Heart Like Mine: A Novel

As I neared Kelli’s house, and after talking with my mom, I couldn’t help but think more about my father. We’d never been especially close, even before Sam came along. He wasn’t ever the kind of dad to snuggle with me on the couch or read to me, and it was my mom who taught me how to tie my shoes and ride my bike. He was the kind of dad who seemed bewildered that he was married with two kids—that he’d somehow stumbled into a life he never wanted to live. His body was there, but his mind was not; I’d always sensed that he would have preferred to be anywhere but with our family.

But however rocky our parents’ marriage was, the end of it had shocked both my brother and me. I guess we assumed that after so many years of putting up with Dad, Mom had grown too weary and accustomed to his bad behavior to change anything between them. So even when she called me and said, “That’s it. I’m done. Your great-aunt Rowena died and left me enough to retire on, and I’m not going to let your father piss it away on the poker table,” there was a part of me that didn’t believe her. She’d stayed with him through so much. But then she hired a lawyer, and Dad didn’t know what hit him. He left the marriage quietly, as though he had expected the end would happen all along. He used the small payout from the inheritance Mom had received to immediately move to Las Vegas, where he eventually suffered a stroke and died a few years ago. Since I barely spoke with him, when he died the sense of loss was vague, like the misplacement of a pair of earrings you liked but had rarely pulled out of your jewelry box to wear.

Melody’s car was already parked in front of Kelli’s house when I pulled up. She sat on the front porch, clad in Levi’s, a snug-fitting tie-dyed T-shirt, and running shoes. Her long blond hair was pulled into an I Dream of Jeannie ponytail on top of her head. She trotted down the steps and hugged me when I approached, and I found myself tearing up again.

Melody pulled back and searched my face with kindness in her brown eyes. “How are you?”

I shrugged. “Sad. Confused. A little pissed off.”

She smiled. “Sounds about right. I was up baking all night,” she said. “I had to do something. I was so worried about you. And the kids. I made two pound cakes and six dozen cookies. Oh, and three lasagnas.”

“Good lord. What are you going to do with all that?”

“Send it home with you so you can put them in your freezer. You’ll need something to feed the kids over the next couple of weeks. Victor’s going to have too much going on and lord knows you’re not going to cook.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, grateful for her ability to make me smile. She glanced down at my left hand and immediately squealed. “Oh my god, let me see!” She snatched my hand and pulled it close to her face so she could admire the ring. I’d put it on in the car after talking with my mom, wanting to show it to my best friend. “Wow. Totally impressive rock, Mr. Hansen. I love the baguettes framing the center stone like that. It’s gorgeous.”

I allowed myself to feel a moment of giddiness in seeing my friend’s reaction to my engagement. “It is gorgeous, isn’t it? I love it.”

“As well you should. That, my friend, is a ring from a man who obviously adores you. I will attempt to not be wickedly jealous.” Melody was single but determined to get married and have at least two kids before she turned forty. She read countless how-to-find-your-soul-mate self-help books and tirelessly revised her online dating profile to try to attract the man who would make her rampant desire for motherhood come true. She scoured What to Expect When You’re Expecting and parenting magazines so she would be prepared to immediately launch herself into the job when the right man came along. And yet, she didn’t find him. She prepared for first dates the way athletes train for the Olympics, but those dates rarely blossomed into anything more than a temporary fling. I knew she was happy for me when I met Victor, but a little envious, too, the same way a friend who is trying to lose weight is happy when her best friend drops twenty pounds while still quietly bemoaning the wide span of her own hips. We were good enough friends that we could talk about how she felt and not let it become a problem between us, which was a relief. As a transplant to Seattle and with her parents still living in the small Iowa town where she grew up, I was the closest thing to family Melody had. She often spent the holidays with us and Sam had affectionately dubbed her his “bonus sister.” I would never have done anything to hurt her.

Standing in Kelli’s driveway, she winked at me now, then frowned a little as she watched me slip the ring off and put it back in the safety of my zippered wallet. “It’s not about the ring,” I said, hoping I sounded more convincing than I felt.

“Damn right, it’s not,” she agreed. A moment later, we ascended the front steps, and I was just putting the key Victor had given me into the lock when a woman’s voice called out.

“Excuse me,” she said. “What do you think you’re doing?” I turned my head to see a short, slightly heavy woman with shoulder-length light brown hair chugging her way across the lawn. She wore jeans, a purple University of Washington sweatshirt, and tan slippers edged in faux fur.

