neighbor. He asks me once a day if I’m okay and brings over food. Despite my shitty attitude of no thank you, go take your pleasant ass somewhere else, I thank him, take the casserole his wife made, and set it on the counter with the others that we haven’t eaten yet.
“Who was at the door?” Emmie asks. She hasn’t left our sides since Friday. It’s been a week since the news. I feel worse than a hot mess. I’m a dumpster fire.
“Neighbor. Another casserole.”
Emmie shuts the door to the fridge after retrieving a diet Coke. “Why can’t they bring something snatched. Like cake pops. Those are lit.”
“Probably because they know I’m going to eat my feelings.” I flip through the life insurance forms. I can’t fathom that here I am, five days from the day, and still unable to comprehend that he’s gone, and I’m referring to him in the past tense.
The days that follow Collin’s death are an absolute blur. My tears fall harder than the words around me. They tell me he died instantly, or within seconds of the impact. He ran off the road, and apparently, his self-driving car couldn’t correct it. It doesn’t really hit me until the viewing at the funeral home. The first time I saw him, the stillness that followed, I don’t think I will ever forget that moment between us. It was as if his arms were wrapped around me, giving me the courage to continue.
I’m given a bag with his belongings and what he had on him at the time.
His briefcase. Wallet. Phone. And… a condom. In his motherfucking wallet.
It sits with me for days. Why’d he have that in there? I’ve been on birth control pills since we had Tatum because I wasn’t anywhere near ready to have another baby. Yet he carried condoms?
Uneasiness had settled into my bones, a bitter taste of betrayal surfacing, and that’s all I had now—the constant nagging feeling that Collin had been cheating on me, but I’ve no way of asking him.
As I’m filling out the paperwork for the life insurance and wading through a mountain of debt we’ve accumulated, I think about the condom in his wallet. It weighs down on my chest, like a crushing sensation I can’t get out from under.
I can’t surface from it, and I don’t recall a single conversation or event since last week. I shut down my shop for three weeks to deal with the nightmare that is my life now. But other than that post on my Instagram page that has close to half a million likes, I haven’t surfaced back to reality. There are bits and pieces that come to mind, but nothing remarkable.
No words that move or comfort. I find in the wake of death, it’s not the ones who offer their condolences but the ones who stand with you in the days that come after that make a difference.
My tribe.
My sister, Sadie, my best friend, Nahla, and Emmie and Tatum. They’re with me, day and night.
I struggled with telling her, but in the comfort of her room at sunrise, I gave her the news. She stared at me with a concentrated expression for several seconds. No words. And then she sighed, tipped her head to the side, and asked, “Daddy had to go to heaven?”
That was the last time she mentioned him. Five days and she’s mentioned him one time. And I haven’t seen her shed a tear yet. It might be because there’s constant commotion in our house, and she not only has me and my tribe waiting on her every demand but maybe she hadn’t been that attached to Collin. It’s sad to say, but between him working long hours and golfing on the weekends, she barely saw him.
Sadie sits next to me and pours herself a glass of wine. “Where’s Tatum?”
“Watching a movie in the family room with Nahla?”
Sadie’s barely twenty-one and in college. She can’t pick a man who treats her right, and has an unhealthy obsession with musicians and Red Bull. With curly red hair (that she dyes blue), she has a million freckles and the most contagious smile I’ve ever seen. “Oh. I made her the peanut butter and jelly sandwich she asked for.”
“I don’t know what my kid is going to do without you guys here every day to wait on her hand and foot.”
“Eh, she has you.” She takes a drink straight from the bottle and winks at me. “Coolest mom ever.”