. To a degree, the thought of telling people threatened his pride. He didn’t want people to pity him any more than they already did. It was one thing to be a widower, but it was quite another to be a widower whose late wife had (possibly) been unfaithful to him. Every time he thought about the situation, Simon was usually able to remind himself that he didn’t know for sure whether or not Sunny actually had been unfaithful, but not knowing for sure was almost worse than certainty.

Simon was still attending the grief support group, but he mostly just listened to other people’s stories and rarely contributed anything himself, no matter how hard Nancy tried to coax something out of him. He knew that he would probably be getting more out of it if he put more into it, but at the moment it took most of the energy he had just to show up a couple of nights each week.

The world outside Simon’s door was, of course, continuing to turn, and the city of Denver was in the midst of another beautiful, mild summer. There were the occasional mid-afternoon thunderstorms, but the sun made itself known for at least part of each day. Simon found some measure of comfort in his daily walk to and from campus; he used that time to focus his mind on the things he wanted to accomplish that day, whether that was putting together syllabi for the courses he was slated to teach in the fall, meeting with students, or hammering out yet another article. The time he put in at work seemed to be the most productive and the most normal-feeling hours of his day. Simon found that having something else to concentrate on seemed to ease some of the turmoil that beleaguered him during the other hours, so he allowed himself to put in longer hours and find more and more things to do. He hadn’t presented at an academic conference in a while, so he started sending abstracts out right and left in the hopes that at least one would strike a chord with some committee, somewhere. He didn’t worry about whether or not he had already done the research necessary to actually present on the subjects in some of his abstracts; he figured he could use the time between the acceptance of his abstract and the conference itself to pull something together. That was what everybody else did, anyway. Plus, that was what graduate students were for.

One Friday afternoon in early July, Simon was working in his office when one of his fellow professors, Charlie Mason, wandered by.  A wiry man who spent his leisure time going on long runs and training for marathons, he looked much younger than his fifty-one years, despite his iron-gray hair. He and Simon had always gotten along well and Simon was still grateful for how willing Charlie had been to step in and cover Simon’s classes in the immediate aftermath of Sunny’s death.

“Dr. Parker!” Charlie greeted him in his usual cheerful manner, rapping lightly on the open door as he stepped into Simon’s office.

“Dr. Mason,” Simon replied, with a tired smile.

“What are you working on today?” Charlie wanted to know. “Another article about the world of terra-cotta? Or are you nominating the Milk Carton for the National Register of Historic Places?”

Simon managed a laugh. The “Milk Carton,” as it was known around town, was the distinctive Philip Johnson-designed, copper-colored building downtown with the asymmetrical curved roof. A major national bank had its main Denver branch and offices there. The rounded sections of the roof were heated in winter so that snow would melt on contact instead of accumulating, sliding off and posing a hazard to pedestrians and vehicles on the streets below. The building was less than thirty years old, and while at least one of Philip Johnson’s other structures had made the National Register (the famous Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut), it would probably be a while before the Milk Carton ever earned that distinction.

“Hey, don’t knock the Milk Carton,” Simon retorted. “It’s only a matter of time before its historical and architectural significance is recognized.” Charlie knew he was being sarcastic. Simon loathed most modern architecture and was forever poking fun at Eero Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and their contemporaries. Charlie, on the other hand, loved the modernists and he and Simon had engaged in many spirited debates about the relative merits of their work.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Charlie played along as he sat down in the empty chair beside Simon’s desk. “After all, God is in the details.” He was, of course, parroting a favorite phrase of Mies van der Rohe, one of Johnson’s greatest influences, collaborators, and competitors.

“OK, Mies,” Simon rolled his eyes. “No, seriously, I’m just getting ready to submit this conference abstract. I’ve been thinking about digging back into my doctoral research on place attachment. I’d like to expand on it a little, maybe do another ethnographic study.”

“Your work is the most fascinating blend of the functional and the esoteric that I’ve ever encountered,” Charlie marveled. “This university lucked out when they got you, man. You’re one of a kind.”

“I know, I’m an oddity,” Simon concurred. “Gotta keep ‘em guessing.”

Charlie smiled and changed the subject. “How’ve you been doing lately?”

Silently, Simon wondered if there was a sign on his office door instructing people to come in, sit down, and ask him how he was feeling. First Abby, and now Charlie.

“Do you really want to know?” Simon asked.

“Of course,” Charlie reassured him.

Simon took him at his word. “Not very well, Charlie. Not very well at all.” It felt good to Simon, even brave somehow, to admit that to another human being outside of the relative safety of a support group or a therapist’s office.

Charlie looked genuinely concerned. “I can’t say I’m surprised to hear you say that,” he replied. “It shows a little.”

Simon nodded and shrugged his shoulders.

“Hey,” Charlie continued. “It’s almost five. I don’t know about you, but I can’t look at my computer for another minute. What do you say we get out of here and head over to Larimer Square? We can find a pub and I’ll buy you a beer. Or ten.”

Simon chuckled. “I suppose a little self-medication wouldn’t hurt.”

“Excellent. Let me grab my stuff. I’ll meet you back here in five.” Charlie stood and headed back down the hall toward his own office, leaving Simon to power down his laptop and pack up his own things. In a few minutes, the two professors started the half-mile trek over to the Larimer Square area, making the mad dash across the decidedly pedestrian-unfriendly Speer Boulevard before arriving at the quiet block of shops, restaurants, and bars. They wandered into a tavern on the far end of the block and settled at the bar.

“What are we drinking?” Charlie asked. After a quick scan of the taps and the beer bottles that were displayed behind the bar, Simon settled on some local ale that they had on draft. Charlie ordered a pint of Guinness and the two men sat back and began enjoying their beers.

Charlie spoke first. “I have to tell you, Simon, I’ve been kind of surprised to see you around the department as much as I have this summer. I’d have thought you’d want to take some time off, relax, take it easy… you know. But you’ve really been putting in the hours.”

Simon spoke quickly. “Well, I’ve got a couple of independent study students this summer and I want to be sure I’m around for them. Plus I’ve got a few articles in the works and I’m trying to find a conference or two.”

“Yeah, but those are all things you don’t need to come in for,” Charlie pointed out. He was good at getting straight to the point. “That’s why we have laptops and email, my man.” He patted Simon’s arm.

“I know,” Simon mumbled and took a long drink from his beer glass. “I guess I just don’t like being at home that much since… you know.”

Charlie nodded. “I know. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if I’d been married to someone like Sunny, I don’t think I’d be able to function half as well as you are right now. She was really something else.”

“Yeah, she was something else all right,” Simon almost growled.

Charlie’s curiosity was piqued. He held his breath and waited for Simon to continue. Simon needed no encouragement. After another mouthful of beer, he started talking again.

“You remember how she died, right?”

“Of course. She was on her bike and someone hit her.”

Simon nodded. “Well, I’d been going through her stuff to figure out what I wanted to keep and what I didn’t need, and one of the last things I had to do was look through her panniers – you know, the bags she attached to her bike to carry things. I’ll admit I’d been putting it off. I mean, that was the stuff she carried with her all the time.”

“Sure.”

“Anyway, I finally felt like I could do it, so I pulled everything out and found her journal.”

Charlie’s eyes widened a bit but he seemed otherwise unfazed.

Simon continued. “There was a bundle of letters tucked inside of it. She’d stuck a note on it asking me to mail them if anything happened to her.”

“That was forward-thinking of her,” Charlie mused, somewhat surprised.

“Yeah, she worked in a funeral home when we were first married and she was all about planning ahead when it came to this stuff,” Simon explained. “It bordered on morbid sometimes but I have to say that when she died I was glad that she didn’t leave me with too many decisions to make on my own.”

“OK, so you found the letters,” Charlie prompted.

“Yes. Most of them were written to people you’d expect… her parents, her brother, her best friends. But there was one letter addressed to some guy named Matt. I didn’t recognize his name at all.”

“Did you figure out who he is?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Simon replied, darkly. “They worked together. He wrote to me after she died. Really perfunctory, you know? ‘You’re in my thoughts,’ blah blah blah. At any rate, I still thought it was weird that she’d written to him and not to…. well, me, to be quite honest.”

“And?”

“I started reading her journal. Chucky, she was in love with him.”

Charlie searched for a way to pose his next question as delicately as possible. “Simon, did she ever…?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you mail the letters?” Charlie punctuated the question by downing the rest of his beer.

“All but the one for Matt,” Simon replied.

“Ah,” Charlie smiled, knowingly. “I’m guessing that one went in the shredder?”

“No…” Simon’s voice echoed weirdly in his beer glass as he took another swallow. “I still have it. The way I see it, I have three choices: mail it, shred it, or rip it open and read it.”

“Makes sense.”

“The only problem is that I can’t for the life of me decide what to do.”

Charlie started to say something but stopped himself. Simon looked at him questioningly.

“What?”

“Well, I could weigh in on that dilemma, if you’d like me to.”

“Knock yourself out,” Simon encouraged Charlie with a wry smile. He pounded the last of his beer. “Any and all opinions are welcome at this point.”

“I think we need another beer first,” Charlie waved at the bartender, gestured to their two empty glasses, and within moments the empties had been replaced with two foamy, frosty, and – most importantly – full glasses of beer. After a few sips, Charlie spoke again.

“Simon, I can’t tell you what to do. You’re the only one who’ll be able to figure that out,” Charlie began. “But I can tell you what I would do if I was in your shoes, and maybe that will help.”

“I understand.”

Charlie looked Simon in the eye as he spoke. “Look, I don’t know what your marriage was like, day-to-day. But I know you married a gorgeous, awe-inspiring, frighteningly intelligent woman. Sunny was one of a kind, Simon.”

“Man, you’re starting to sound like you were in love with her,” Simon actually laughed.