I lifted a hand in greeting, realizing instantly who this was from the kids’ description of their mother’s best friend. The woman who found Kelli. “You must be Diane,” I said. “I’m Grace, and this is Melody. We’re just here to pick up a few things for the kids.”

She looked me up and down, not even pretending to be subtle about it. “Grace,” she repeated as she came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. I assumed that since she and Kelli were friends, she’d heard my name at least a time or two, perhaps followed by a few choice descriptive expletives. After our first meeting, Kelli and I hadn’t exactly bonded; her distaste for my presence in Victor’s life continued to be an almost palpable thing. I’d done my best to ignore it on the rare occasions when we had to interact, but she hadn’t made it easy.

Diane huffed a little bit now, trying to catch her breath. “Where’s Victor?”

“He’s with his children,” Melody said, and I hoped that only I could hear the touch of annoyance in her words. Melody had a low tolerance for people who had a hard time grasping the obvious. I could almost hear the other—unspoken—sentence in Melody’s head: Where the hell else would he be? The Bahamas?

“Oh. Okay.” The edges of Diane’s face softened, and I noticed that her eyes were red rimmed and swollen. She’s just lost her best friend, I reminded myself. She’s in pain, too. She sighed, then continued speaking. “I just saw you sitting out here and then the both of you trying to get into the house and I didn’t know what to think.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “How are they?”

“Pretty much in shock, I think,” I said. “Trying to understand what exactly happened.”

Diane cocked a single eyebrow. “Didn’t the doctors say anything to Victor?”

I wondered if Diane knew something we didn’t. “They told him about the pills by her nightstand—”

“What?” Melody exclaimed, and I realized I hadn’t known this when we’d talked last night, before Victor got home from the hospital.

“She took those for anxiety,” Diane said quickly. “The prescription could have just run out. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“You’re right,” I said, resting my hand on Melody’s arm, hoping she’d realize I didn’t want to get into this particular discussion right now. I’d tell her about my concerns later, not in front of Diane. “It doesn’t. We’re hoping the doctors will figure out exactly what happened, but Victor decided it was better not to mention the bottle or the pills to the kids.”

Diane nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s best.” She paused. “Kelli told me you and Victor got engaged.”

“We did.”

She raised her eyebrows. “That was quick, wasn’t it? You two haven’t even been together a year yet.”

I opened my mouth to respond, feeling my cheeks get hot, but Melody spoke for me. “Um, actually they’ve been together over a year. Not that it’s really your business.” I shot my friend a warning look.

“Sorry.” Diane looked back and forth between Melody and me. “It’s just that Kelli was pretty upset when Victor just dropped the news on her like that.”

“I don’t think he dropped it on her,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice even. “He—we thought it would better if she knew before the kids. In case they had questions.”

She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Have you told the kids?” I shook my head, hoping we were on the tail end of this conversation, but then she spoke again. “Will there be a funeral?”

“Just a small gathering at our house, I think. Maybe on Thursday. Victor said she wanted to be cremated.”

“Well, let me know if I can do anything. She was a good friend to me.” Her eyes filled until she blinked the tears away, then she glanced up to the front door. “I could help you pack up the kids’ stuff, if you want. I know what they like, for the most part.”

I held up the notes Victor had given me. “I think we’re set. They made me a list.” I smiled at her, trying to imagine how I’d feel if Melody had died. My stomach flipped over at the thought. “But thank you. I appreciate it. And I’m really so very sorry for your loss.” I reached out and squeezed her arm this time.

“Thank you,” she said with obvious surprise. She nodded again, a slightly pinched look on her face, then gestured toward the tan house next door. “That’s me, if you change your mind.”

“Thanks,” Melody said, and we finally went our separate ways. We stepped through the doorway, and while I’d been to Kelli’s house several times, it felt foreign to me now. Empty and sad, as though it somehow sensed that she’d never be returning. The entryway was thick with the scent of vanilla—Victor had told me about Kelli’s tendency to overuse plug-in air fresheners, to the extent that he eventually developed allergies to them. Sunlight slid through the cracks in the drapes, highlighting the dust motes in the air.

“Well, this is slightly creepy,” Melody said, glancing around the living room, a small space littered with kids’ clothes, toys, and stacks of magazines. “Knowing she’s never coming back here.” She shuddered. “What do you think Victor will do with the house?”

“It was his mom’s, but I imagine he’ll still need to sell it.” I took a deep breath. “We should get to work. Victor said there should be suitcases in the hall closet.” We proceeded to our right, easily found several large black suitcases, and decided that each of us would pack up a child’s room. “Can you do Ava’s? I feel like she’ll be happier if it’s not me.” I explained what Ava had said to me the night before and Melody sighed.

