“I thought he didn’t want another baby.”
“So did I. I don’t know if he’s doing it to get me to come home or if he means it. I hate that I even doubt his sincerity.” I shot her a desperate look, practically pleading for her to tell me what to do. “I love Jack, but something happened to him that night. It was like a switch flipped inside his brain. He was always cynical and wickedly smart. But I think what happened that night made him…”
I wanted to say it had made him calculating, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the word aloud. Though I felt it was true, I didn’t want to infect Drea with my poisoned thoughts.
Drea sat up, placed the popcorn bowl on the coffee table, and fixed me with a sober expression. “I hate to even suggest this, but… maybe you should just start cooking meth.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think I have any other choice.”
She smiled as she stood up. “How about I turn off Breaking Bad and put on some Little Britain?” she asked.
Drea was always keenly aware when I needed a distraction or a change of scenery. I was also fairly certain she’d noticed me flinching at the sound of every gunshot while we watched Breaking Bad.
The one time I had a PTSD-induced hospitalization, I had come home early from having coffee with Drea. As I opened Jack’s office door to let him know I was home, I heard the sound of two gunshots in quick succession — I knew from sheer instinct that what I was hearing was the first shot that hit my mother’s shoulder and the second, which hit the left side of her head.
As I stood in the doorway, frozen, Jack scrambled to turn off the audio on the surveillance video he was watching, but not before I heard the third and final shot.
Though I’d seen the surveillance video of the murderer as he rummaged around the bottom level of our house, I stopped watching as soon as his body language made it evident that he’d heard someone moving upstairs. There was no footage of the murder, since we didn’t have cameras in the bedrooms or bathrooms. But the cameras in the hallways and downstairs picked up almost all of the audio.
I had never heard the sound of the gunshots that killed them. But I knew, from reading the autopsy report, that my mother was shot first, and she was likely dead or unconscious when Junior was killed.
I spent the night in the hospital on heavy anti-anxiety medication as they attempted to stabilize my mood and heart rate. I had one more severe panic attack and one moderate before they released me the next afternoon.
I’d spent the months that had passed since that day trying to forget the sound of what I’d heard as I stepped into Jack’s office. Sometimes, it felt as if the trauma of that night followed me around like a monster, occasionally jumping out at me from behind corners to make sure I would never, for one second, make the mistake of believing I was strong.
“Little Britain sounds perfect,” I replied.
“Another round of lemon drops?”
I nodded. “Better make it a double.”
* * *
I entered Sunny’s Garden Depot for my first day of work in a daze, sleep-deprived from my inability to stop thinking about Jack all weekend. Oddly, when I saw Dylan’s mother, Vera Beckett, behind the cashier’s counter, her auburn hair up in a ponytail and reading glasses resting on the tip of her nose as she counted money for the cashier’s drawer, I felt at ease.
“Good morning, Mrs. Beckett,” I said, approaching the counter.
She looked a bit surprised at first, then she recognized me and smiled. “Oh, hello, dear. Please call me Vera. I haven’t been Mrs. Beckett in a long time.”
I didn’t ask her if this meant she was divorced or widowed. “You can call me Laurel.”
“Beautiful name. You know there are more than a dozen different plants, trees, and shrubs in the laurel family. Some of them have beautiful flowers. But my favorite is the Alexandrian laurel tree. An evergreen with many medicinal uses, and it can flower all year round.”
I smiled as I remembered the many times my mother told me about how she decided on my name when she was pregnant. She told me my grandmother had let her pick out some plants for a small patch of garden space, and the only thing that had survived was the laurel tree.
My mother kept that tree, transplanted it from her mother’s house into the house where I’d grown up in Portland. Even after she divorced my father when I was in college, that laurel tree was still there, tucked away into a corner in the backyard. I wondered if it had survived the past two years of neglect.
My relationship with my father certainly hadn’t fared well. After the divorce, we only spoke every few months over the phone and the occasional email. But after Junior’s death, when he “couldn’t make it” to the funeral, it was almost easy to forget him. One less person I would have to mourn.
As I came out of my memory, I found Vera smiling at me. “You mentioned on your application that your mother taught you quite a bit about gardening,” she said, sliding the cash drawer into the register. “Do you live with your mother?”
I shook my head. “My mother’s… gone.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, dear.”
“It’s okay,” I said, waving off her apology. “But, yes, she taught me a bit. Though, now I wish I’d paid more attention.”
“Oh, it’s not that hard. Just mind the register and use this,” she said, lifting a large binder out from under the cashier’s counter, “if you can’t find something. This is the inventory list. It will tell you where everything is and whether or not we carry it. And it will even tell you if we can special order something and who to call for that.”
I smiled as I realized this five-inch thick binder was this woman’s inventory system. “Sounds easy enough,” I replied, then I got to work.
As she minded the register, I swept the back office and cleaned the employee and public restrooms — not my favorite task. Then, I happily hosed down the floors in the greenhouse. Vera and I laughed at my initial ineptitude as I learned to use the mini-range pallet truck to move pallets of soil and sandbags. I felt a sense of accomplishment after I helped a little old lady safely load twenty trays of delicate petunias into her station wagon.