Charlie shook his head. “You know Amanda is the love of my life and always will be,” he chided gently, referring to his own wife of 25 years.

Simon nodded at Charlie in a decidedly beer-buzzed way, tacitly inviting him to keep talking. He’d downed that first beer awfully fast and the second one wasn’t very far behind.

“Anyway… where was I going with this?”

“My late wife was gorgeous, awe-inspiring, and frighteningly intelligent.”

“Oh, right,” Charlie regained his train of thought. “As I was saying, Sunny was one of a kind. Would you agree with that?”

Simon nodded again. In spite of everything, he found he actually could accept Charlie’s assessment.

“She probably could have had any guy she wanted, at any time, right?” Charlie went on. “But she didn’t.”

“That I know of….” Simon faltered.

“Oh, cool it,” Charlie cut him off. “When she died, what was she doing?”

“She was on her way home from a bike ride, errands, you know….”

“That’s right,” Charlie argued. “She was on her way home. To you. To the home you two shared. During the ten years you were married to her, did you ever spend a night wondering where she was or who she was with?”

Simon had to admit that no, he hadn’t.

“Did she ever give you a reason not to trust her?”

Simon considered this for a moment, and then shook his head.

“Then don’t worry about it, Simon!” Charlie exclaimed. “She might have loved someone else, but I doubt that she ever stopped loving you, and I certainly don’t think she was fooling around with this guy behind your back. Stop thinking so much and mail the damn letter.”

“You think?” Simon asked, still unsure.

“Of course,” Charlie reassured him. “You were lucky enough to have her all to yourself for ten years. Let someone else experience the joy.”

“I had no idea you were such a romantic, there, Chuck,” Simon snorted.

“I’m going to assume that’s the beer talking,” Charlie laughed. “But seriously, I’m not a romantic. I’m a realist and I always have been. After 25 years of marriage, I can tell you that if I lost Amanda, I would be giving anybody willing to listen an earful about how wonderful she was. This guy Matt deserves to know as much as anyone does.”

Simon turned back to his beer and reflected on Charlie’s counsel. He had made several good points. But Matt Grant? Really?

Simon ordered another beer and turned back to Charlie. “Wait a second,” he argued. They might as well have been going another round or two about Mies van der Rohe. “I haven’t told you about this guy.”

“What about him?”

“I met him once,” Simon announced. “And he was such a yuppie. WASP-y, preppy, completely shallow. He was anathema to everything Sunny ever believed in. I couldn’t understand why she bothered to introduce us or what she even liked about him. I still don’t.”

Charlie swatted Simon’s statement away with a wave of his hand. “Does that really matter?” The more alcohol Charlie consumed, the more philosophical and irascible he became.  “So he drives a damn BMW and wouldn’t last a week in one of your preservation theory classes, who gives a crap? She loved him. Trust her judgment. She was no fool, right?”

“I suppose not…”

“She did pick you, after all.”

“Yeah, but she picked him, too, apparently.”

“But she picked you first,” Charlie laughed and then grew serious for a moment. “All right, I’m done arguing for now. You’ll figure out what to do, but I wouldn’t be doing my job as your friend and colleague if I didn’t at least give you my two cents.”

“And I appreciate that,” Simon smiled at his friend.

Charlie and Simon sat and drank for a another hour or two, and by the time Charlie paid the tab, making good on his promise to buy Simon a few beers, Simon was feeling suitably numb. They shook hands and clapped each other on the back out on the sidewalk and headed off in opposite directions, Simon toward home and Charlie toward the light rail station near campus. As Simon traversed the sidewalk, still a bit intoxicated and stumbling slightly, he thought about the advice Charlie had given him. He had to admit that the illustrious Dr. Mason might have been on to something. Simon had been fortunate to have Sunny to himself for ten years. Maybe the benevolent thing to do would be to share her memory with someone else. Maybe it would even help him heal the raw wounds that her death had left on his soul.

Simon made it home, and as he climbed the stairs to what had once been “their” door and let himself in, a feeling of peace began to settle over him. Still, he figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to seek a second opinion. He was, after all, considering taking the advice of someone who thought the International style was the greatest architectural movement since Greek revival. Simon laughed again as he got ready for bed. He skipped the valium for the night and crawled straight under the covers without bothering to shut the bedroom door. Clorinda and Bella came in after a little while and snuggled together on what had been Sunny’s side of the bed. For the first time in ages, Simon slept well.

The following evening, Simon arrived at the hospice center and found the room where the support group would be meeting. He was about ten minutes early and he lingered outside the door for a few minutes, even though people had already begun to gather. Silently, he sized up the other attendees as they arrived. Most everyone was older than he was, which made sense. Simon knew it was pretty unusual, although not unheard of, to lose a spouse at such a young age, and he guessed that a lot of the older people were widows and widowers. Although Simon was in his early forties, there had been an eight-year age difference between Sunny and himself. He smiled sadly as he remembered the way she would try to make his skin crawl by reminding him at various times that she had been only 13 when he was 21. Her youth had added another poignant layer to her early death.

A fifty-ish looking woman came down the corridor. Based on the materials she was carrying and her general air of familiarity, Simon guessed that this was Nancy, the group’s facilitator. Her graying hair was pulled back in a loose bun, and a pair of very retro looking cat’s-eye reading glasses dangled from a chain around her neck. She was dressed in a loose-fitting, cowl-necked gray sweater, black slacks, and sensible shoes. She reminded Simon vaguely of his junior high school principal. When she saw him, she paused.

“Are you Simon?” she asked, with a warm smile.

Simon was startled, but also reassured. “Yes,” he affirmed.

“You just looked like a Simon. I’m Nancy, we spoke on the phone yesterday.”

Simon shook her hand.

“I’m glad you’re here. Come on inside and have a seat. Nobody here bites that I know of.” She laughed, gently.

Simon followed her into the room. Around ten or twelve people had gathered, including himself and Nancy. The chairs were arranged in a circle, and Simon took a seat between an elderly man and a thin woman who looked to be relatively close to his own age. After a few more minutes, Nancy closed the door to the room and joined the circle herself, flashing another of her reassuring smiles.

“Good evening, everyone, and thank you so much for coming. My name is Nancy, and this is our support group for the recently bereaved. I’m very glad that you could join us, but I’m of course very sorry for the underlying reason that each of you is here tonight.” She paused and swiveled her head slowly, making eye contact with each of the participants.

“Just to lay a few ground rules before we get started,” she went on. “Everything we say in here is confidential. I want to stress that this is a safe place where we can share our stories and experiences and learn more about grief work, and confidentiality is essential to that. I also want to mention that everyone experiences and deals with grief differently, so it’s important that we not judge one another, but instead listen and share our perspectives in a caring way.”

Simon felt comforted by the structure. Order and rules had always appealed to him. He and the other participants waited expectantly for Nancy to continue.

“I always like to begin by having us introduce ourselves. I’d like to go around the circle and have everyone give their name and say as much or as little as they feel comfortable sharing about their loss. I’ll start. My name is Nancy, and five years ago my twenty-year-old son died in a car accident.” She looked at the woman to her left and nodded encouragingly.

Simon listened as each person introduced themselves and told a little about the death that had brought them there that night. There was Jacob, an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. Emily’s mother had died of cancer a month prior. Suzanne, the woman sitting on Simon’s right, had a teenage niece with an undetected congenital heart defect that had taken her life. Suzanne had been her niece’s guardian, so her death had understandably hit her quite hard. Everyone’s loss was a little bit different, but the one thing they had in common was the death of someone they had loved tremendously. Nancy listened supportively to each person, asking the occasional placid follow-up question in an effort to draw the quieter people out.

Soon it was Simon’s turn. He hesitated for a moment before speaking.

“I’m Simon,” he began. “And two months ago my wife, Sunny, died in a hit-and-run accident. She was riding her bicycle and she was hit by a car from behind. She had an advanced medical directive, so I had to carry out her wish to be removed from life support.”

“That’s a difficult thing,” Nancy offered. “Even knowing it’s what she wanted, it’s still a hard decision to face.”

Simon nodded emphatically. “It’s as if she died twice.” His breath caught in his throat and tears began to ooze from the corners of his eyes. Tentatively, Suzanne handed him a tissue from a small packet she had withdrawn from her handbag. Simon accepted it gratefully and dabbed at his eyes.

“Thank you, Suzanne,” Nancy murmured on Simon’s behalf. Simon turned to Suzanne and managed a watery smile of appreciation.

Once everyone had introduced themselves, the meeting continued. Since this was the first session, Nancy spent a lot of time discussing some of the experiences the members of the group might have as they went through the grieving process. She touched on some of the more well-known research about grief and loss, distributed some handouts, and recommended a few books for anyone who was interested in further reading.

The meeting adjourned with a promise from Nancy that there would be more time for sharing and discussion at the next session. Simon left feeling drained and a little overwhelmed, but also with the sense that a weight was slowly being lifted from his shoulders. He was not alone, and perhaps for the first time since Sunny had died Simon began to feel that he could work through the pain and live a reasonably happy life. The feeling of hopefulness was so new that Simon barely recognized it.

Upon returning home, Simon settled on the living room sofa. Bella and Clorinda hopped onto the couch beside him and he stroked their heads absentmindedly, still thinking about his experience at the support group meeting. Sunny’s journal was sitting on the coffee table where Simon had left it a couple of days before, and he eyed it with apprehension now.  The temptation to continue reading it overpowered him again and he picked it up, flipping through it until he found the first entry he hadn’t yet read. Sunny didn’t just write about Matt, fortunately. Her journal contained reflections about everything from a couple of the vacations they had taken together to movies she’d seen and books that she loved. She had even transcribed the lyrics from some of her favorite songs, and the pages were not only full of her words, but also of the unique, swirling doodles Simon had always loved. Simon found a few poems shoved into the back pocket that Sunny had clipped from various issues of The New Yorker, and a handful of random photographs as well. One of them was a shot of the old parachute jump tower at Coney Island, and seeing that reminded Simon that he still hadn’t scattered Sunny’s ashes.

