Nine Lives - Danielle Steel Page 0,25
killed her when it came time to say goodbye to him. She couldn’t stop crying after she left, and she had to keep reminding herself, as Brad would have, that he was going to be okay. It was so hard doing this alone. And the return trip on the plane was even harder without him, but the flight was smooth, with no problems.
She felt drained and empty when she got back to Chicago, and had one of her worst nightmares that night, that Aden had drowned with Brad. She could see them both slipping under the water and couldn’t reach them in time. She woke up sobbing, and sat up in bed for the rest of the night with the TV on, unable to get the image out of her mind.
She called Aden in the morning, when he was on his way to the store to buy his books. He sounded happy and busy and fine. He liked his roommates and rushed her off the phone. She sat down in her kitchen with a sigh. The house was as empty as she had feared it would be, without a sound, and nothing for her to do. Helen called her just as she was thinking of going back to bed, which she knew was a bad idea, but she couldn’t help it. She felt as though she had lost everything now that Aden had flown the nest.
“So have you made your list?” Helen asked her.
“What list?” Maggie’s mind was a blank.
“Of all the places you want to go that you’ve never been to. That was homework. Remember?”
“Yeah. I guess I forgot,” Maggie said sheepishly with a grin. But she didn’t want to go anywhere alone. “I can see them on the internet.”
“You’re not a shut-in, Maggie. You’re a young widow with a kid in college. That means you have freedom. How about celebrating it?” It didn’t feel like a celebration to her, and it made her miss Brad more. Aden leaving for college had brought the loss into even sharper focus. “I’m coming over,” Helen said, and she was there twenty minutes later, as she had been off and on for the past eight months.
Helen had turned out to be incredibly loyal. Some of Maggie’s other friends hadn’t been. They acted nervous around her, as though losing her husband might be contagious, or she might try to hit on their husbands now, or her sadness and loss made them uncomfortable. Of all her friends, Helen had been the most present, and the most proactive. Every time Maggie started to sink, Helen dragged her up to the surface again, and got her going in the right direction. Except for this stupid idea about Maggie taking a trip by herself, which she didn’t want to do. Helen insisted she’d have fun once she got to her various destinations. And she reminded Maggie that if she hated it, she could always come home. She wasn’t going to the moon. She could cut it short if she really wanted to, but she should at least try to broaden her horizons again, and change scenery.
“I did it after my sister died, and it helped me,” she said firmly.
“What do other widows do?” Maggie asked glumly, as they sat in her kitchen with her laptop on the table in front of her.
“They try internet dating, if they want to date. Change jobs, move houses, travel, take cruises, or get plastic surgery if they can afford to. You don’t need it. You’re gorgeous and don’t look your age. You refuse to date and don’t seem to want to sell your house, so that leaves travel. Turn on your computer.” Maggie laughed. Helen had a piece of paper in front of her and a pen in her hand. She was taking the project seriously. Maggie wasn’t. “Okay, so where haven’t you been that you always thought would be cool?” Helen refused to be daunted, and stubbornly persisted.
“China,” Maggie said off the top of her head.
“Really?” Helen was impressed. “Do you want to go there?”
“No, but I like reading about it. And Japan.”
“Do you want to go there? Tokyo, Kyoto, the temples?”
“No, it’s too far. I think I’d be scared. San Francisco,” she said reasonably, and Helen wrote it down.
“Perfect. You get two points for that. What about L.A.?”
Maggie shook her head.
“No, we took Aden to Disneyland there. It would be too sad without Brad and Aden, and I didn’t love L.A. But I’ve always wanted to