“Poor kid. She’s angry and you’re an easy target. She can’t be mad at her mom for dying, so she’s mad at you for still being alive. I think if she didn’t care about you, she wouldn’t trust you with any of her feelings, so in a way, it’s a good sign for your relationship with her.”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” I said, the weight in my chest suddenly feeling a tiny bit lighter. “You should totally be a therapist; you know that, right?”

She smiled, and we went our separate ways. Max’s room smelled exactly like the one at our house did—eau de musty sweat socks. His walls were painted a bright blue and were littered with Iron Man posters. He had an elaborate Lego city built in the corner and a gaming system hooked up to a small television at the foot of his race-car bed. I opened his dresser drawers, only to find bulging piles of unfolded and mismatched clothes—I’m sure being a single mom, Kelli chose to not make this a battle she waged with her son. I couldn’t say I blamed her.

Now I sifted through each of Max’s drawers, folding and packing as much as I could in the suitcase. I found his Iron Man costume in a wrinkled mound on the floor next to his bed—I wondered if he liked to sleep in it. I grabbed handfuls of underwear and a huge pile of mismatched socks and threw them in, too. His red flashlight was under the bed, something that I discovered only after crawling around and looking in every other nook and cranny of his room, including the back of his closet. I was still reaching for it, my butt in the air, when Melody spoke.

“I think I’ve got everything Ava wanted,” she said, and then, seeing me on the floor, asked, “What the hell are you doing under there?”

I jerked back, knocking my wrist on the bottom of the bed frame as I pulled out the flashlight and held it high for her to see. I stood up and sighed. “Boys are messy.”

She laughed, then paused. “Have you and Victor talked at all about what’s going to happen with the kids?”

“This morning, a little bit.” I told her what Victor had said and my promise to be there to support him.

She gave me a sidelong glance. “That’s a lot to take on, Grace.”

“I know,” I said, sighing and lifting my eyes back to hers. “But what am I supposed to do? Abandon them? I won’t do that. Not to mention the fact that I’m totally in love with Victor.” My voice shook with the threat of tears.

She nodded but didn’t appear entirely convinced. “Okay. Then I’ll help however I can. Take stepparenting classes with you. Or go to a support group.”

“Do they have support groups for women who are engaged to men whose ex-wives are dead and now have to help raise two kids?” I asked hopefully, only partially joking.

Melody laughed. “Probably not.” She reached up to tighten her ponytail. “So, what’s the deal with the pills?” I filled her in on what we knew—which wasn’t much. She dropped onto Max’s bed and let out a long breath. “Let me guess. You’re worried you and Victor getting engaged had something to do with her committing suicide?” She paused. “If she did, that is.”

I nodded. “My mom basically told me not to borrow trouble.”

“She’s right. You shouldn’t. You’ve got enough to deal with right now, my friend. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we?”

I nodded again but couldn’t let go of the worry that niggled at me. I was a big believer in going with my gut, and my gut was telling me there was more to this situation than I knew. My mother and Melody were right about one thing, though—there was nothing to be done about it until we knew for sure exactly how Kelli had died. I didn’t even want to consider what might have been going through her mind if her death wasn’t an accident—if she had swallowed those pills deliberately. I knew from Victor that over the years, her refusal to deal with her past made her emotionally unpredictable and maybe even a little unstable, but he’d never indicated she could be suicidal. If he’d suspected any possible danger, I had to believe he wouldn’t have let her take care of their children. He would have intervened.

“Is there anything else we should grab?” Melody said, interrupting my thoughts as she popped back up to her feet.

“I need to get a blue blanket from Kelli’s bed. It’s on Max’s list. Maybe you could get another suitcase and fill it up with some of Max’s toys and whatever else from Ava’s room she might like, so they’ll have some more familiar things around? They have some things at our house, but not very much.”

“Great idea,” she said, and headed back down the hall while I made my way into Kelli’s bedroom. The door was open, and when I stepped inside, I saw Kelli’s girly personality spread all over the room in its powder-blue walls, yellow floral curtains, and white lace throw pillows. Every inch of space on the top of her dresser was covered in beauty products, and she had a tall jewelry case set next to the maple-hued vanity with its huge, circular mirror. Her closet door was open, too, as though she had dressed in haste and forgotten to close it. I wondered what her last thoughts were. Maybe she was thinking of watching a Friday-night DVD at home with the kids and what she might get accomplished while they were with us for the rest of the weekend. I must have been in my office when she took her last breath, when she’d crawled into bed after dropping the kids off at school. I was sitting at my desk, reviewing those client files, no idea that everything was about to change. My throat thickened at the realization that I would never know when my life would come to an end. How suddenly everything might be lost.