He had no idea if he could even spread her ashes on the beach at Coney Island legally. He made a mental note to research that and, if it did turn out to be illegal, to figure out a way he could do it without getting caught. A wry smile lit his face for a moment as he thought of what Sunny might say about his scheming. He imagined her quiet glee at his uncharacteristically subversive behavior and for a split second Simon could swear he heard her laughing her warm, buoyant laugh. Simon jerked his head around and looked into the hallway, half-expecting to see her standing there in her red bathrobe, perhaps with a book or a mug of tea in her hand. His sudden movement startled the cats and they fled the room. The scurrying sound of their claws on the hardwood floor brought Simon back to reality.

“She’s gone,” he whispered to no one in particular, then corrected himself. “She’s dead.” One of the things Nancy had mentioned at that evening’s meeting was that they shouldn’t be afraid to use words like “dead” and “died” when talking about what had happened to their loved ones, as opposed to hiding behind one of the many convenient euphemisms for death. Nancy stressed that the ability to say that the person had died in an unvarnished, truly honest way was an important step in the healing process. Simon wasn’t sure how he felt about doing that, but he decided he would make the effort.

He looked again at Sunny’s journal, tucking the Coney Island photo back between the pages and flipping to the next entry. Simon’s stomach roiled as he realized that he’d found another entry about Matt. The fury that had been plaguing him intermittently for the past two days returned and all of a sudden he couldn’t stand the idea of reading another word. With a half-suppressed howl, he hurled Sunny’s journal as hard as he could and watched it fly across the room and ricochet off of the opposite wall, papers and photographs spilling out of it and floating to the floor like so many maple seed helicopters. He hadn’t read much of that particular entry, but he’d read enough. This time the offending words were, simply: I love Matt.

Heartbroken, infuriated, and utterly defeated, Simon heaved himself off the couch, but the effort it took to stand was too great and he found himself sinking to the floor. He leaned back against the side of the coffee table and folded his arms across his bent knees. He stared up at the ceiling and before long he felt the tears again, working their way out of the corners of his eyes and gathering speed as gravity pulled them along. The obsessive thoughts about Sunny and Matt invaded his mind once more and he let them uncoil, too exhausted for denial or his usual reliance on logic to defy anything remotely emotional. Simon felt as though his insides were caving in as the realization that he hadn’t known his late wife half as well as he thought he had slammed into him all over again. Had he really known her at all?

That Monday, Simon found that his work didn’t provide the usual distraction or respite that it normally did. His mind kept returning to Sunny’s journal and the painful realities it contained. Simon tried to focus on the article he was prepping for publication in a refereed journal, but thoughts of Sunny, and thoughts of Matt, and thoughts of Sunny with Matt kept invading his brain and obliterating his momentum as soon as he started to make any progress. At several points, he put the article aside and worked on composing an angry email to Matt, laden with hateful insults and ferocious accusations. He didn’t know Matt’s email address, and even if he did he knew it would be a bad idea to actually send what he’d written, but thinking about all of the nastiness he would unload on Matt given the opportunity made him feel momentarily better.

One of his graduate students, Abby James, stopped by shortly before lunchtime to ask Simon for some input on a National Register of Historic Places nomination she was working on as part of her independent study. A pretty redhead with huge green eyes and a cute figure, she was casually dressed in a pair of tattered jeans, flip-flops, and a somewhat tight t-shirt with the name of some obscure band on the front of it. Abby was a great student and Simon always enjoyed working with her, but today, as she set down her bag and settled into the chair next to his desk, he caught himself wondering what she’d look like naked… as though sleeping with one of his students would somehow erase Sunny’s betrayal – however actual or artificial it might turn out to be. Abby’s cheery voice jerked him back to reality.

“I’m glad you were in because I wanted to talk to you about my nomination,” Abby began. “I’m having a really hard time with my narrative about the building’s significance. It doesn’t seem like anything really important ever happened there.”

Simon took in the earnest expression on her face and felt instantly ashamed of himself. Wherever he had been going with his earlier thoughts about Abby, he knew that direction could not cure the present hurt and anger that was plaguing him. His head seemed to clear, and he re-focused on Abby’s question.

“You have to be able to make a good case for significance, for sure,” Simon replied. “A lot of times when writing these things, it’s easy to get hung up on the fact that George Washington didn’t sleep there, so to speak.”

Abby nodded.

“The key is to find other ways that the building has significance. Just because an event of great national historical importance didn’t happen there doesn’t mean it isn’t significant and worthy of inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.”

“Any suggestions for how to do that?” Abby inquired.

“Ask yourself this,” Simon continued. “What did the building mean to the people who lived or worked there? Is there anyone associated with the building who was well-known locally? Local significance is just as good as national significance when it comes to these things. Also, what makes it unique or distinctive? You have to get yourself out of that ‘George Washington’ frame of mind. Does that help?”

Abby smiled. “Yeah – I just needed to think about it a little differently, I guess. I’m going to go back to some of my sources and see what I can dig up.”

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something great,” Simon reassured her. “You always do.”

“Thanks,” Abby’s ears turned slightly pink at the compliment. “How have you been doing, Dr. Parker?”

The unspoken part of that question, Simon thought, cynically, was “…since your wife died.” He believed Abby was asking out of genuine concern – she was one of a small number of his students who had actually met Sunny, at a departmental happy hour the previous fall that Sunny had attended along with him. As Simon recalled, Abby and Sunny had seemed to take to one another. They had spent a lot of time talking, at any rate.

“I’m doing pretty well,” Simon replied. “Thank you for asking.”

“I know you miss her,” Abby gave him a gentle smile. She hesitated for a moment before continuing. “When my Dad died last year I found this awesome support group and it really helped me a lot. I still go once in a while, although I don’t need to as much anymore. I can email you the details if you want.”

Simon was touched by her thoughtfulness. “Sure, that would be great.”

Abby nodded and got to her feet. “I’ll send you an email. It’s through the hospice but you don’t have to have had someone receiving hospice care in order to participate.”

“Thanks a lot, Abby. I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.” Abby picked up her stuff and breezed out of Simon’s office, shutting the door behind her as she went.

Simon turned back to his computer screen and pulled up his email program. The email he had started writing to Matt was still in the Drafts folder, and Simon re-opened it and read through what he’d written. Somehow, “Guess what, asshole? My dead wife was in love with you,” didn’t seem like such a great opener anymore. Simon closed the message and went back to work on his article. A short while later, his computer chirped, announcing the arrival of a new email message. It was from Abby and it contained all the details about the grief support group she had mentioned earlier. Simon gave it a quick read and resolved to follow up on it later. It was after twelve and Simon’s stomach was growling. Grabbing his keys, he pushed back his chair and got to his feet. Pausing only to lock his office door behind him, Simon strode resolutely out of the building and over to the student union for a bite to eat.

Simon usually brought his food back to his office and worked while he ate, but today he found a bench outside and decided to eat there, focusing on nothing but the warm June day and the bright sunshine. His sandwich tasted good. Since Sunny had died, eating had been a perfunctory act at best. Shortly after her death, there was a time when had gone three days without eating, until Angie had shown up with a big pan of lasagna and a loaf of crusty Italian bread and forced him to ingest some of it. He remembered the way she had sat across the dining room table from him, never taking her eyes off of him until he had swallowed every bite of the generous portion she had served. She had even threatened to make him move in to her house so she could keep a closer eye on him and make sure he was eating. Simon knew that his older sister would make good on that warning if she thought it necessary, so he’d made more of an effort to keep eating since then. Most foods tasted like cardboard, but the turkey sandwich he was eating now – as nondescript as it was – was actually pretty delicious.

Moments like these reminded Simon – if only temporarily – of the fact that his life might actually return to normal one day. He knew things would never be the same as they had been before Sunny died, but something as simple as sitting in the sunshine and enjoying the flavor of turkey and provolone on wheat made him think that perhaps a new normal might actually be possible.

Then he remembered Sunny’s feelings for Matt and that damned letter she wanted him to mail, and the tentative optimism that had stolen over him earlier vanished along with his appetite. He wrapped up the uneaten half of his sandwich, resolving to give it to one of the homeless people that invariably hovered around the periphery of the campus. Disconsolate, Simon stood and trudged back to his office.

Once there, he settled at his desk and looked again at the email from Abby. She had included the phone number for the hospice, so Simon picked up the phone and dialed. A cheery-sounding woman answered.

“Denver Hospice.”

“Um, hello,” Simon faltered, and he nearly hung up the phone. “I’m calling about your grief support group. I’m thinking about attending and I’d like to know more about it.”

“Of course,” the woman responded. “May I have your name?”

“Simon Parker.”

“Thank you for calling us, Simon. I’m assuming you recently experienced the death of someone close to you?”

“My wife,” Simon replied.

“I’m so very sorry for your loss.” It was obvious to Simon that she had a lot of experience responding to these kinds of phone calls, but the note of sympathy in her voice felt genuine to him. She continued, “May I ask how long ago your wife died?”

Simon looked at the calendar hanging above his desk, as if he actually needed to confirm the date. “It was about two months ago.”

“So quite recently, then.” It was a statement, not a question. “Well, it happens that we have an eight-week support group for the recently bereaved – that is, people who have experienced a loss within the last three months – starting up tomorrow night. Would you like to come?”

Simon hesitated. Suddenly everything seemed to be happening much faster than he was ready for, but perhaps having a chance to meet people who were in the same boat would help.

“Um, OK.”

