start to cramp up and tears run down her face, and that of course eventually turned into hysterical sobbing because Piper no longer had control over anything, including her own emotions. Alarmed, the cat slipped out the window Piper still left cracked over the kitchen sink, and then Piper was really, truly alone. She thought she had grieved Tom, in the months when she was pretending he was alive, alone and silently in their bed at night. But apparently she hadn’t even scratched the surface.
And now, her face swollen, her throat raw, it felt like grief was a never-ending corn maze with plenty of surprising turns but no actual solution. Exhausted, she curled up into the chair that Tom used to read in, hoping to feel him somehow. Where was he? She knew, of course, where his body was now—in the graveyard behind the church where they’d exchanged vows and thin gold bands. But where was he—the essence of him? Was it in these books he used to hold or the pillow he laid his head on night after night or in the coffee mug in the sink filled with mold because she still couldn’t bring herself to wash it out? She sat in the chair, waiting to feel him, his breath in her hair, his laughter in her ear. But all she felt was the cold draft from the cracked window over the kitchen sink and all she heard was the crackle of a log disintegrating in the woodstove.
And she knew that Tom—her Tom, the greatest love of her short, pointless life—was gone. And she would never, ever see him again.
* * *
—
At the end of November, a knock on the door roused her from an afternoon nap. Lady Judy had taken to leaving food on Piper’s stoop once again, but rarely knocked anymore, as she knew Piper wouldn’t answer the door. Piper planned to ignore it, but the knocking kept up at intervals, only becoming more insistent, until finally she heard the door creak open of its own accord. And then she heard a familiar voice. “Piper?”
She sat straight up, wondering if she was hallucinating. “Mom?”
She threw the covers off and ran to the den, stopping at her bedroom door to take in the woman she hadn’t seen in more than a year—since the day she married Tom.
“Oh, my baby,” her mom breathed, her face crinkled in concern. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Piper slowly shook her head. She knew she didn’t have to explain right then. That saying it out loud, especially to her mom, would have made it all too real. “How did you—”
“Pearl called. Lord knows how she found my cell number. I booked a flight immediately. But, God, Pipes, months! And I had no idea. And the funeral?”
A sob lodged in Piper’s throat. She covered her mouth, as her mom spread her thin arms out like a bird about to take flight. “Come here.” And Piper did, collapsing into her mother’s embrace.
Her mom stayed through the holidays, which were sad and awful, but a little less sad and awful than they might have otherwise been because at least Piper was no longer alone.
Anders continued to send letters, and sometimes a package, and Piper added them, unopened, to the stack on the kitchen table that was coming dangerously close to teetering over and spilling onto the floor.
She dodged phone calls from Jacob, the developer, deleting his messages, one after the other, until he finally stopped calling. What was the point of trying to fix up the island? What was the point of anything? Tom wasn’t here to see it.
At the end of January, four months past its first scheduled date of completion, the workers finally finished the cell tower. Tom’s cousin Steve invited everyone to a ribbon-cutting ceremony and Piper decided to go, if for no other reason than to give herself an excuse to shower and get dressed. As Steve talked about the importance of the island having decent Internet and cell phone service—being connected to the greater world—Mrs. Olecki stood scowling and Steve’s baby, who was now toddling around on her chubby legs, charmed everyone in town, even grumpy Mr. Gimby. Bobby took pictures of the whole thing with his camera and said he was going to get them developed and make a newspaper just like Anders. At the mention of his name, Mrs. Olecki scowled even harder, and everyone studiously avoided Piper’s eyes, and she found herself wishing she hadn’t come after all.
February