The Solitude of Passion (6 page)

The room darkens. A video presentation starts out with Mitch as a baby.

Baby. That’s the elephant in the room—Lee’s growing middle. Now what? Stand by and watch Colton, the bumbling uncle, swap the baby bottle with a beer bottle? Lee isn’t even cognizant of what could happen with too much Colt around an innocent child. She’s too blindsided with grief. Nope. Not letting that take place—not going back East this time. I’m not letting Lee out of my sight. I’ll wait until she’s ready. She will be eventually.

Mitch lights up the room with an enormous smile. There’s something piercing about the way he looks out into the crowd. He inspires the waterworks to take off exponentially, and I swallow hard, fighting not to give in. It takes everything in me not to blubber like a baby. It’s a wrestling match of the highest order to keep my emotions in check, but the lights come back, and I let out a breath—I win.

My heart breaks for Mitch. I still consider him a brother even if he went to his grave filled with hatred over something I had nothing to do with. The truth is, I cared about him. And if it wasn’t me who could have Lee, it might as well have been him. Doubtful he would feel the same now that the roles are reversed. In fact, I’d better get ready to dodge some serious lightning bolts if he has anything to say about it.

After the service, a line snakes around the room as people offer up their condolences to the family. It takes an hour before I even reach the front, Colton first.

“Sorry man. He was a good guy.” I pat my way past him and let Lee fold into my arms. She smells good, roses and raw earth. I breathe in the scent of her hair, feel her soft skin against mine and close my eyes a moment. I’m still so thirsty for Lee. All of those wasted Vivienne years when all I wanted was something I couldn’t have.

My arms remain locked as I wait for her to let go first.

“Thanks for coming.” She pulls back, holding onto my hands with her iced fingers. My eyes fall to her waist. It looks like she tucked a basketball under her shirt, and it makes her even more beautiful.

“I’m sorry there was anything to come to,” I say it low, and my voice breaks for the first time.

“He liked you,” she whispers through tears. “He just didn’t know how to handle it all. I’m sure if Mitch had more time he would have welcomed you back into his life.” Her left eye twitches when she says it as if she had spilled some long-guarded secret, and she just might have.

“I’d like to think so.” I warm her hands with mine. “If you need anything at all, call me.”

“I will.” She says it, but it feels obligatory.

“Janice.” I pull his mother into a tight embrace. I miss Janice. She was more of a mother to me than my own could ever hope to be. Her hair is shorter, darker than it was when I logged all those hours at the Townsend house back in high school.

“Max.” Her entire face glows with a broken smile. “How have you been?” There’s a genuine sweetness in her voice like she means it.

“I’m fine. Listen, if you want me to take care of anything at the vineyard—even if it’s just paying a few bills. I’m your man.”

Lee reaches over and clasps my forearm. “Would you? He did everything by himself, and I’ve been trying to figure things out, but I’m afraid I’ve missed something.”

“Yes.” My heart thumps like a racehorse as I cover her hand with mine. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll come by tomorrow and straighten everything out.”

I’ll be happy to put myself front and center.

By the time she’s ready to move on, I’ll be all she sees.

Two months later

Lee

When I was a child I adored my mother. Her hair was spun gold, and her teeth illuminated like stars. My father was a tall man with a twinkle in his eye just for me, and I worshiped at his feet. Katrice and I would stand at the window like puppies until he came home from his job at the advertising agency. He brought colorful paperclips and discarded office supplies that delighted my sister and me. They were our treasures. Then God saw that my heart was full and removed my parents from the landscape of my life.

Mitch.

He filled my being with his goodness. His heart was pure, and he loved me infinitely more than my parents were ever capable. God saw that this too was good, and He took Mitch. It’s days that my heart highlights this realization that I feel like a celestial toy—nothing more than a mortal burden to those I love.

In a tragic sense, my sweet baby will enter this world without two parents. One of them removed from the planet by fire and the other removed by emotional paralysis—with nothing left to offer but a soul caged in barbed wired—a heart of ice.

Time is drifting. Minutes, hours—
days
bleed by. Time flows like some unstoppable torrent. It knocks me off balance with no proper way to navigate its force field. The day and night die, then resurrect themselves as something new, but I see it for the sham it really is—just a string of yesterdays that pile up in the end, the hopeful tomorrow dangled before us that never comes.

It’s killing me fast, this death cloud with its intangible stranglehold.

I’m paralyzed. I’ve become my own rotting corpse with the hand of God crooked around my neck, dragging me into each new day by force. I’m choking, all alone in my misery. There isn’t enough time to devote, collapsed in front of Mitch’s pictures, pleading with God for some new resolution to this madness. I’m nothing more than a speck in the universe. I’ve become a master of my nothingness.

I play with the curtains while peering out the window. My heart pulsates with anticipation because Max is on his way to the house to comb through some loose ends in the office. Max has gone by Townsend vineyard every single day for the past eight weeks. He’s reassigned distributors, and production has nearly doubled under his steady supervision. But today he’ll be here, on sacred grounds, and I’m afraid of what Mitch would think. It’s strange. The only other man I’ve had at the house is Colton, and now, out of all the penile-wielding people on earth, it’s Max who will darken these halls. It feels entirely septic bringing him here. I try to tuck away the anger Mitch felt toward him. Mitch would rather eat buckets of broken glass and swim through sewage than have Max here under any circumstance.