“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad you called us, Simon. My name is Nancy. I’m one of the grief counselors here and I’m actually going to be facilitating this group, so I’ll have a chance to meet you tomorrow night. Let me just get some additional information from you…”

Simon gave Nancy his contact information and she gave him some more details about the location and what to expect at the first meeting. He thanked her, hung up, and returned to his article. Concentration was still difficult, but admitting that he needed help coping with Sunny’s death was liberating somehow. A trace of the optimism he had felt at lunch returned.

February 2

I am so excited about my new job! It’s different from anything I’ve ever done before and I know I have a lot to learn, but I can’t wait to get started. There are some amazing people here that I’ll (hopefully) get a chance to work with. There was this one person in particular named Matt who interviewed me, and I was so impressed by him. He seemed very bright and we also had a lot in common as far as our philosophies about the work were concerned.

Simon exhaled a little as he read. So Sunny had noticed Matt early on, but it seemed as though her interest in or admiration of him had been purely professional, at least at first. He flipped ahead a few more pages, looking earnestly for any further instances of Matt’s name. It wasn’t long before he spotted Matt again:

April 8

Today was Matt’s birthday and a bunch of us took him out for drinks after work to celebrate. It was really fun – Matt and I had this really long conversation. We talked about movies, work, places we like to go for vacation, etc. He’s so easy to talk to (and damn cute when he’s had a few drinks, too.) I think what I like the best about him, though, is how genuinely kind-hearted he seems. He takes an authentic interest in people and that is so refreshing in a time when superficiality reigns supreme…. I really like him a lot.

Simon slammed Sunny’s journal closed and cast it away as though it were radioactive. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know more. He could tell from the tone of that last entry that Sunny had, at the very least, begun to think of Matt as more than just a colleague, and possibly even as more than just a friend. If the two of them had formed a romantic attachment, Simon knew he would be devastated. The very thought of it was enough to send bullets of adrenaline coursing through his whole body.

He looked at the envelope addressed to Matt that was still sitting on his desk and thought about whether or not to mail it along with Sunny’s other letters. A knock on the office door interrupted his train of thought, and he uttered a vague “come in” noise.

The door opened and Angie’s concerned face appeared.

“Just wanted to let you know that Emma and I are finished,” she said, softly. “Do you want us to drop off the stuff you’re not keeping?”

Simon gave her a sad smile. “Sure, that would be great.”

“It’s about supper time,” Angie continued. “Want to go get a bite to eat with us?”

Simon shook his head emphatically. “No, I’m not hungry. If you two just want to head home after you drop the stuff off, I’ll be fine on my own.” It wasn’t a lie. Simon felt certain that he needed to deal with this latest discovery on his own. The fact that Emma had inserted herself into his search earlier didn’t matter to him. From here on out, he knew he was on his own.

“Are you sure?” Angie looked worried.

“I need to be by myself right now,” Simon insisted, calmly. “I really appreciate all of your help today, though. It’s definitely made things easier on me.”

Angie nodded. “If you change your mind, we’re both just a phone call away, OK?”

Simon returned her nod, and then got to his feet. “Show me what needs to go downstairs; I can help load it into your car.”

He followed Angie into the hallway where Emma was waiting for them. There were a half-dozen or so boxes stacked nearby, and Simon hefted one of them and headed for the stairs. Angie and Emma followed and they soon had all of the boxes containing the last remnants of Sunny’s life loaded into the back of Angie’s SUV.

Simon shut the back door of the car, and then turned to his sisters. The three siblings gazed at each other for a long moment. It was Simon who broke the silence.

“Thanks again.”

Angie and Emma murmured, “You’re welcome” at almost the exact same instant, and then they each gave him a long hug. Simon stood on the sidewalk and watched as they clambered into the car and drove away. Once Angie’s taillights had disappeared around the corner, Simon turned back toward the apartment building and headed inside. He made his way up the stairs and closed the apartment door softly behind him, locking it. He peered into the living room and noted the absence of Sunny’s things, then went down the hall to the bedroom and made the same observation. The closet door was still open and Simon’s clothes looked a little forlorn hanging there by themselves. Sunny had been a confirmed clothes horse and her wardrobe had always taken up about two-thirds of every closet they’d ever shared during the course of their marriage. It was one of those little things about her that had always driven Simon mildly crazy.

Tears welled in Simon’s eyes and he gave a rueful laugh as he remembered how stuffed that closet had once been. He hadn’t anticipated that he would miss that part of Sunny. With a sigh, he switched off the bedroom light and wandered out of the bedroom. Once again, he was starting to feel that panic that always seemed to precede a particularly bad bout of grieving. Simon would have done anything in that moment to have Sunny back; to hear her voice, taste her kisses, even to have a bitter disagreement with her. Anything was better than her absence.

Simon looked down the hall toward the office. Sunny’s journal seemed to be calling to him, and as much as he wanted to, the masochist inside of him couldn’t resist the urge to learn more about what she had been feeling for Matt. He took a deep breath and went into the office to get it. He grabbed the journal from his desk and made a quick detour back to the kitchen to brew some coffee, then dug out a bottle of Frangelico from one of the kitchen cabinets – it had been a favorite of Sunny’s – and added a shot to his mug, filling it the rest of the way with fresh coffee. Mug and journal in hand, he settled onto the living room couch and began to sip and read.

August 23

These feelings need an outlet. My attraction to Matt is, more or less, purely physical. I doubt we even have that much in common. Yet I’m terrified of “screwing up” in front of him. It’s one of the reasons why, when I learned he’d been asking about me when there was an opening on his team, I was flattered as hell but I knew there was no way I could actually work for him. I would be utterly terrified of screwing up, making a mistake or doing anything that could be perceived as letting him down. Wow. I have serious paternal issues if this is the way I crush on someone. And yet I’m not afraid of screwing up in front of Simon. He embraces me, flaws and all. But is that really love, or just complacency? I can’t believe I just asked that question… what I feel for Matt is just sad, silly infatuation. Simon and I have real love or something approximating it. I suppose, all the same, I can’t help wondering if the big change I need to make in my life involves my husband. Things aren’t always what they seem….

Simon drew a long breath and took three large gulps from his coffee mug. There was no doubt in his mind now that Sunny had had it bad for Matt. On top of that, she had been questioning, albeit abstractly, the value of their own marriage. Anger and resentment welled inside of him. Granted, he’d only met Matt once, and the memory of their meeting was somewhat dim, but from what he could remember there hadn’t been all that much about Matt that was terribly impressive. He was just some guy, an overgrown version of the preppy rich kids that had tortured Simon all through junior high and high school. Simon could spot his type a mile away.

“What in the hell did you ever see in that guy, Sunny?” Simon wondered aloud. He continued reading.

October 14

I am in love. Matt and I had the nicest conversation tonight. It practically made my entire year. He probably has no inkling that what we shared tonight meant more to me than I can say. So much more than I can even put into words. It’s achingly painful, too, because I love him so much and could never…. But I needed this. And it was perfect. I won’t let myself hope for more, and yet I’m praying there will be. I admit, I wonder if his marriage is really that good. His wife is a knockout, but I wonder if she’s really “all that,” as they say. She is gorgeous, for sure. Even if he wasn’t married to her, I could never compete with that. I know I’m pretty and I take pride in that, but it’s clear, based on the woman he married, that his tastes seem to run toward the all-American, Barbie doll, bubbly blonde standard. And I will never be that woman.

My impression of her, though, is that she’s kind of a robot, and I wonder if he’s really happy with that. There’s something simmering under the surface with him – the clean-cut exterior has to be way different than what’s underneath. I would kill for a chance to really get to know him, to see what’s really there. He rocks my world and I know I could rock his given the opportunity. I’m floored by how beautiful he is every time I see him. When he talks to me, I have to remind myself to breathe. I am completely crazy about him. And I do love Simon, but Matt just lights me up. I don’t know how else to describe it….

Simon stayed awake for most of the night, reading his way through Sunny’s journal. There were entries that were hard for him to stomach; her waxing poetic about Matt made his skin crawl at times, for certain. He lost track of the number of times he had had to stop reading and sob for a few minutes. He filled the wastebasket next to the sofa with tissues and wasn’t shy about keeping up a steady intake of Frangelico and coffee. At first, he’d felt improbably privileged to be reading her innermost thoughts, her uncensored reality. He was seeing a side of her he’d never had a chance to know when she was alive, and although that reality was at times difficult to reconcile with the woman he thought he had known, he understood on some level that learning more about who she was had to be a positive thing.  But the further he read, the harder it became to look at it that way, because the bottom line was that his wife had been in love with another man.

It gradually became clear to him as he read that as far as her written record was concerned, nothing physical, or even all that emotional, had transpired between Sunny and Matt. There were many words dedicated to Matt, that was for sure, but there was just as much written about the fact that Sunny didn’t want to reveal how she felt to Matt as long as she was still married to Simon. Simon supposed that if she and Matt had ever been more than colleagues and friends, Sunny might have had the sense not to write about it in her journal, but her words about him were permeated with so much bliss that Simon had a hard time imagining Sunny being able to contain the news if she and Matt had in fact taken their relationship to another level. This conclusion did little to reassure Simon – he felt betrayed, at the very least. Regardless of whether or not his wife had actually cheated on him, she’d certainly lost her heart to someone else.

Simon nodded off shortly before dawn and awoke a little while later with a crick in his neck and Sunny’s journal lying on his chest. Bella and Clorinda stared at him from their bed near the radiator. Simon stirred, and placed the journal on the coffee table. He had a pounding headache. Of the two of them, Sunny had always had the higher tolerance for alcohol, and Simon honestly couldn’t remember her ever having had a hangover.

