Jen's Legacy.

He checked himself out a week after that against his doctors’ advice. He would decide what to do with himself; with his life.

He couldn’t work, as dysfunctional as he was; his mind constantly on the verge of panic if anything loud or unexpected came near him, his nerves were shot, and his hands constantly trembled. He broke down into tears for no reason when he least expected it. He could never trust himself to be what he had once been.

The thought that most angered him was that Jen was stored in a damned refrigerator somewhere awaiting cremation; along with other crash victims when the backlog of bodies was cleared. He wanted to claim her and see to it himself, to see her for the last time; to be sure.

He should be thankful in a way. Many of the other remains would never be properly identified or all of the pieces brought together.

It had always been a fear of those in a much earlier and more superstitious time that their body parts would be so widely scattered that they would never be able to rest. He began to understand that feeling for himself now. Perhaps that was why they wouldn’t tell him.

He’d enquired, but they wouldn’t let him see her. They assured him that her ashes… ‘and those of their developing child’,… he kept adding that qualifier, as 'they', wouldn’t... would come to him in due course.

The nurses watched him go. They hadn’t had time to get the orderly and the mandatory wheelchair, to get him safely out of the front door to avoid an army of lawyers and litigation if he tripped and fell.

As he walked to the elevators with his walking stick, he passed the stairwell and paused, opening the door, looking over the edge where the protective mesh fencing above the railing had been temporarily removed. There was not enough of a drop to be sure of killing himself, and there were buckets and cleaning equipment at the bottom to break his fall. Three floors wouldn’t do it. The roof would be better, but then who else would be devastated by what he would do, seeing his broken body in front of them on the walkway in a spreading pool of blood?

No. He should be the only casualty of what he would do.

Jen would never have approved of him doing that to himself out of grief for her. She had always ridden over life’s difficulties by saying that ‘life will find a way to move forward, somehow, and so shall we,’ but it would be difficult without her.

Then on his way down to their apartment, not so far from the hospital, taking everything at a slow walk, ignoring the sunshine, not hearing the birds singing, not seeing the flowers bursting into bloom, he stood by the lights, watching them change. He stood there for three changes of lights, not sure he could make it across in the too few seconds available.

The cars sped by again, his mind timing the exact moment he could step out in front of one of them trying to beat the lights, except the lights changed again, and the moment passed. The signal changed from; ‘Don’t walk, you idiot,’ to, ‘Jen and Claire say you can walk now.’

He set out and made it across as the lights changed again.

Jen was still in his mind and always would be; her voice in his head, along with the unheard voice and gurgling laughter of their unborn daughter.

Royce let himself into their apartment and from force of habit tossed his keys into the wooden bowl by the door.

The manager had collected his mail from his over-full mailbox and had left it on the table by the door. Royce leaned back against the door, not sure what he was doing here, except he had nowhere else to go. He wanted to call out and to see Jen suddenly appear from the small kitchen smiling at him and to greet him with a kiss and a hug as he touched her abdomen, both of their minds on that one new life within her that they had both created, and then dinner could wait while they went to their bedroom or living room and made love for the third or fourth time that day, while their dinner got cold.

Everything was as they’d left it two weeks earlier, except for a thin patina of dust on everything. He could even see their bikes in the hallway; safer there, when they were away, than in the lockup downstairs.

It no longer felt like home, but it was all he had.

He lined up his pain medications on the table, along with his sleeping pills, and the antidepressant medication, and then went to lie down, bringing Jen’s crumpled pajamas from under her pillow into his face, needing to catch her intimate scent on them, laying her pillow over them and his face as he cried. Everything around him was Jen, and what they’d built and achieved together.

He would go mad at this rate.

He still couldn’t believe she was dead, or that she was awaiting cremation. A part of him could not believe that so loved a person, so absolutely essential to his life and happiness, could be so easily removed from this world. A dynasty ended before it had begun.

He got up several hours later in the dark, disappointed that he had not died, lying there, thinking of Jen, and wondering how he would survive and go on without her.

He was hungry, and there was no food in the apartment except for some cereal and crunchy bars. That would have to do until morning.

Royce had the same dream every night when he slept, living through that crash over and over again as it played in his head, waking at all hours in a sweat, afraid to go back to sleep again to listen to that screaming, ringing in his ears, and reliving over and over what it had meant to his future, suddenly cutting it off. He could no longer see more than a day or two ahead of himself at the most, and did not like what faced him.

He knew that he had to do something better with his life than to feel such grief, and have it dictate what happened to him. This was not the way it should be going.

Then, there was knock on his door while he was in the middle of doing sit-ups.

He looked out of the lens in the door.

It was the building superintendent.

“This was left for you this morning while you were out, Mr. Healey. I signed for it.”

“Thanks.”

Royce knew what it was with a sinking heart, and just as he was making some slight progress; his wife’s and Claire’s ashes in a decorative, flat metal box with her name written on it in funereal script.

He sat the container of ashes in the middle of the table by the unopened bottle of liquor, looking from one to the other, crying in frustration that he couldn’t end it all as he wanted to, feeling this war going on between Jen and the liquor—she had not approved of drinking, other than a little wine occasionally with dinner or on special occasions, or for cooking, so he moved the unopened bottle onto the sideboard.

That sudden crush of returning emotion put him back a few days.

Each night he woke up, reliving the nightmare over and over again, frantically searching for Jen beside him, hoping to have his touch returned as she always had before, then they would move together, caress, kiss, find each other as she reached out to hold him and as he slid his hand between her legs with the other coming at her from behind, fondling her from two directions, or touching her breasts—he always found pleasure in that, kissing her everywhere, moving closer together, playing, until neither of them could stand the torment any longer, and he slid into her easily with long practice, and they made love.

