“Mrs. Beach, my name is Officer Wright and this is Lieutenant Moscowitz. I’m afraid we have some bad news for you.”
Jennifer’s eyes danced from man to man. She looked at the hats in their hands and the way they were standing. She looked into eyes brimming with shame. The rookie’s shoulders dropped an inch as his stare found the floor. Oh, shit. They were about to say something terrible. They were about to say––
“There’s been an accident.”
Something inside Jennifer collapsed. Or died. The earth tilted on one corner and the air thinned. As the room began to spin she managed to say, “It’s Richard.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“There’s been an accident.”
“Right again, Mrs. Beach… on highway 78. I’m sorry to inform you––
(oh please God no)
––that your husband––
(don’t say it, for the love of God)
––is no longer with us, Mrs. Beach,––
(I don’t want to hear this… please tell me I’m dreaming)
––I’m afraid that he’s dead.”
A question tumbled from her lips: “What happened?”
“It happened this morning around seven-thirty; a head-on collision. There were no survivors.”
A one-sided conversation was laid out like brickwork. Officer Wright explained and described and enlightened and in the end it didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Richard was dead, gone forever. Nothing else mattered.
At some point the envelope was placed inside her trembling fingers and the officers offered condolences that came from the heart. A short while later they left her to grieve. Alone. She couldn’t be more alone if she tried. And when she closed the door on a world that was eternally altered, she wondered how she’d ever find the strength to face the day.
* * *
The next three days were arguably––or perhaps not so arguably––the hardest days of Jennifer’s life. She was still a young woman, twenty-nine this past March, and her life had been cruising along rather smoothly. On paper it may not have seemed that way. Her mother died when she was barely eight years old. The death had been hard on her, of course. But that was twenty-one years ago and twenty-one years is a long time for a woman not quite thirty years old. She could remember her mom’s face, but mostly from photographs. She could remember her mother’s voice, somewhat, and she had the memory of her mom gardening in the backyard. After that it was just little clips and snippets, not full-blown memories, really. More like recollections.
Her father was a different story.
He was an alcoholic she visited twice a year; his name was Ted. He wasn’t a terrible man; he never intentionally hurt Jennifer or abused her physically, but he prayed at the altar of intoxication and was very devoted to his religion.
Ted took a bus into town on the day of the funeral and offered what he was able in terms of condolences. But Jennifer could smell the whiskey coming from his mouth and see it in his blood-red eyes. And when he announced that he couldn’t stay Jennifer felt a weight lift from her shoulders that was heavier than she realized. She was already dealing with one catastrophe. When she looked into her father’s slack-jawed face she felt like she was dealing with another.
It wasn’t a perfect life, as no life is. Her mother was dead and her father was––for lack of a better word––gone. But it wasn’t a bad life either, and she wasn’t an only child. She had a younger sister named Kate who was just as bright and beautiful as she was. And it was Kate that embraced her after the funeral, although the reasons for it were not what Jennifer expected.
* * *
It was a day of tears. Richard and Steven were buried in the same cemetery at the same time. A double funeral at noon, two separate wakes shortly after. Jennifer hosted one; Steven Wendelle’s parents hosted the other. For Jennifer, the last of her guests didn’t leave until almost seven. And when they did, Jennifer and Kate found themselves sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded with food and beverages. The refrigerator had already been filled to capacity; the countertops were equally loaded. Jennifer was grateful for the generosity of her friends and family, but what she was supposed to do with so many provisions was beyond her.
Kate said, “I’d like to stay with you, if that’s alright.”
Jennifer was drinking rum and coke, unlike Kate who was drinking gin. Alcohol wasn’t something they indulged in often due to the negative influence it had on their childhood. But here, now, it