Simon rose from the sofa carefully and shuffled into the kitchen to make another pot of coffee. He saw the bottle of Frangelico where he’d left it on the kitchen counter and groaned softly, cradling his throbbing head in his hands for a moment. How could Sunny drink that stuff? He managed to get cold water and ground coffee beans loaded into the coffeemaker without too much trouble, and then washed out his mug while he waited for the brewing cycle to finish. The cloying hazelnut scent of the Frangelico was still lingering in the cup and he knew if he tasted another drop or even got a whiff of it, he’d probably throw up.

Simon went to the bathroom and rooted around in the medicine cabinet for some aspirin, swallowing two with a mouthful of water from the bathroom sink. He heard the coffee pot making the telltale gurgling noise that signaled that the coffee was ready and quickly made his way back to the kitchen to pour himself a cup. He took a long sip of the rich, warm liquid and it seemed to clear his head. He looked out the kitchen window to the back patio and the alleyway beyond. The sun was getting higher in the sky now and soon it would be time to head to work.  Because it was summer, Simon didn’t have any courses to teach, but he was supervising a couple of students who were doing independent study during the summer term and he had been in the habit of going in to his office in case they needed him for anything during the course of the day. It gave him time to work on a few articles he was writing, too, and of course got him out of the apartment and away from his memories of Sunny.

His mind wandered back to the things he’d learned the previous night. Through the haze of his hangover, he tried to reconcile this new information about his late wife with his original assumptions and perceptions about her. She had definitely been carrying a torch for Matt, and Simon had found it somewhat remarkable to trace the evolution of her feelings through the journal entries he’d read. Simon had an incredible ability to detach from emotions and look at things analytically – Sunny had been aggravated many times by his recurrent tendency to withdraw into his intellect – but now, in spite of his attempts to look at these latest developments logically, his anger and worry continued to fester inside of him. What he didn’t know for certain was whether or not Sunny had ever acted on what she felt. He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure, and that thought troubled him greatly. Not that there was anything he could do about it now, short of burning or shredding the letter to Matt to ensure that he’d never see it.

Simon thought about what he knew of Matt, combining his impression of him from their one brief meeting with all the things Sunny had said about him in her journal. He still didn’t understand what Sunny saw in him. Sunny had always been very politically active, and her progressive politics (coupled with her penchant for radical feminist theory) would have clashed mightily with Matt’s more conservative, traditional values. Sunny had often told Simon that she could never be with anyone who didn’t accept her beliefs, because to her the political was also intensely personal. On top of that, Sunny loathed the sport of golf, and Matt was practically a golf pro. Sunny was a free spirit, and Matt seemed so staid and conformist that Simon truly could not fathom how the two of them ever could have progressed beyond a casual workplace friendship.

“It just isn’t possible,” Simon muttered to himself. “Maybe she just thought he was cute and that’s as far as it went.” He hoped that was the case, but without confirmation from somewhere he would never know for sure.

Simon polished off the last of his coffee, fed the cats, and went to shower and dress. He grabbed a banana from the kitchen and threw his messenger bag over his shoulder. As he prepared to walk out the door, he saw Sunny’s letters still sitting on his desk in the office. He ignored them for the time being and left for work.

Chapter 5

Simon shuffled the stack of letters again, certain that he must have missed one. He couldn’t imagine Sunny not writing something for him, but unless she’d stashed it somewhere else for him to find, it appeared that she hadn’t. He stared at the envelopes. The one for Matthew Grant, whoever that was, was sitting on the top of the pile. Simon squinted at it. Who was Matthew Grant? The name seemed vaguely familiar to him the more he stared at the envelope, but maybe it was just the familiarity of Sunny’s handwriting that he was noticing. No, there was something else. Matthew was often shortened to Matt. Matt Grant. That seemed even more familiar.

With an uncharacteristic suddenness of movement, Simon spun his chair around and yanked open the bottom drawer of a nearby filing cabinet. He had saved all of the cards and notes people had sent after Sunny had died; they were all in this drawer in a large manila envelope. Simon snatched it up, slammed the drawer shut, and made a beeline for the dining room. Emma, who was still organizing the last of Sunny’s personal effects into boxes, did a double take as he blew past her.

“Simon?”

“What?” Simon’s voice held an edge, as if he was trying to wedge the word itself between himself and his sister. Fortunately (or unfortunately) Emma was notorious for failing to pick up on social cues, or just ignoring them outright. It was part of what made her so off-putting to people at first. She stood and strode purposefully into the dining room.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Simon muttered, unconvincingly. “I’m just looking for something.” He dumped the contents of the envelope out on the table and began fanning them out with his hands.

“Can I help?”

Simon shrugged. Emma took that as a yes and seated herself across the table from him.

“What are we looking for?”

“A note from someone named Matt,” Simon replied. “At least that’s what I think we’re looking for.”

“Matt who?”

“Last name is ‘Grant.’”

“OK, then.” Emma pulled a portion of the pile over to her side of the table and began looking through it. There were notes and cards of all shapes and sizes, but Simon hadn’t saved any of the envelopes, quashing Emma’s initial instinct to start by checking out names on return address labels. She sighed, picked up a store-bought sympathy card, and flipped it open. Nope. She moved on to the next one. Still nothing. She looked across at Simon, who was working feverishly through his half of the pile.

“Who is this guy, honey?”

“I don’t know!” There was anguish in Simon’s voice now, and he dropped the note he had been looking at and put his head down on the table. He drew in a shaky breath.

Emma regarded him analytically for a moment, as if she were conducting an interview or a psychological experiment. She swallowed hard.

“Simon,” she began, haltingly, her usual brusque nerve faltering. Simon raised his head and looked at her. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” Simon admitted. Quietly, he told Emma what he had discovered as he went through Sunny’s panniers. “I’m trying to figure out who this guy is, and I thought maybe he might have sent a note or a sympathy card when Sunny died. The name sounds familiar.”

Emma nodded. “But you still don’t know why Sunny left a letter for him and it’s making you crazy, isn’t it?”

“Leave it to you not to sugarcoat it,” Simon managed a wry grin.

“Well, let’s see if he did write to you,” Emma turned her attention back to her pile. “If he did, I suppose that would be a clue.”

Simon returned to thumbing through the notes on his side of the dining table with renewed concentration. He and Emma searched in silence for several more minutes. Suddenly, she gasped. Simon’s head snapped up.

Emma was holding a cream-colored correspondence card with a thin navy blue border. From across the table, Simon could tell it contained several lines of compact handwriting, but that was all.

“Shall I read it?” Emma asked.

Simon shook his head and held out his hand. Emma passed the card to him. Pushing his glasses further up onto his nose, he began to read it to himself.

Dear Simon,

I was shocked and saddened to learn of Sunny’s passing. Please know you are in my thoughts at this difficult time. Sunny was a delightful presence here in the office and I know I am not the only one who will miss her talent and good humor. I feel fortunate to have known her, and hope you will find comfort in your memories of her.

Sincerely,

Matt Grant

“Could that be more generic?” Simon scoffed, passing the note back to Emma. “I’m not sure if it’s a condolence note or a performance evaluation.”

“Was he her boss or something?” Emma inquired.

“No, but I think he’s in management,” Simon replied, his vague recollection of Matt slowly coming into focus. “Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I met him once, at a party.”

“And?”

“I found him totally unremarkable,” Simon continued. “Just another preppy yuppie as far as I was concerned. I’m not sure why Sunny even bothered to introduce us. She couldn’t stand people like that.”

“From what I hear you saying,” Emma mused, “I can’t think why Sunny would have written him a letter.”

“Me neither.”

“Well, you could open her letter to him before you send it,” Emma suggested. “Or just not send it at all.”

“I couldn’t do that,” Simon protested. “Even though Sunny’s gone, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do this for her.”

“Oh, come on, Simon. It’s not like she’s going to yell at you,” Emma’s voice had taken on that wheedling tone that Simon hated. He gave her a look, and she backed off. “At least give yourself some time to think about it,” she encouraged.

Simon responded to her tactlessness by gathering up the pile of papers and cards on the table – except for the one from Matt – and shoving them back into the envelope in which he’d been storing them. With a quick jerk of his head, he pointed Emma back to her unfinished task in the living room and stalked out.

Back in the office, Simon closed the door behind him and replaced the envelope of condolence notes in the filing cabinet. He sat down at his desk, placing Sunny’s letter to Matt and Matt’s note to him side by side in front of him. He looked from one to the other, growing more and more mystified and uneasy about what he didn’t know. His stomach churned as ever more outrageous scenarios flooded his mind. Had Sunny had an affair with Matt? Had she died owing him money? Was there something even more bizarre going on that Sunny had kept hidden? Simon shook his head in a vain attempt to purge these and other thoughts from his mind. As he did so, he noticed Sunny’s journal out of the corner of his eye. It was sitting on the other side of his desk, where he’d set it after discovering Sunny’s letters. He turned and stared at it. Maybe the answers were in there.

Gingerly, he reached over and picked it up, as if he expected it to disappear or fall to pieces in his hands. Softly, gently, he flipped the cover back, found the first page that contained writing, and started to read. In the back of his mind, he rationalized his decision by telling himself that while the envelope for Matt was sealed, Sunny’s journal was not. And Simon needed answers.

Chapter 4

Upon awakening in the mornings, it often took a few moments for Simon to remember that Sunny was gone. Sometimes he would even roll half-awake to her side of the bed, expecting to feel her soft curves and warm skin instead of an empty expanse of blankets and sheets. Then the realization would hit, and he would have to lay there for a few more minutes before he could force himself to get up and face the day.

People had been more bold about asking him how he was feeling lately, and he had gotten so good at telling everyone he was fine that he had begun believing it himself. It was easier to say “I’m fine” or “I’m hanging in there” than to try to evaluate whether people genuinely wanted to know how he was holding up or were just asking to be polite. As for how he was really doing, well… he was doing a good job of telling himself that he was fine. Sunny had been dead for two months.

