wouldn’t be enough room for you as well.”
“I’m prepared to have a try.”
“I bet you are.” She sighs, plays with her desert. “How are the negotiations going?”
I shrug. I don’t want to talk about work. We’re not supposed to. “Fine. We should see the final draft of the contract sometime next week.”
“Are we going to be rich?”
“Wade will be rich. We’ll be well off. I don’t care anyway. All I want is you and a healthy baby arriving safe and sound.”
“As opposed to the horror stories they told us last night.”
“I can’t imagine any point to scaring the crap out of people before they give birth. I think we should stay positive.”
“I guess they’re preparing people for the worst.”
“Nothing can prepare you,” I say. Quinn nods. She knows, as well as I, how things can change in an instant. She knows there is no course, no book, no presentation that can be undertaken to prepare for the grief that follows. She knows that once you’re in the midst of it, the grief is overwhelming and cannot be imagined beforehand.
“True.”
“But we’re going to be alright. Rachel is going to come without a problem and we’re going to be a family like we were always meant to be.”
“I miss him, you know. I only held him for a moment, but I’d loved him for months and he went so quickly.”
“I know.”
“Can we go and see him tomorrow, after the session?”
“I’d like that.”
She laughs. “I’m staggered by what we had to go through to get where we are now, talking honestly, opening our hearts to each other. I think a lot about how things could have turned out.”
“Why are you laughing?”
“I don’t want to do the other thing that wants to come out.”
I nod sadly. “I get that. We have quite a story, don’t we?”
“It’s not over yet.”
“I wonder if we’re going to be one of those couples that stand up at seminars and tell their story. I wonder what people will think, what they’ll get from us.”
Quinn shakes her head. “I’m not sure I could do that. I’m not sure people would like my story.”
I shrug. “I don’t know. The classic tale of redemption? Who doesn’t love that? I mean, we all want to be forgiven for our sins, no matter how big. It shows us that we’re loved. And you are. Very much.”
She smiles. “I know.”
“And Rachel, she’s going to love you so much you wouldn’t have thought there was a love like that.”
“Bigger than yours?”
“Not bigger, just different.”
Saturday
Tragedy comes unannounced most of the time. Days usually start just fine. There is no indication of what is ahead. I left Quinn one morning just like a have been these last months, pregnant and happy. Then later, without any warning, without any sign, our boy was lost. The day ended in anguish, in tears. Our marriage almost ended the same way. I left for work on a day like any other. I kissed her, wished her a happy birthday and said that I loved her. She said she loved me, and sent me on my way. To me Quinn was one person, but she wasn’t, she was two. When I returned later that day, I saw the second. Our marriage collapsed in a matter of moments. The day ended, just like before, in anguish and tears.
Quinn and I pull up at the Uptons around ten in the morning. Normally we have the only car in the drive, but not today. There are three, and I have to park in a different place.
She flashes me a look of concern, but I shrug back. I help her out of the car and walk hand in hand with her to the steps that lead to the landing and the front door. It opens and a woman around Mary’s age waits for us to make the top.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
“We’re here to see Grant,” I say, perhaps a little timidly. This is not our usual reception.
The woman’s face drops a little. “He had a session today?” she asks.
“Yeah. Judd and Quinn Altman. With Mary.”
“I’m sorry. We thought we’d called everyone. I have some bad news.”
Quinn grips my arm like she’s about to fall.
“Grant passed away yesterday afternoon,” the woman says. “I’m sorry to tell you this way. We called a lot of people, but we didn’t know about him seeing you today. We didn’t know he was seeing anyone anymore, for that matter.”
Quinn’s other hand is over her mouth and there are tears forming. I can feel her body start to sag.
“Do you mind?” I say. “I need to sit my wife down someplace before she falls.”
“Of course.”
It’s cold, but now I’m sweating under my jacket. Quinn is wearing a light dress made for pregnant women but she gets overheated quickly these days, especially when she is wearing her heavy winter coat. The woman leads us inside and sits us down on the lounge that we’ve been using just about every Saturday together for the past three months. The woman leaves us, but returns with a glass of cold water and hands it to Quinn.