But even after that, it was not the end of it. They played even more, with her now being more open, moist, and receptive to whatever he needed to do to get her to reach orgasm as he had often done. She wanted him to be rougher and harder with her, to squeeze her nipples now, in a way he was sure would hurt her, but it didn’t hurt her.

Then she came, with a delightful whimper, her eyes tight-closed, her body a ball of tensed muscles with his knee driven hard up into her crotch, and her squeezing the very life out of his leg. Then she relaxed with a deep sigh, and died, temporarily, beside him. By then he had become hard again because of her infectious mood, but he knew he must not stop. She would come again, several times; many times with his help and determination, until she was utterly exhausted and could do nothing more, becoming totally helpless. Only then did he allow himself the pleasure of going into her again. She was smoother, wetter now, and there seemed to be much more room; enough to have accommodated two or three of him, and very wet and warm, to the point where he had no sense of anything embracing him, as though he was floating in a warmly moist space that he could not feel holding around him, and then 'coming' again. He was drunk on the haunting smell of her vagina, and of all of the exudations from them both, filling his nostrils.

They went to sleep like that, or he would bring her back into him and go into her warm dampness from behind, and stay there for as long as he could with his hand pulling on her abdomen or cupping her breasts, so that they could sleep that way, but he always dropped from her as he relaxed, conscious that there was now a wet spot left for them to discover; laughing about it, gently complaining as one or other of them encountered it.

In the morning they would couple again before they both left for work, usually having lunch together, making love again. He needed to shower after that, or carry all those wondrously intimate smells with him for others to comment upon. ‘Smells like someone was ridden hard and put away wet,’ was one such embarrassing comment from one at work, knowledgeable about such things. Ah, the memories!

He would go mad with frustration thinking of all of those wondrous sensations now denied him.

When he reached out now, all he found was a cold and empty bed, but feeling as though she had been with him all night, just not in that bed with him as he had grown used to. She was everywhere, just not with him in any tangible way, but he had the sense that she was overseeing him now from some other place, and she was trying to help him, her strength reaching out from her position in the middle of the table, radiating a silent authoritative energy, directing him what to do from within his subconscious. He could hear her voice, and it was settling.

Royce knew what he should do; what Jen would have wanted him to do, and what he would have wanted her to do if that accident had taken his life instead of hers.

He took the one letter he’d kept of all of them, out of the pocket of the jacket hanging behind the door, and phoned the number at the top of it, asking to speak with the administrator; Mr. Crowther. His voice was calm, and his mind clear, for once.

“Mr. Crowther. Royce Healey here. Is your job offer in Culver still open?”

Mr. Crowther recognized that name immediately, having followed what happened after that plane crash, and how it had affected Royce’s life.

Royce learned that the job offer was still open for him until the end of September, still a few weeks away; even later, if he needed more time. They knew him well, and had competed to get him.

He didn’t need more time. He couldn’t live much longer like this.

“I’ll be there. I’ll send a few things ahead of me into your care to arrive some time before that deadline.

Mr. Crowther knew of the plane crash and had diplomatically not asked about Royce’s wife. The job offer, when it had originally been made, had been for both of them.

Royce packed what he would need into two suitcases and phoned the shipping company with instructions for getting them to Culver ahead of him, and into the safe-keeping of Mr. Crowther, to await his arrival some weeks later.

Before he left for an extended walking holiday which would end one way or another in Culver, he went to visit Jen’s mother, staying with her for a couple of days. He should at least visit her and his own mother.

Mrs. Shelby was pleased and relieved to see him, still torn up herself, to lose both a daughter and a grandchild, and now seeing how that accident had affected her son-in-law too. She was diplomatic enough not to comment on how he’d changed; losing too much weight and beginning to look like a scarecrow compared to what he had been like, but he was fit too, and looked healthy, apart from the drawn look to his face and that haunted look in his eyes. She sat him down and gave him a haircut which was long overdue and tried to feed him up before he went on to visit his mother.

Royce needed to decide what he would do with himself. Neither of those pained women could help him get over this.

Back at the apartment again after that week’s absence, and feeling better for having visited the other two women in his life, he sorted out his backpack and everything he and Jen had taken with them on their honeymoon five years earlier, seeing what he needed to stock up on for an extended walk that would see his future go in one of two directions.

As a last step, he sat down and drew up a will, writing it out by hand and signing it. None of it mattered.

He’d take the bus, in stages, to get to Welland, his starting point for his walk along the Canyon. Welland was where he’d pick up the food supplies he’d need, buy socks and other clothing there, and start walking. His boots were still pliable and useable, and his nylon ropes were still as good as the day he’d bought them.

He packed only what he would need, as well as Jen’s and Claire’s ashes, which he ensured were tightly closed—he had plans for those—and all of the letters they had exchanged before they’d got engaged and married.

He closed and locked up the apartment with all of its memories. It was all paid up to the end of the year. Everything would be resolved one way or the other by then.

The bottle of liquor was still sitting in the middle of the sideboard, unopened. He had at least won that battle, thanks to Jen.

He leaned the envelope containing his will against it and let himself out, leaving his keys with the super, telling him he’d be back in another month or two, and just to collect his mail and hang onto it. There shouldn’t be much, as he’d cancelled all of his subscriptions, and left him more than enough money to cover his utilities until the end of the year.

He could reconnect with Jen in some way on that walk. They had spent their honeymoon walking the canyon rim.

He had three circles on his map. Welland: his starting point. Culver, where work waited for him, and Witches Cauldron, where he and Jen had laughingly reaffirmed their vows in the middle of that suspension bridge over the gorge, and had even got rid of their shorts and made love in that same place in the very middle of it, standing up, with the bridge swaying and swinging precariously beneath them as they laughingly reached their climax with each other. There had been no one to see them.