Simon awoke on a bright Sunday morning in mid-June and felt the usual pang of realization regarding Sunny’s absence. It had become so customary to him by this point that he took a small amount of comfort in it. This morning, the pang was followed by a strong sense of purpose which pushed him out of the bed and into the kitchen to start the coffee. Angie and Emma, two of his older sisters, were coming over in a while to help him finish going through Sunny’s belongings.

A couple of weeks prior, he had gotten off to a decent start on that task. It had been a painful process and he had needed to enlist help from friends and family in order to get through it. He had started with the things of hers that he knew he wanted to keep: the blue zircon earrings and necklace he had given her as a wedding present, her engagement ring and wedding band, her Coney Island memorabilia, a few of her books (The Great Gatsby included) and an assortment of other items that had sentimental value. When he could, he had returned other things of hers to the people that had given them to her originally.

He was planning to give most of her clothes, with the exception of a few t-shirts he wanted to save, to the local rape crisis center where Sunny had volunteered when she was alive. She had told him stories about counseling rape victims who had nothing to wear home but hospital scrubs after their rape kit exams, since their clothes were often taken as evidence. The center was always collecting gently used clothing in order to be able to provide victims with something to wear home, so Simon knew Sunny would have approved of his decision to give them her clothes. His sisters were going to go through them first, in case there was anything of hers that they wanted. Sunny would have been fine with that too; she and Angie, in particular, were always borrowing each other’s clothes and shoes.

There were a few boxes of her files that he still needed to go through, and he was going to have to pack up the books of hers that he wasn’t keeping. He hadn’t gone through her panniers yet, either, the bags she’d had attached to the back of her bike the night of the accident. The police had returned them to him, but he hadn’t yet had the courage to dig through the stuff she carried with her most every day.

Simon turned on the coffee pot and set about fixing himself a bowl of oatmeal, his usual breakfast. The sunlight was streaming in through the kitchen window and the cats wound themselves around his ankles as he went back and forth from the fridge to the counter and over to the microwave. The coffee pot gurgled as it filled. It could have been a scene from any Sunday morning during the course of Simon and Sunny’s marriage. If she was still alive, Sunny most likely would have been up before Simon to feed the cats and walk to the corner market for the Sunday paper. By the time she got back, Simon would be up and the coffee would be brewing, and they’d settle onto the sofa to eat and read, preferring the coffee table to the formality of the dining room.

Despite the wide availability of news and information on television and the internet, Sunny had loved the Sunday paper. She would read it methodically, pulling out the various sections and putting them into her own special order, and Simon knew better than to ask her for a particular section before she was finished with it. Sunny loved the advertising circulars too, saving them for last and dog-earing the corners if she came across something on special somewhere that they needed to buy. She clipped grocery coupons as well, although she grumbled frequently that there were never any coupons for the things they normally bought – coupons were a gimmick designed to get people to buy stuff they didn’t need, she would insist.

She would become so absorbed with the paper that her coffee would get cold, so Simon would zap it for her in the microwave for a few seconds. When he returned it, she would pause in her reading to express her appreciation by kissing him lightly on the cheek. Simon put a hand to his face as he remembered and tears stung the corners of his eyes. He glanced at the kitchen counter, where her favorite coffee cup was sitting. Simon had finally washed it, but he had left it on the counter, the wilder part of his mind imagining that she’d waltz into the kitchen some morning in search of it. She’d bought it in Tombstone, Arizona during a stop they’d made on vacation a few years ago. It had a picture of Doc Holliday on it and the words, “I’m your huckleberry.” Sunny always sought out the cheesiest souvenirs.

Simon turned away, poured himself a cup of coffee, and retrieved his oatmeal from the microwave. He ate in the dining room, and then got dressed. A short while later, he heard the buzzer and headed downstairs to open the front door for his sisters.

Angie and Emma were both in their upper-middle fifties, born a couple of years apart and with a strong family resemblance, but they couldn’t have been more different in terms of personality. Angie, the oldest, was the more conventional of the two – married at a young age, mother to three adult children, and now a grandmother to two young boys. She had been a teenager when Simon was born and for years she and Emma had been his only babysitters. Emma was more of a free spirit. A gifted artist, she’d shown her sculptures in several galleries around Denver and had a steady enough income stream from the sale of her art that she could devote herself full time to her creative pursuits. That was a good thing, because her eccentric personality had made it hard for her to hold down a more typical nine-to-five job. Despite living only a few miles apart, Angie and Emma didn’t see each other often. Their personalities often clashed, and there had been times when they had gone for years without speaking to one another. But their immense love for Simon had resulted in a cease fire, and they had arrived to help.

They took turns hugging him tightly, Angie first.

“How are you holding up, sweetie?” she whispered as she released him from her embrace.

Simon shrugged. “I’m functioning,” he replied, matter-of-factly, as Emma reached out to hug him, too.

“Are you getting enough to eat?” Emma demanded. “You’re looking skinnier.”

“I’m fine, Em. Thanks for coming.”

“You tell us what you want us to do, OK?” Angie offered, solicitously. “You’re in charge.”

“Well…” Simon began, “I was planning to donate most of her clothes and shoes and stuff. But if there’s anything you want, you can help yourself. She would have been happy for you to have anything of hers. Go ahead and take a look.” He pointed Angie toward the bedroom. “I put some boxes in there; whatever you don’t want, just pack up and we can take it down to the crisis center.”

“Em,” he continued. “There’s a pile of her stuff in the living room there – books and things that I’m not keeping. Do you mind boxing that stuff up for me?”

“No problem,” Emma was all business, making a beeline for the living room.

“Same goes for that stuff,” Simon called after her. “See anything you want, it’s yours.”

His sisters occupied, Simon went into the office. In the closet were Sunny’s panniers. He knew he needed to look through them and now seemed like the right time to do it. If the task proved too difficult, he could always take a break and go help his sisters.

He pulled the panniers out of the closet and carried them over to what had been Sunny’s desk. They were actually two separate bags that could be detached from one another. Their handles were linked by a Velcro strap and there were two rigid hooks attached to the tops of each bag that were designed to fit onto the rear rack of a bicycle. Each bag also had a strong elastic cord with another hook that could be attached lower down on the bicycle’s frame, near the chain stay. Reflective material had been sewn onto the bags to help make the rider more visible. Simon thought blackly of the fact that the reflectors on the bags and the bike itself, not to mention the two lights Sunny always used, hadn’t done a thing to stop that moron from hitting her and fleeing the scene. The bags were scarred and dirty, with a few small tears in them resulting from the impact of the accident. Simon’s stomach lurched, and he felt fortunate that he hadn’t had to see Sunny lying in the street before the paramedics came. Seeing her in a hospital bed, her body broken and her luminous skin dulled with bruises and cuts had been bad enough. Then he felt guilty. If he had been there, at the scene, maybe he could have done something.

Gingerly, Simon unzipped one of the bags and reached in. He found the inhaler Sunny carried with her in case her asthma flared up. Its plastic housing was cracked and chipped in places and the cap was completely missing. The next thing to come out was her wallet. He would look through that later. Next, her keys. He fingered the silver seahorse keychain that he had bought her in Mexico. Sunny had loved it because she loved seahorses, but she also loved it because the seahorse’s dorsal fin doubled as a bottle opener. Simon laughed, softly. That was everything in that side, except for some lint and a bit of loose change. The other side still felt heavy, though, and Simon unzipped it.

An empty plastic water bottle that had been crushed by the impact of the accident, some rain gear, a few pens, and a bicycle tire patch kit revealed themselves to him. Finally, he reached to the bottom and pulled out a thick black notebook with a hard leather cover. An elastic band attached to the back cover held it closed. Simon gasped. This was Sunny’s journal.

For as long as Simon had known her, Sunny had always kept a journal. Sometimes she wrote in it daily, and other times she let several weeks, or even months, go by without making an entry, but she had always had one. It had been sacrosanct to her. Simon never invaded her privacy, even when curiosity about what his wife could be writing about that she couldn’t share with anyone else threatened to get the better of him. Even now, he was hesitant, as though she might appear before him and demand he hand it over. His fingers worried the elastic a little, and then with a decisive movement of his hand he slid it off.

The notebook nearly fell open into his lap, so full was it of clippings, photos, and even a few recipes Sunny’s mom had written down on index cards. The elastic hadn’t just been holding it shut, it had practically been holding it together. The spine was showing signs of strain. There was a little accordion-type pocket on the inside of the back cover, and it also overflowed with a thick assortment of papery items. Curious, Simon separated it with his index finger, and extracted a small bundle of sealed monarch-sized envelopes with a rubber band around it. Each envelope was slightly puffy, as though it contained several sheets of paper. Simon turned them over in his hands. There was a sticky note attached to the top of the pile.

Simon,

If anything happens to me, please see that these letters get delivered.

I love you,

Sunny

Simon’s body went cold for a moment, but then he relaxed. This was just like Sunny. Not long after they got married, they’d moved to a small college town in Missouri. Simon had been finishing his Bachelor’s degree, and Sunny found part-time work as a receptionist in a funeral home. For several months, she had witnessed the anguish of the bereaved friends, caretakers, and family members of perfect strangers, and that anguish was often compounded by the fact that the deceased had left no instructions or guidance as far as funeral arrangements and other end-of-life matters were concerned. Since she had observed that dreadful pain, Sunny had made it her mission to ensure that she and Simon took care of those things ahead of time. She had taken time to research topics like living wills and power of attorney, and she had even written down what she wanted at her memorial service and her wishes regarding the disposition of her remains. Simon thought back to Sunny’s memorial service and knew that the reason it had gone as well as it had was because Sunny’s fingerprints had been all over it. So it was no surprise to him that she might have written letters to a few special people in her life, just in case she never had a chance to say a proper goodbye.

