Loving Again: The Broken Hearts Club Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Loving Again

  The Broken Hearts Club

  Michele Barlow

  Coffee, Friends, and Tales of Woe

  Copyright © 2017 by Michele Barlow

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. 0817

  Cover Design by Jacqueline Sweet

  Last Page Publishing

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Connect with Michele

  Also by Michele Barlow

  Chapter 1

  August

  The back section of an IHOP is an unlikely place as any to see tears, laughter, and sometimes fits of rage. Then again, what better place to express one’s feelings of pain and suffering than one that is filled with healing, non-judgmental carbohydrates?

  Evie had been coming not to the IHOP, but to the Denver Community Center’s “Women Suffering Loss” group for six months. The first meeting was the hardest. She couldn’t join a widow’s group. She knew in her heart that it wouldn’t work for her. The pain was too fresh, too raw, and she was worried she’d be surrounded by women much older than her.

  Sure, they would have suffered the same loss, but they probably had many more years to have spent with their husbands. Decades of babies, family, and grandchildren. They had memories to fall back on and enjoy as the pain eased. Evie had barely glimpsed the life she could have had. In the grand scheme things, her time with her husband had been a fraction of a lifetime.

  She assumed that the widow’s group would have sons and daughters to support them and aid them in their day to day lives. Reminding them why they had to continue to get up every day. They would be able to shoulder the burden of their mothers’ pain.

  Hailey couldn’t shoulder anything. She was four, and she was very, very sad. Her daddy was gone and she couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t be back.

  With that reality weighing heavily on her mind, Evie decided to find a group that centered around loss instead. All kinds of loss. Some of the heart, some of the mind, some much more complicated than a label could ever describe. Not everyone was dealing with death, though many were. Some had other reasons to be sad, not easily shared, but still very real. This group was full of women who were all looking for something.

  Evie was looking for something too, even though she wasn’t precisely sure what that something was. Unexpectedly, through the group she found friends, she found support, and finally she found her laugh again.

  It had been the first time she’d laughed in months and it had been through tears. She was sharing a memory of a time that she and her husband had gone out for sushi. It was before Hailey had been born and they were just a young trendy couple trying out new restaurants and taking vacations on a whim. The restaurant had served up delicious rolls and sashimi. The ride home was a different matter. It had escalated into Evie begging for him to pull over and Isaac screaming at her to hold it in.

  There was shit, there was vomit… and it was horrible. Retelling the story brought a different light to it and Evie had laughed and cried while she told everyone about how they had snuck through their own back door so the neighbors wouldn’t see them under the porch light covered in bodily fluids.

  Without the loss group, Evie might never have dragged herself back up to the surface. Her daughter would have grown up with only half a parent, a robot that went through the motions, never really living and never really giving her little angel everything she deserved. That was one thing she couldn’t let herself do. Isaac would never forgive her if his princess wasn’t treated as though she had hung the moon herself.

  Evie knew exactly how to do that. It was how Isaac had always treated her. He was a hands-on husband. He used to laugh when she called him that. But compared to some of her coworkers and friends, it was an accurate description. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do. Shopping, picking up tampons, or sitting in hair salons with her. He gave her opinions on clothing and shoes when she asked. He was with her every moment they weren’t working.

  She channeled as much of that thoughtful attention into raising their daughter as best she could, but she needed some support too.

  Her loss group was more than a regular meeting. The woman had formed a bond that had them meeting outside of their sessions. The informal meet ups at local restaurants and coffee shops had been affectionately called “The Broken Hearts Club.”

  It was a place that they could talk not just about loss, but about their lives. Family, kids, work, and the usual things girlfriends chatted about when they went out together. It felt normal, and normal was something that they all so desperately needed. It was also the group that gave her the courage to make a very big life change.

  She had worked at a software company as an account manager for years. A perfectly respectable job. She didn’t even mind the work. It was interesting and she enjoyed her coworkers. Isaac was a pharmaceutical sales rep, which meant that he spent much of his time on the road.

  Every morning, without fail, she would utter the words, “drive safe.” It was an afterthought, something you say when someone leaves the house. It’s like saying, “sleep tight” or, “feel better.” It doesn’t really have any effect on the circumstances, but it’s the polite thing to say. Automatic. So, you say it.