And that was just my first two hours on the job.
Thankfully, my next day at Sunny’s was far less strenuous. Unfortunately, as soon as I arrived for my second day on the job, Vera informed me that Dylan and I would be taking the company truck to make deliveries today, and one of those would be to Isaac.
I had yet to work up the nerve to thank him for helping me get this job.
“Dylan is going to accompany you on all deliveries,” Vera said, as if Dylan wasn’t standing right next to her and fully capable of telling me this himself. “We have a few customers like Isaac, who live mostly off the grid. It’s becoming a trend. Anyway, they tend to get large orders of supplies delivered about once a month.”
“Off the grid? Like those people who build nuclear bunkers and stock them full of canned food so they’re ready for the apocalypse?” I asked, as I followed her and Dylan toward the lot in the back of the store, where pallets were stacked taller than me with bright-green sod and large, flattened bags of soil, mulch, and seed.
Dylan laughed. “You’re thinking of preppers. People who think the end of the world is nigh. People like Isaac and Marlon aren’t preppers. They’re not really homesteaders either. They’re just folks who try to live off the land as much as possible. They usually only produce enough food and energy to take care of themselves and their families.”
It dawned on me that I hadn’t seen anyone else living at Isaac’s house. Would I be meeting Isaac’s family today?
Vera tsk-tsked at Dylan’s explanation. “Isaac and Mr. Tripp are good men. Solid, salt-of-the-earth boys. But most of these people, like Marlon, are just hippies trying to ‘lower their carbon footprint,’ which is a load of nonsense, if you ask me.”
Dylan looked embarrassed as his mother walked away. “I’ll load the order. You can drive,” he said as he opened the gate on the back of
the stake-bed delivery truck, then reached into his pocket and produced a set of keys.
“I can help you load the delivery,” I said, following him toward the hydraulic pallet truck, which was parked near the chain-link fence that surrounded the backlot.
“You’re skinnier than me,” he said with a chuckle. “Save your calories, girl. You can watch me do it this time.”
I knew in my heart Dylan was only teasing me, but his words still felt like a punch in the gut, especially since it confirmed what Jack had said to me a few days ago at Bonnie’s office.
The truth was that I had already talked to my doctor about my loss of appetite. My doctor explained that, due to my anxiety, my body was almost always flooded with adrenaline and stress hormones. My mind, unable to accept my new reality without Junior, was keeping my body in constant fight-or-flight mode. The anxiety — and PTSD — both contributed to a constant impending sense of doom, that made it near impossible to eat, despite my best efforts.
Eating becomes a secondary interest when mere survival is your primary concern.
“Oh, hey, I meant that as a joke,” Dylan clarified as he pulled the pallet truck toward the stacks of soil bags. “I’m sorry. That was kind of insensitive.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said, following closely behind him. “It’s just that Jack — my husband — commented on the same thing a couple of days ago. I just… wish there was an easy fix. Believe me, up until—” I stopped myself before I blurted out the details of my tragic life. “Well, I used to eat a lot.”
He cast me some major side-eye as he slid the pallet truck into place. “So, have you started on the garden yet?” he asked.
“A little,” I said, trying to sound as casual as I could to hide the guilt from my lack of progress.
The pallet truck beeped loudly as he drove the pallet of soil toward the delivery vehicle. “You should ask Isaac to help you out. From what I hear, he had nothing but nice things to say about you.”
“Really?” I replied, practically yelling to be heard above the beeping noise coming from the pallet truck.
I had avoided going to Isaac’s house to thank him for helping me get the job, because, quite frankly, I didn’t know how to thank him. The more I thought about the dog-sitting idea, the stupider it felt. I didn’t know anything about dogs.
The hydraulic lift activated, raising the pallet of soil up and into the bed of the delivery truck. “I’m going to be totally honest with you right now,” Dylan said, glancing over his shoulder before he leaned in to whisper to me, “I think Isaac likes you.”
I laughed at this. “Isaac knows I’m married.”
I climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck and slammed the heavy door closed. Breathing in the dusty, worn leather smell reminded me of being in Jack’s truck the first year we were together.
Dylan rounded the back of the truck and slid into the passenger seat. “If you’re married, why aren’t you wearing a ring?” he asked as he pulled on his seat belt.
I glanced at my hand, where it rested on my lap. The faint tan line that was there when I removed my wedding band ten days ago was now gone. This realization washed over me like a wave of ice-cold water, shocking me to my core. I instantly felt guilty for leaving the ring behind.
The longer I thought about it, I began to start feeling guilty about everything: leaving, getting a job, introducing myself to Isaac, even having a good time with Drea this weekend felt indulgent.
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had brief moments of sheer pleasure or even happiness these past two years — a few hilarious moments came to mind from Jack’s coworker’s wedding we attended last year. But I had lived with the guilt of outliving my son for too long. The guilt was now embedded in my soul, as much a part of me as the four-inch scar that stretched along my abdomen.
For some reason, instead of shying away from the discomforting guilt, I decided to lean into it.