Simon snapped the rubber band off of the packet of letters and shuffled through them as though they were a deck of cards. Each one was already addressed to its recipient in Sunny’s elegant-but-quirky handwriting, and the varying degrees of discoloration on the envelopes indicated that Sunny had most likely written them at different points in time. There was one for Sunny’s brother, one addressed to her parents, as well as one for each of her two best friends. Simon reached the bottom of the pile, expecting to see a letter for himself, but there wasn’t one.

The last letter, which looked newer than the rest, was addressed to someone named Matthew Grant, in Charleston, South Carolina.

Chapter 3

Charleston, South Carolina doesn’t have four seasons; instead, the conditions slide from blazing summer to mellow winter and back again with a few weeks of milder temperatures on each end that serve as a subtle line of demarcation. When Simon and Sunny had lived there, Sunny had missed having a real autumn. It was her favorite time of year; the changing leaves and crisp air invigorated her. The shift from summer to winter in Charleston was so understated that it never felt like autumn, and every year Sunny had mourned the absence of her favorite season.

But for others who called Charleston home, the extended periods of warm temperatures and sunshine were a bonus. Matthew Grant was one of those people. A golfer and all-around outdoorsman, he loved any kind of weather that got him out of the house and onto the golf course or the beach, or into a boat on the intercoastals. He was one of those guys with a year-round tan, and he never looked tired. He had a seemingly boundless supply of energy that coursed through him like a cool current, humming just under the surface of his skin, making him always appear robust and vital. That he was also smart, charismatic, handsome, and in possession of a golf swing most guys would kill for was just icing on the cake.

Matthew, or Matt as most people called him, worked for the same company Sunny had. He was introduced to Sunny when she interviewed for her first job there; he had been one of several people who had been asked to meet with her that day. He still remembered how much she had impressed him….  She had been articulate but not condescending, with a meticulous attention to detail that he knew would be an asset in the job for which they were considering her. On top of that, Sunny was completely disarming. To Matt, it went beyond just simple charm. She was enchanting. Once you started talking to her, you didn’t want to stop. She wasn’t his type at all (Matt loved leggy blondes and Sunny was a curvy brunette) but he remembered being captivated by her agile mind and easy affability.

There was no question in Matt’s mind that the company would want to hire her, and he was hoping he would get her on the team he managed, but it never worked out that way. Sunny ended up reporting to a couple of different managers, and a year or so into her tenure she had turned down an opportunity to come and work for him. Matt never quite understood why, but figured she had her reasons. He kept tabs on her, though, and when she got promoted to the vacant management position in their division he felt as proud of her as he would of a family member. Likewise, when he received a promotion to upper management himself not long after, Sunny had been one of the first to send him a congratulatory note.

Their paths never crossed very much at work, save for the occasional shared project or mentoring conversation. Matt felt her absence, though, after she and Simon left for Denver. He was pleased that she was continuing to work for the company, but he missed seeing her around the building. When the Vice President of their division sent out the email notifying everyone of her death, Matt had felt genuinely shocked and sad. Matt was divorced, but he still remembered how much he had loved his ex-wife before things had gone south and how awful it would have been to lose her at such a young age. He thought at the time that Simon must have been going through hell. He had only met Simon once, at a company holiday party, but given his high regard for Sunny, Matt wrote a brief condolence note to Simon and mailed it off to Denver in the days following her death.

Ultimately, the initial upset of Sunny’s death proved only a temporary disruption for Matt. By the time she died, he had more or less gotten used to her absence, and it wasn’t long before his life felt normal again. He remembered her fondly as a terrific employee and a great colleague, but that was all.

Matt’s marriage had ended about a year and a half ago, right around the time Sunny left for Denver, and he was still single. His wife had been unfaithful to him, but what had upset Matt wasn’t so much the actual infidelity, but the realization that his wife of six years was not, in fact, who he thought she was. She hadn’t asked him to forgive her; rather, she admitted she was in love with the other man and asked Matt for a divorce so they could be together. Matt obliged, but he had been hurt, and now he was enjoying playing the field. He had been on a lot of dates and had one or two relatively serious girlfriends in the past year, but he wasn’t ready to settle down just yet. He spent his weekend days out golfing or fishing with the guys, returning home in the evenings to shower, dress, and head downtown for drinks and idle flirtation or to take the girl of the moment on a romantic date somewhere.

Deep down, Matt probably missed the companionship and security of marriage more than he wanted to admit. He had been eager to become a father, too. Most of all, he missed the rush of falling in love, and the inherent joy in having an incredible partner with whom to share his life, for better or for worse. Politically conservative, it was easy for Matt to embrace the image of a house with a white picket fence, a beautiful stay-at-home wife and mother, 2.5 kids, a dog or two, a minivan, church on Sunday, and all those traditional “family values” the politicians were always going on about. Every time he heard the satisfying THWACK of golf club against ball, he imagined that life. He and his ex-wife had been going in that direction, and ever since their marriage ended, Matt had been feeling increasingly unmoored. What other possibilities were there, really?

On a Saturday afternoon in early April, Matt had been golfing with a few friends. As they played their way through the back nine, the sky began clouding up and when thunder started rumbling in the distance, they knew they’d have to cut the game short. They made it to their golf carts before the rain started to pour and zipped back to the clubhouse for beers and snacks.

The foursome gathered around a table on the club’s covered patio so that they could watch what was turning out to be a pretty dramatic storm. Lightning flashed in the distance and the rain fell hard and fast, soaking everything. The lightning made Matt think of his camera. Photography was a hobby of his; it was the one remotely creative activity he engaged in on a regular basis. He was good enough that some of his photos had been displayed in a couple of smaller galleries, and he’d lucked out and actually sold a couple of them, too. He tended to photograph landscapes and thought briefly for a moment about how cool it would be to get a good outdoor shot during a rainstorm.

“What do you think, guys?” asked Matt. “Downtown going to be flooded?”

“Probably,” replied Matt’s friend, Rob. “We may have to re-think tonight.”

The guys had been planning to visit a few of their favorite bars downtown that evening, including a fantastic raw bar that had great oysters. Matt stretched, his shoulder muscles shifting under the fabric of his blue polo shirt. He cut a slim silhouette, but he was powerfully built, with the good muscle tone and definition that only comes from regular exercise. He ran a strong hand through his sandy brown hair – at 35, his hairline showed no sign of receding – and returned his attention to the show Mother Nature had been putting on for them.

“Maybe it’ll have let up by then,” Matt offered, ever the optimist. “Storms never last that long around here.”

His friends nodded and they agreed to revisit the topic later. Matt sipped his beer and let his mind wander. He’d played well today, but there were a few easy putts that he’d missed. He chalked it up to distraction, but the more he thought about it he couldn’t be sure what had been distracting him. He sat quietly, watching the rain pour and listening to the thunder.

He swallowed another mouthful of beer, and as he did so an odd memory sprang to his mind. Suddenly, he was remembering a day at work a couple of years ago, in a rainstorm much like this one. He had just returned from lunch, and had been annoyed because he’d had to park pretty far from the building’s entrance. It wasn’t that he minded walking the extra steps, but the sky looked like it was about to rain and he’d left his umbrella upstairs in his office. Sure enough, just as he prepared to get out of the car and make a break for the doors, the skies opened and unleashed a torrential downpour. He had an important meeting scheduled that afternoon and really didn’t want to arrive looking like he’d spent his lunch hour swimming in his clothes.

That day had already tried his patience; it seemed like he had been dealing with projects that had gone off the rails and emergencies all morning, and the meeting this afternoon promised more of the same. Figuring he’d better just run for it, he looked around the inside of his car to see if he had at least a plastic bag or a newspaper that he could hold over his head.

Just then, he heard a couple of sharp raps on the driver’s side window. He turned, and although the raindrops snaking their way down the glass obscured her somewhat, he could make out Sunny Parker standing just outside the driver’s door. She was wearing a plum-colored raincoat and holding a huge golf umbrella with the corporate logo emblazoned on it. He had one just like it – everyone had gotten one as a present at the last departmental conference.

She motioned for him to get out of the car and then moved out of the way as he swung the door open. Holding the umbrella aloft so he could exit his car without getting drenched, she gave him a cheerful grin.

“Thanks, Sunny! I thought I was going to get soaked, and I have a 1:30.”

“It’s your lucky day,” she replied. “I pulled in right behind you and it didn’t take me long to figure out why you weren’t getting out of your car! Isn’t this rain god-awful?”

Matt locked his car and positioned himself under the umbrella so that Sunny’s right arm (the arm holding the umbrella) was between them. He took her elbow, and they trotted across the parking lot together, keeping their bodies relatively close to maximize the umbrella’s coverage while simultaneously trying to avoid stepping into puddles or onto each other’s toes. When they reached the building, Matt opened the door and held it for Sunny while she collapsed the umbrella and shook as much excess water from it as she could. She preceded him through the door and the two of them walked across the building’s atrium together, heading toward the staircase that led to their respective offices on the second floor and chatting as they went. The sounds of the deluge outside receded to a quiet patter on the roof high above their heads.

“Thanks again for bailing me out,” he smiled at her as they reached the short corridor that led to her office. “That was really nice of you.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “I hate getting caught without my umbrella.”

They had parted then, but the image of Sunny in her raincoat, standing outside his car with her umbrella like some kind of no-nonsense guardian angel, had fixed itself in his mind. He hadn’t thought of that day in a long time, and he felt a little startled by the memory’s sudden return to the forefront of his mind. Sunny had just been a casual acquaintance. That she was no longer living was certainly sad, but Matt had had many other things on his mind lately besides his deceased co-worker.

A light punch in the arm returned him to the present moment. Rob was trying to get his attention.

“Matt, dude,” Rob exclaimed. “You were somewhere else there for a minute.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Matt replied. “I just zoned out.”