I coughed and pushed back my tears, trying to focus on the task at hand. My eyes moved further around the room and noticed the floor around the white wicker hamper in the corner was littered with lacy bits of underwear. A stack of books rested on the nightstand next to her unmade bed. There was no empty pill bottle; Diane must have given it to the medics who took her friend to the hospital so the doctors would know what she might have taken.

Curious to see what Kelli had been reading, I stepped over and looked at the book on top of the stack. Healing After Loss, the title proclaimed in bright red letters. How to Let Go of the Pain and Reclaim Your Life. She’d lost her relationship with her parents; she’d lost Victor. Was there something else?

As far as I had witnessed, Kelli and Victor’s post-divorce relationship seemed mostly amicable. They had their moments of tension over the extra expenses around the kids that child support didn’t cover, or when Victor had to switch around which weekend he could see them because of a commitment at the restaurant, but overall, they seemed to get along. But I hadn’t been around the two of them together very much, so I didn’t know for sure. Seeing this book on Kelli’s nightstand now, three years after he’d moved out, I wondered if she regretted asking him to leave. I wondered if there were important things about their marriage that I didn’t know.

I shook my head, as though my mind was an Etch A Sketch and I could simply erase my thoughts. Glancing over to the bed, I saw the fuzzy blue blanket I was sure Max meant for me to bring to him, and after grabbing it, I noticed several photo albums over on the bookshelves. I decided to bring the kids a stack of those, too, thinking it might comfort the kids to have pictures of their mom. Impulsively, I took a few of Kelli’s sweaters out of her dresser for Ava to wear, too. Even if they didn’t fit her, it still might feel like her mother’s arms were around her.

Just as I was about to leave the room, I noticed another book lying on Kelli’s bed. It must have been beneath the blanket. The cover was a deep burgundy and stood out against her white lace sheet like a square of spilled blood. Hesitating just a breath before setting what I already carried down on the floor, I stepped back over to her bed and picked up the book.

It was a hard, smooth cover, larger than a novel or textbook. I flipped it over in my hands, not surprised to see San Luis Obispo Saints, 1993 in italics across the top. A yearbook. I turned the pages to find Kelli, starting with the freshman class. There she was: Kelli Reed. The picture was black and white, but I recognized her long, straight hair and closed-lipped smile. She’d been extremely pretty, even at what I guessed was fourteen. A little gawky maybe, but I could see the curve of her chest—not fake, it turned out, as this photo seemed to prove. Ava had mentioned that her mother had been a cheerleader in high school, but as I fanned through a few more pages looking for an image of the cheerleading squad, she was nowhere to be found in the pictures. I wondered if she just hadn’t been on the team her first year. I looked at the front two pages of the book, and then the back, but they were totally blank. No signatures. No “You are 2 Good 2 B 4gotten” or “Science lab sucked!” Why would she have a yearbook but not ask anyone to sign it? Maybe she hadn’t been popular enough, or maybe she was too shy. But even with all the time I spent taking care of Sam when I was in high school, at the end of the year I still had my classmates at least sign their names in my yearbook.

I glanced at the bookshelves again, thinking the other three yearbooks might be there and I could bring them along with the photo albums for Max and Ava to look through. But I didn’t see any book spines similar to the one I held. Why had she been looking at this before she died?

“You done, Grace?” Melody called out, interrupting my thoughts. “I filled another suitcase and it weighs about six hundred pounds. I need help getting it out to the car.”

Suddenly, the yearbook didn’t matter. Tears stung the back of my throat when I considered stepping back into the house with Victor and the kids. The hollow grief in their eyes, the already weary expression on Victor’s face. The story I’d written in my head of the kind of life I thought we would live had vanished. Now there were endless blank pages ahead, waiting to be filled. I suddenly felt the urge to hand everything over to Melody and let her deliver it all. However much I loved Victor and worried for Max and Ava, I wasn’t sure I could go through this without losing myself completely. I wanted to be the type of selfless woman who faced this kind of drama head-on, but I wasn’t sure I had it in me. I thought about my cramped but wonderfully peaceful condo and imagined myself within its walls again, surrounded by all my things. No real stress, no huge emotional disasters to clean up. And no Victor, either, I reminded myself. No companionship. No acceptance. No love.

“Coming,” I responded, holding the albums and blanket close to my chest, looking around Kelli’s room one last time. There was no question I would have to face this. Victor needed me. It didn’t matter whether I felt ready or not.