“I’m Elise. Mary’s sister,” she says.
“Judd – and Quinn,” I say.
“How long have you known Grant and Mary,” she asks.
“I’ve known Grant for four months – Mary three.”
“What happened?” Quinn asks quietly.
“Heart attack. It wasn’t his first one.”
“He didn’t look well last week,” I tell her. “I think the heat bothered him.”
Elise nods sadly.
“How is Mary?” Quinn asks.
“Mary is Mary. She soldiers on. I don’t think it’s quite hit her yet.”
I’m thinking that I’m the same way. My shut down, defence mechanism has been activated, like when my own father passed. I feel numb, in shock. I don’t know how to feel. My mother says that I could cry – or laugh – there’s no correct response. But I can’t do either.
“Can I see her?”
Elise frowns a little. “We’re trying to keep things quiet for a while.”
“Only for a minute?”
“Who is it?” comes a voice from the hall. Mary appears at the doorway. She’s dressed the same as always. At some level I was expecting her to be in black, with a veil, but that’s ridiculous. “Quinn... Judd...” She smiles warmly.
Mary walks with us through her garden, its trees bare, past the seat that I had spent some time on talking to her husband. I can see him there, just for a moment, smiling at me, but it’s just my imagination. We say nothing as we walk, not for a while.
“I’m so sorry about Grant,” Quinn says finally. She’s said something like that to my mother when I took her home the first time after she’d come back to me. “He was a wonderful man, and he’ll be missed.” She looks at me to say something, but nothing comes to mind.
“What can people say at times like this,” I say, “that can make this any better? I don’t know.”
“What did people say at your father’s funeral?” Mary asks me.
“’I’m sorry’. ‘He’s going to a better place’. But then he was an atheist, and I guess he would have laughed to think that people would say that.”
“Grant believed in God,” Mary points out.
“Yeah. I got that impression. I suppose he did go to a better place. I don’t believe in heaven though.”
“Really?”
“I kind of think it’ll be a little dull, but who knows. If I’m wrong, and I get to go there, I’d like to think that I’d see him again.”
Quinn is looking at me strangely, like she doesn’t understand why I’m saying these things, right at that moment. I know that look. I know what she’s thinking.
“Is there anything we can do?” Quinn asks, returning her attention to Mary who seems to be unaffected by what I have been saying.
“I’ll be fine, dear. I have Elise and the family with me, but it was lovely of you both come.”
“You’re sort of family to us as well.”
> Mary takes Quinn’s arm and pulls her along. For some reason I don’t think it’s right to follow them, so I sit in a familiar place and wait for them to return. Then Quinn takes my arm and leads me back to the car while Mary goes back inside.
Five minutes of driving and Quinn speaks. Her eyes are the same temperature as the air outside. She’s been quiet, not thinking now, she’s annoyed at something.
“What the hell was that?” she asks me sharply.
“What?”
“You don’t say those kinds of things to a widow. What were you thinking?”
In my defence, my experience of widows was limited to my mother – recently bereaved - and Linda, and I had no doubt both of those would have accepted what I had said without concern. The other issue, I guess, is that I’m not thinking. I don’t know what to think. My mind is a blank. Shut down. But somewhere in there, right at the back, is a voice shouting to be heard. I just can’t hear the words.
“I don’t know,” I say, truthful at least.
“I gave you the signal.”
“What signal?”
“The ‘shut the hell up’ signal.”
“I must have missed it.” Again I don’t know what I’m saying, the words are coming unbidden, uncontrolled. “Maybe I’m rusty. Maybe you changed the signal to suit Wade and then forgot to change it back.”
She turns her face to the window. She closes her eyes shut, holding back tears. “That was unkind,” she says quietly.
I can only grunt in response.
She is still looking out the window, but her eyes are open. She’s regained control. “I’m not going to let you do this.”
“Do what?”
“Attack me when you should be feeling something for your friend. You redirecting.”
“Well, I don’t feel anything. And you can’t tell me to feel something when I don’t. We don’t work