bounces off the walls, a dull echo. Inside my head, a single word repeats until I want to cry.
Alonealonealonealonealone.
I pivot, slide the chain into place, then remember I have grief group soon. I hesitate before unlocking the door and then release the chain.
I’m safe.
4
CRYSTAL
Crystal grabs both coffees and joins Rebecca in their usual booth near the back. It’s their routine to get coffee after grief group each week. They download, process, and talk about everything.
Bec arranges her cane and wallet on the table. Today, she is wearing all black: black skinny jeans, black sneakers, and a fitted black V-neck T-shirt. She looks chic and urban, not homely and suburban. She thanks Crystal for the coffee and takes a tentative sip. Jackson sleeps in a stroller beside her. “Cecil’s really made progress,” Bec comments.
“He has.” Cecil’s seven-year-old daughter just died from leukemia. “I can’t even imagine.”
Rebecca gazes out the window and sadly shakes her head. “Me either.” Her auburn hair catches the light. She absentmindedly twirls a silky strand around her finger. “It’s so hard.”
Crystal doesn’t have to ask what she means. She stirs sugar into her coffee and wipes the granules from her fingers. “It is. It makes it impossible to go through life the same way.”
“It does.” Rebecca spins her cup on the table. “Question.”
“Shoot.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Savi when we first met?”
Guilt taps on Crystal’s shoulder, but she knocks it away. “I guess that’s my coping mechanism. I feel like if I don’t talk about the people in my life, then they’re somehow safe.”
“Denial?”
Crystal nods, then self-corrects to verbalize her response—something she is still getting used to doing, even after all these months of friendship. “Yes. Savi aside, I’m really good at skipping over things I don’t like talking about.”
“Protection,” Rebecca affirms. She lifts her chin and tilts it toward Jackson’s stroller. “I cope by protecting him. As long as he’s safe, then I’m safe. But lately…”
“Lately what?” Crystal leans forward as if Rebecca is about to reveal a secret.
“Lately, I just feel like something is off. Like I’m being followed or someone’s watching me.”
“Do you think it’s because your vision is getting worse?” Rebecca recently confided that her condition is worsening, that the small bits of peripheral vision she retains are starting to slip away too, and it’s making her feel unsteady, scared.
Rebecca has explained it so vividly to her—the early days of banged-up shins and bruises, the way everything appears milky and smeared, never sharp. How losing your sight bit by bit is like losing limbs. Bec once described it to Savi like throwing a bunch of paint on a canvas, mixing the colors until they are all soupy and impossible to distinguish, then dunking the painting in a pool. Her world is like that. Blurry, dreamy, uncertain.
“Maybe … Jess thinks I’m just overly tired, but I don’t know. I just have this weird feeling.”
“When you live alone, it’s easy to feel scared. Especially with a kid.” Crystal thinks about Savi, about what she would do to protect her. “But you’re doing great.”
Bec smiles. “Remains to be seen.”
“I’ve had a weird feeling too, lately, if I’m being honest.”
Bec cocks her head. “How so?”
“Just some weird things happening around the house.”
“Like what?”
She hasn’t mentioned it, but some of her dead husband’s belongings have gone missing: his vintage Rolex, a few Navy medals, a journal, a business ledger. “Some of Paul’s things.”
Bec takes a sip. “Savi?”
“I don’t think so. She knows she can have anything of his, if she just asks.”
“Then who? The nanny?” Bec jokes.
She hired Pam a few months ago, and though Crystal isn’t a naturally trusting person, she is even less so with a bubbly millennial on her hands. But Pam is exceptional with Savi, which is what matters most. “I can’t bring myself to ask her, but I think I might have to.”
“And you’re positive it’s not Savi just wanting something of her dad’s?”
Crystal shakes her head. “No, we had a long talk about it.”
“Maybe you could get one of those nanny cams. Spy a bit.”
“I should get a nanny cam,” she laughs. “Though, if it is Pam, that means I’ll have to find another nanny, and I’m way too tired for that.” Plus, she can’t imagine taking another person away from Savi.
“I get that.” Bec glances toward the stroller and turns serious. “I have to say, the one silver lining in all of this? That Jackson won’t remember losing Chris.”
“That is a silver lining,” Crystal says. Savi wasn’t so lucky. “I