His truck pulls in low on the driveway as if he were unsure himself whether or not this were a good move. I rush over to the door before he has a chance to knock, excited to see him, excited to see anybody who has the power to soothe this constant bite of pain, and Max definitely holds that power. Max has become a strange salve in Mitch’s absence.

He strides up the walk with the beginnings of a smile playing on his lips. His dark hair stains the blue sky with just the right amount of saving grace my heart needs.

“Hey,” he says it shy, wide-eyed with a slight grin just for me. His dimples dig in deep, happy to see me. His eyes steal the color from the sky and make it their own. It’s a wonder I didn’t bow down to his glory long before that fated night in high school.

He’s lost the suit in exchange for jeans and a green T-shirt with faded letters that read,
Ireland
. The soft scent of musk and sandalwood mixes through the air, and I take him in, inhale him by the vat-full. I miss the clean scent of a man, the layer of testosterone just beneath. It makes me dizzy, makes it feel as though the altitude in the room has shifted.

“Hey, yourself.” I wrap my arms around him and pull him inside.

Our eyes lock, and something quickens in me. I don’t think I’ve felt him through anything but his wool suit, his crisp dress shirts, and now here I was with my hand over his warm arm, his muscles rock solid as if he were carved from granite. I take in a breath and pull away. Max has always had the power to move me on primal level, but I belong to Mitch. Mitch is my everything. His death is just another obstacle we’ll have to overcome on our way to happily ever after, and a heartsick part of me accepts this impossibility.

“What’s this?” He runs his shoe over the raw plywood and creates the shape of a rainbow in the dust.

“My fault. I couldn’t decide what I wanted, and now I have nothing.” Just like it’s my fault I let Mitch go. I should have pulled the wife card—the new
mom
card—and I would have, but I swore I’d never be one of those women.

His serious eyes flex at the sight, and I marvel at the unblemished sky he holds in them. When we were kids I could stare at them for hours. Even before my hormones kicked in I had a place in my heart for Max. But I can tell he’s judging Mitch for letting us move in like this, even if it was me who pushed for it.

“So what are you leaning toward? Are you thinking stone—hardwood?” He presses his hand into the small of my back as I lead him toward the office, and an electrical charge springs from his touch. It travels up my spine and proliferates its branches over my arms, down my legs, quickening between my thighs. Max is infiltrating, rooting himself in my existence even if he’s not aware of it.

There’s a sweetness to Max. If I let him, I’m sure he’d solve every problem on the planet for me, including my spousal deficiency. But he can’t bring back Mitch. He can’t
be
Mitch. Some problems are just too big.

“Wood, for sure.” I blink back tears. “We were going to put in stone, but then I thought wood last minute.” I thought it’d be better with the baby, but I leave that part out. Instead, I run my hand over the high crest of my stomach. The only piece of Mitch left in the world sits right here inside me. The whole universe had reduced itself to a thimble. It was so big and beautiful with Mitch in it. His love buoyed me, soft and light, like helium. I don’t think this baby could take his place, but I long to see Mitch’s face when I hold it. I crave to see his smile again in our child, hear his laugh through another set of vocal cords.

When I come to, Max is penetrating me with his gaze. He doesn’t ask for explanation when I go away like that, just simply waits for me to return.

“Sorry,” I say, leading him into the stifling office. “It’s an oven in here. No A.C.—Colt’s fault.” I’m quick to point out. “Colt was in charge of ductwork and screwed up—now it’s a furnace. For this reason alone Mitch didn’t spend anymore more time in here than needed.”

We both take a seat, right here, in Mitch’s office, and yet today it feels more like a chamber of his heart.

Max lets out a soft laugh at Colt’s oversight. “I’m shocked he didn’t install a stripper pole in the middle of the living room.” His eyes widen with a slight look of mortification. “I meant Colt, not Mitch.”

“Of course you meant Colt. And, it was me who ixnayed the stripper pole from the blueprints.” I give a little laugh. That small tremor stirred something inside me. I haven’t laughed since before Mitch left—forgot that I was capable. “Here’s the stuff.” I pulled all the papers I thought Max might have to look at and fanned them out like a tapestry of financial destruction.

I watch over his shoulder as he studies each one individually—Max with all his assurances. With Mitch there were always questions when it came to the business, and with Max there are only solutions.

“So what’s going on with our favorite strip club patron anyway?” He glances up, and the dimple on the left side of his cheek goes off with a wink.

“Why? Is he siphoning funds?” I lean in closer until my cheek rubs against his shoulder. I can feel the warmth radiating off his body, and a selfish part of me craves to touch him, wrap myself around him like a vine and forget about all this dizzying pain.

Max turns into me, resettling the paperwork in his hands. He inspects me in earnest before giving the hint of a devilish smile.

“Do I detect a hint of mistrust?” He looks alien in this world that Mitch built, gorgeous yet obtrusive.

“I don’t know.” I avert my eyes at the thought. “I’d trust Colt with my life. My finances—not so sure.”

He reverts back to the paperwork a moment. “I’ll do a little digging. How’s he handling things? You know…” He ticks his head toward a picture of Mitch, reducing him to a bodily gesture without meaning to. Max asks me that same question every day regarding my own sanity or lack thereof. He’s been so wonderful, holding me up emotionally like a suspension bridge that’s desperate for the plunge because he knows that drowning in grief is a real possibility. “I mean, usually he’s poking around Hudson’s, but since the funeral he’s been M.I.A.” He winces as though he regrets his word choice.