“So, now that we’re in the car, and I don’t know how to turn on the radio in this thing,” I said, as he directed me to turn right on Burnside, “maybe you could show off your singing skills.”
As we made the turn, the truck bounced and creaked under the weight of the soil and gardening supplies in the back. I tried not to imagine the glossy wood creaking and splintering as they packed dirt on top of Junior’s tiny coffin.
I once tried explaining my disgust with these morbid thoughts I so often had to my primary doctor. He explained most people had a dangerous misconception that thoughts could be controlled. He said thoughts could not be controlled, only understood.
What could be controlled, he said, was our actions, and our actions affected our thoughts. Then he referred me to a cognitive behavioral therapist, with whom I never made an appointment. Jack and I both shared a fear of saying too much, though the secrets we would confess would probably be quite different.
After a brief meltdown last year — about a year after my PTSD-induced hospitalization — I downed an entire bottle of ibuprofen and was placed on a 72-hour psychiatric hold. The problem was that I didn’t take the pills in an attempt to commit suicide. I had a terrible migraine and couldn’t find my migraine medicine.
But after I took the first four ibuprofen pills, I realized it wouldn’t be enough. I honestly thought the only way to make the headache — and the grief that had caused the headache — go away, was to take another pill, and another one, and another one, until eventually the bottle was empty and I fell asleep.
The only good thing that came out of my 72-hour stint in a psych ward was that I quickly learned what I needed to say to get out, and to never be put in there again.
Dylan reached for the stereo to turn it on, but I reached for his hand to stop him.
“Come on,” I begged. “I saw you watching singing lessons on YouTube in the breakroom.”
He slowly removed his hand from underneath mine. “No way. I’m not singing for you. That’s totally embarrassing.”
Coming to a stop at a red light, I was about to continue pleading with him, but I could see something had shifted. There was no trace of a smile on his face as he stared straight ahead. Dylan was no longer in a joking mood.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
He nodded, keeping his attention on the road in front of us. “It’s just that… I got a degree in music, but I haven’t been able to do anything with it because… Now, don’t laugh, but…” He sighed as he slumped in his seat. “My mom doesn’t trust anyone but me to help her at the store. I finally convinced her to hire someone so I could start taking singing lessons. I knew if I started taking a singing class, my mom would let me have some time off, and maybe even hire someone to replace me. You see, my mom… she loves my singing voice. It’s kind of creepy, honestly.”
I chuckled. “I never did anything with my degree, either. And liking your kid’s singing voice is not creepy,” I said, remembering how much I loved Junior’s cooing and ahhh-ing. “Have you told your mom you need some time off?”
He shook his head. “I don’t need time off. I need to move out of my mom’s house and get another job, where I can use my degree and be myself.”
Suddenly, bits of information I’d gleaned from our previous conversations began to resurface, coming together to form a larger picture. But I couldn’t say anything until I was absolutely certain. I knew the only way to make Dylan feel safe enough to open up to me was if I opened up to him first.
I drew in a deep breath, summoning courage from a reserve tank that was running on fumes. “Um…” My breath was shaky as I steeled myself for the words I was about to speak. “My… My mom and my baby were killed two years ago… inside my home.”
I stared straight ahead as I gripped the steering wheel. All I could think was that I would have to pick up a bottle of wine on the way back to the house today.
“Wow… I… didn’t know that. I’m sorry,” Dylan said. “Now my problems feel kind of stupid.”
“Your problems are not stupid,” I replied fiercely,
still keeping my eyes focused on the road. “I just wanted to tell you, because I know what it’s like… to meet someone new and all you can do is think of that one thing… that secret part of you that defines you, but is too personal to share with just anyone. How you wish you didn’t even have a secret part of you that you needed to hide.”
He sighed. “I didn’t realize I was that obvious.”
“You’re not!” I insisted. “I’m just sort of sensitive to this kind of stuff now. I feel like I notice more things than I care to, honestly. So, if you don’t mind me asking, are you just afraid to tell people, or is it something else?”
He shook his head. “My mom’s not a bad person, she’s just really religious. She doesn’t believe that being gay is a bad thing. It’s that she doesn’t think being gay is even a thing. She thinks it’s just adolescent confusion, or some kind of mental illness that can be cured.”
I stopped at a red light again. “I guess it’s a good thing conversion therapy is illegal in Oregon.”
“I don’t think she would do that to me if she knew.”
“She doesn’t even suspect?”
He tilted his head. “Are you saying I’m very obviously gay?”
My mouth dropped open. “I’m sorry. That was super insensitive of me. I’m a total asshole.”
He laughed. “I was only kidding. I think my mom is the only one who hasn’t noticed, and I’m almost one hundred percent certain she’s just pretending. Make a right up there, right before the Lutheran church.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry you’re dealing with that. I wish there was some way I could help. I mean… well… If you need to quit your job, I could offer you a place to stay in Portland while you look for another one. I inherited my mom’s house in Southeast after she died. That’s where I’m staying, but there are two unused bedrooms.”
My stomach ached at the thought of someone sleeping in my mother’s bedroom, smothering the traces of her scent she’d left behind.