“What’s her name?” Rob asked with a wink, and the other two guys at the table cackled while Matt turned slightly pink.

“It’s nothing like that,” he demurred, quietly.

“Whatever you say,” Rob replied. “Come on, buddy, let’s get out of here. While you were in la-la land over there, the rest of us decided we’d take a chance on going downtown tonight. You’d better go home and get cleaned up, because you look like shit right now!”

Everyone guffawed, and Matt followed his friends out of the clubhouse. He was already thinking ahead to their plans for the evening, but for some reason he couldn’t get Sunny or her purple raincoat out of his mind.

Chapter 2

Simon returned to work a few days later. Work for him was a faculty position at the University of Colorado, Denver, where he taught in a program for burgeoning architectural conservators and historic preservation planners. The atmosphere of higher education suited him, as he had always known it would when he started down the path toward a Ph.D., and he enjoyed his daily walk to the Auraria campus. His relatively light teaching load gave him plenty of opportunities for research, and he collaborated frequently with his bright, energetic graduate students.

The April morning was cool and frosty. It hadn’t snowed in a while, which Simon took as a sign that maybe spring was coming. With his gray pea coat buttoned around him and his messenger bag slung across his body, Simon could have passed for a student. His brisk, bouncing stride set him apart from the other people criss-crossing the campus. His mother told him that when he received his Master’s degree, she and Sunny had picked him out of the huge crowd of graduates because of the way he walked. The phrase, “spring in your step” had been invented for Simon. But one only had to look at the weariness on his face to know that Simon wasn’t entirely himself these days.

He paused in the student union for a cup of coffee and then made his way over to his building. As he traversed the corridor to his office, he felt a bit like a two-headed monster. People were looking at him, smiling sadly, offering tentative hellos. He knew they had no idea how to respond to him at this stage. He remembered all the times when the roles had been reversed and he had been the one trying to figure out how to convey his sympathies to someone who had recently experienced a loss. It was never easy. He found himself wanting to reach out and comfort his colleagues instead.

He unlocked his office and stepped inside. The last time he’d been in here was the night of Sunny’s accident. He’d just finished his office hours when his phone rang, and he found himself on the receiving end of the awful news, coming from a city police officer who couldn’t possibly have comprehended how enduringly the information he was delivering would alter Simon’s existence. Things here were more or less as he’d left them that night, but now the letter tray near one corner of his desk was filled with expressions of sympathy from colleagues and students, along with a letter from one of Sunny’s favorite charities. Apparently the department chair had taken up a collection for a donation in her memory.

Simon sat down at his desk and powered up his laptop. A colleague, Charlie Mason, had taken over his courses for him while he had been out, and he soon found an email from Charlie updating him on the progress they’d made through the various syllabi during Simon’s absence. He’d have no problem picking up where Charlie left off. He turned to his overflowing inbox and began reading through some of the cards and notes people had left. Even the University Chancellor had sent him a sympathy card. Simon was vaguely impressed considering that they had only met a handful of times since Simon had joined the faculty. Several students had written heartfelt messages, too, and Simon took the most time to read through these. His students were important to him, and Sunny had gotten to know many of them, as well.

After a few more minutes of reading, Simon turned his attention back to today’s lecture. He reviewed his notes and double checked the reading assignment, and then stood, gathering his laptop, handouts, and keys. He made his way down the hall to the classroom where his 10 a.m. History of Architecture class met and got himself situated, hooking up his laptop to the LCD projector and arranging handouts on the table. Students began trickling in; many of them did slight double takes when they saw him, still others avoided his eyes altogether, occupying themselves by typing text messages on their phones or chatting amongst themselves.

At 10, Simon stood before the class and cleared his throat. His students looked at him expectantly.

“Before we start today,” Simon began, hesitantly, “I just want to thank all of you for your kind thoughts and words in light of my wife’s recent passing. I truly appreciate them.”

The awkwardness and uncertainty in the room seemed to evaporate, and Simon could feel his students and himself relaxing. Several students spoke up then, and murmurs of “We missed you” and “Welcome back, Dr. Parker” echoed around the space briefly. Simon smiled, and then focused on his laptop and the presentation he had prepared for today’s lecture.

“Now, I understand that the last things Charlie covered with you were functionalism and futurism?” He asked, his voice taking on the same businesslike but friendly tone that always surfaced when he lectured. The students nodded their confirmation.

“Good,” Simon continued, “Because I would have hated to miss out on teaching you guys about the International style. So if there are no questions about anything you covered while I was out, that’s where we’ll begin today.” And with that, he was off, falling easily back into his usual rhythm. The cadence of the give and take in the room was reassuring, familiar. He would discuss the topic at hand, ask his students questions to gauge their comprehension of the material, and respond to their observations and questions. For 75 minutes that morning, and again that afternoon, Simon’s life felt almost normal.

There was no question he was thankful for the distraction his job afforded him. When he was holding office hours, lecturing about architectural history, or helping with National Register nominations, he didn’t have to think about the fact that he was a widower. He took his work home with him, grading exams and papers in front of the TV with a beer and pizza from the place around the corner. Other days, he would just stay in his office, working late into the evening in order to avoid having to go home to that empty apartment. Being there unsettled him unless he had a way to occupy himself.

On many occasions, Simon had caught himself calling out for Sunny, as though she were just in the other room and he needed to ask her something. The other day he asked her if she’d picked up coffee filters the last time she went to the grocery store, and there had been a fraction of a second when he actually thought she might answer him. The moment of realization that she wasn’t answering and would never answer him again was like a swift blow to the gut, and he had nearly collapsed onto the kitchen floor from the impact. He left the apartment abruptly then, and it was several hours before he was able to return. He walked through their neighborhood like a zombie, his mind simultaneously blank and racing with every possible thought.

That particular Saturday afternoon, Simon had also been thinking about the more practical matter of all the things Sunny had done to help maintain the household. At its core, a marriage is a partnership, and Simon’s marriage to Sunny was no different. They each had their various responsibilities in their life together. Simon had always been in charge of the cat litter box, emptying the trash, and fixing things around their home. Sunny had handled the grocery shopping, laundry, and the finances, and the two of them had shared cooking and cleaning duties fairly equally. Simon knew he was going to have to start paying the bills and managing the budget and the idea of working through what had been exclusively her domain was exhausting to him. The loss of her income was likely to necessitate some re-budgeting, too, and there were some accounts that had only been in her name that he still needed to close.

Thinking about the budget set him to thinking about how much Sunny had loved her job. She had worked for a management consulting firm and had risen through the ranks from a consultant role to a management position. Her clients and her direct reports loved her, and the best part was that she got to work at home when she wasn’t traveling on business. Simon had loved coming home from the University each day to find his wife working away at her desk, her fingers clicking reassuringly across the keyboard of her computer. He recalled the cheerful sound of her voice as she patiently walked a client or an employee through a particularly challenging concept.

“She is so exceptionally competent,” Simon thought to himself, not bothering to change the verb tense.

While they were living in South Carolina, where Sunny’s company was headquartered, she had gone to the office every day, although Simon had always preferred having her at home. He knew, though, that she had loved being in the office with her teammates. She had forged strong friendships with many of them, and the outpouring of sympathy from them upon her death had been overwhelming. Given the seemingly-endless stream of lousy jobs Sunny had taken over the years in order to support Simon when he was in school, he was happy that she had found a company and a job that she could truly enjoy. Her energy and enthusiasm for her work had been contagious. She had always said that there was nothing more rewarding than helping her clients work more effectively, and that every day represented a new opportunity to really make a difference for them.

Simon wandered into the room they used as a home office and looked at Sunny’s desk. He had returned her work laptop and files to the company soon after her death, but her personal laptop was still sitting there, powered off and surrounded by notepads and pens. Sunny was a meticulous note-taker, but she always took notes the old-fashioned way, preferring pen and paper to typing into a computer program. He looked at some of the doodles she had made in the margins of one notebook and traced one with his finger. A dull ache began to spread at the bottom of his throat and he turned away, flipping off the light and leaving the room.

He knew he still had to deal with Sunny’s things – the physical reminders of her presence. Her clothing, her books, the contents of her desk, her keepsakes — all of that had to be sorted through and handled in some way. Simon had given himself permission to keep anything of Sunny’s that he truly wanted, but he knew there would be plenty of stuff that he would have no real reason to save. Digging through the remnants of her life felt to him like both a betrayal and a tribute.

Outside, it was snowing lightly. Simon twisted the knob on the ancient radiator in the living room and pulled on a flannel shirt over his t-shirt. He lay down on the couch, rolled to one side, and stared at the wall for a long time, trying to clear his mind. He loathed weekends without Sunny.

Clorinda and Bella wandered in and hopped up beside him on the couch, Clorinda snuggling in next to his feet and Bella, the friendlier of the two, nestling beside his chest. He stroked her orange head and listened to her roaring purr. Whenever he paused, she would press her head into his hand, demanding that he continue petting her. As Simon lay there, he marveled at how these two creatures seemed to know just what he needed, in much the same way Sunny had always known. Their presence made him feel closer to Sunny, in an odd way, as if she had trained the cats to watch over him. He knew this was impossible, but the idea soothed him, and suddenly the thought of beginning to clear out Sunny’s things seemed less daunting.

The title of this post is a line of dialogue that popped into my head this summer. From those twelve words sprang an idea for a novel and I began outlining it not long after, and that was as far as I got for a while. During the month of November, though, I participated in the National Novel Writing Month Challenge (also known as “NaNoWriMo”) and that gave me the opportunity to start to breathe life into the thing. As a bonus, I managed to hit the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words in 30 days. Below the jump is the first chapter of said novel. It doesn’t have a title yet, but it’s broken up into five sections, each one named for one of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Hope you enjoy….

Continue reading ‘When we talk about her, it’s almost as if she’s still here.’