  October – the year before

  It was a blustery, rainy day almost a year ago when Evie realized that what she should have been saying every day was, “Everyone else drive safe,” because Isaac was a conscientious driver. She used to tease him that he drove like her great-grandmother. He’d never even been in a fender bender.

  There were those calls you got when someone has been in an accident. They call from the scene because you are the first person they thought of in their time of need. It’s a call to tell you they are okay and it’s meant to put your mind at ease.

  Then there are the times you don’t get a call. You get a visit.

  Evie had been sitting at her desk, when she got a call from the receptionist that there was someone up front for her. Not thinking anything of it, she went down the hallway towards the front of the office, waving at her colleagues and smiling as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  When she got to the front, the receptionist, who was usually very efficient and professional, had a funny look on her face.

  “They’re in the conference room,” she said as soon as she saw Evie.

  The large conference room ran behind the reception desk and had two doors that went into it. She picked the closest one and walked in. She wasn’t expecting anything serious, perhaps a client that wanted to say hello. It wasn’t uncommon in her line of
work.

  But instead of a client, she saw two uniformed state patrol officers standing next to each other. Both of their hands crossed in front of them as if they were standing at attention. They were waiting for her.

  “Mrs. Ward?”

  “Yes?”

  “Ma’am, we are sorry to inform you that your husband, Isaac Ward, was in a motor vehicle collision this morning at around nine a.m.”

  “Is he all right? It’s after lunch, why didn’t he call?” Evie felt like the words were caught in her throat. She had an instant sensation of sheer terror. Adrenaline coursed through her body at a pace that made her heart skip beats.

  “I’m sorry ma’am, but the scene was very chaotic and your husband’s wallet was not immediately located before he was transferred to the hospital. It took some time to recover his ID and identify him.”

  “Okay, that’s fine, I guess. Let me get my purse, what hospital is he at? Can I call him?”

  The officer paused, and then his lips drew into a thin line. “I’m afraid your husband didn’t make it, ma’am. The hospital asked us to notify you because of the time that had passed.”

  Time that had passed.

  It was going to be a phrase that haunted her in the days and weeks after. Time was always passing. It passed when you were aware and when you weren’t. It wasn’t something you noticed in your regular life. But when it slowed down, when it ground to a halt, you became very aware of its impact on your life.

  There wasn’t much she remembered about the rest of that day. Everything was a blur, but it was only snippets of memory. She could tell anyone that asked what the pattern of the carpet was in the conference room. She had been very close to it when she collapsed on the floor.

  She could tell you that the officers had been wearing very sturdy black shoes that were so shiny they reflected the light from the fluorescent bulbs overhead. There was a memory of the strict but efficient receptionist wrapping her arms around her and rocking her as she wailed.

  Murmurs. She could remember the murmurs. Her cries had brought people running. When they found out what had happened they had slunk back into their cubicles, probably to call their loved ones just to check in.

  Evie knew that the back of a police car smelled like antiseptic from being cleaned of god knows what. When you went to the hospital, everyone talked in very low tones and touched you. Hands on shoulders or arms. Constant contact that was meant to comfort, or possibly keep you from running down the halls unchecked and scaring patients. People patting your hands that were twisted together in your lap, when the last thing you needed was more stimulation when you were fighting to be numb. Those soft touches felt like slaps that brought you back to a reality you were trying to escape.

  She also could tell you that the morgue was cold, frigidly cold. They had already moved Isaac by the time she had gotten there and they directed her to a room that had a chair and a long window that had mini-blinds on the other side.

  It was a scene straight out of one of her favorite crime shows. Except this time, she wasn’t sure who was on the other side. It couldn’t be Isaac, that wasn’t even a possibility. Her mind had simply refused to accept that as an option. It was going to be a horrible mistake, one that she would retell when trying to one-up someone else’s tale of horror.

  There was a woman beside her that had been talking from the moment she had arrived. It could have been a nurse, a social worker, or maybe even a chaplain, she wasn’t sure. Her autopilot had kicked in and she nodded anytime someone asked her something.

  She wished that she had been paying more attention when she nodded and the blinds in front of her lifted. It was a plain room on the other side that had a table and a long sheet draped over the shape of a body. A person on the other side was in scrubs, she couldn’t recall a face. The sheet was lifted and her husband was laying there, his skin too pale, too blue. He looked like he had been sleeping if it hadn’t had been for the tube sticking out of his mouth.

  The conversations that happened over the next few weeks filled in many of the gaps of her memory. