“Please, Don, I need you. I’m sorry about the things I said last night, and I support your dreams. I will follow you wherever you want to go, I promise. Just…please wake up…Wake up, baby.” Tessa wiped her tears from his pallid cheeks, kissing every spot that was once wet. “Wake up,” she cried, her voice cracking with each syllable. Overwhelmed by the emotions, she grabbed his white T-shirt in her fists and sobbed into his cold, unmoving chest. “Wake up! Wake up! Please.”
Don’s hand fell off the bed, and Tessa’s eyes followed the movement. His hand was motionless, yet it still held a piece of paper tightly. She jumped out of bed and scuttled away till her back collided with the wall as she realized what had happened. Her palms covered her mouth as sobs wracked her body.
Her husband was dead.
ChapterOne
Tessa
“Don. Wake up!”
Tessa woke up with a start. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as adrenaline coursed through her veins. She exhaled a sigh of weariness as she raised her hands and used the balls of her palms to knead her eyes in an effort to relieve the building pressure behind them. At the same time, her head was pounding quite hard. She had the same dream at least twice a week about her husband lying lifeless in their bed while she frantically shook him and begged him not to leave her. She hadn’t changed much since his death, but his masculine scent on the pillows and bed sheets had long faded. She sometimes had trouble remembering what that scent was, but the memory of that fateful day was just as vivid and fresh as if it had just happened yesterday instead of two years ago.
Raising herself, she rested her back against the headboard and turned her head until her eyes connected with her husband's smiling face from where his picture frame rested on the nightstand. She reached over and snatched it. Her thumbs ran over his handsome face as a bittersweet smile played on her lips. “I miss you so much, Don. Why did you have to leave me?” She hugged the frame to her chest as tears glistened in her eyes. Soon they spilled over and ran silently down her cheeks.
After five minutes of allowing the pain of her loss to settle heavily on her, she released a drawn-out breath, dried her wet face, and placed the picture back on the nightstand before rising from the bed. Making her way to the bathroom, she took a quick shower, donned her scrubs, and headed down the stairs toward the kitchen. She removed the bag of coffee beans from the cupboard and proceeded to load the coffee machine. As she waited for it to brew, she checked her answering machine and realized there were two new messages.
“Hi, sweetheart. It’s your mom.” Tessa’s lips rose in a half smile as she shook her head at her mother’s introduction. “I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing. Call me.” The beep sounded, and another message played. Another smile ruffled her lips at her son’s voice.
“Hey, Mom…I got your message. I’m fine, work’s fine, but I am busy, so I guess I’ll talk to you another time.”
She hadn’t spoken to him in a while, even though it hadn’t been for lack of trying. The most she’d gotten from him the past couple of months was a simple text repeating the same words he’d just spoken. Still, it felt like a small win, and she reveled in the feeling.
She walked over to the counter and removed a traveler's mug, then poured the dark liquid into it and snapped the lid shut. Picking up her bag and sweater, she headed for the door, where she slid her feet into the comfy clogs and grabbed her keys from the wall hook in the foyer. She stepped through the door, walked down the three porch steps, and slid into her Lexus, then pulled out of the driveway.
As she drove down SE 8th Avenue, she admired the grand oak trees with their branching limbs like fingers stretching toward the sky. Their smooth, pinnate leaves flanked the branches, the deep green color contrasting with the rough mud-colored bark and branches as they stretched across the street to form a guard along each side of the road.
A smile lifted her lips when she saw a father and son playing touch football on the front lawn of their home. A woman whom she assumed to be the wife and mother sat on the porch watching them with a warm smile on her lips as she drank something from a mug. Tessa rolled to a stop, unable to keep from being a part of the family’s intimate moment. The father threw the football, and the son expertly dove to catch it. The ball landed in his small hands, and he quickly tucked it under his arm to the delight of his parents, who cheered loudly at his victory. His father ran up to him and placed him on his shoulders before running around with him as he squealed.
Her mind flashed to a memory of her own son and his father’s special moments she had been a part of. It was a moment in her own backyard when Don was teaching Jake the basics of baseball. He’d only been six at the time, but so over the moon. Tessa suspected it had more to do with his father teaching him than it had been about the game. She remembered his bright, toothy smile when he finally threw the ball straight.
“Mom! Did you see that?” he’d asked in his childlike wonder.
“Yeah, honey. You’re doing great,” Tessa complimented and gave him a high five.Her smile disappeared as all the other memories came rushing back— memories of missed baseball and basketball games, piano and ballet concerts. She remembered the looks of disappointment and the tearstained faces whenever she broke the news that she wouldn’t be able to come to their game or recital.
“Mommy really wishes she could be there for you. It’s just that she has to work so we can have a roof over our heads, food to eat, and all the nice things you have,”Don would say.
Pretty soon, Diane and Jake stopped asking her to come to their games, and watching them interact with their father and share every first with him had made her feel like an outsider. It didn't matter how many times he tried to reassure her that the children still loved her; he was unable to bridge the gap that had appeared between them, and it continued to widen to the point where it seemed impossible to do so. Now he was gone, and deep down, she knew her children blamed her for his death. Her hands tightened against the steering wheel, and a tear slid down her cheeks.
The ringing of her phone brought her out of her thoughts.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Sis. What’s up?”
“Hi, Kerry, I’m okay,” she responded in as light a tone as she could manage.
“Are you sure? You sound a bit off.”
Leave it to her little sister to be able to read her like a book, even over the phone.
“I’m fine. I’m just a little tired and on my way to the hospital,” she responded.
“Oh…okay. Well, don’t work yourself too much; we still have our girls’ night out this weekend.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there, even if I have to drag myself there,” Tessa promised. She connected her phone to the car’s speaker and pulled away from the curb as she continued her journey toward the hospital.
Kerry’s voice rang out in the car. “That’s what I like to hear. We all deserve this time to unwind and catch up, you know?”
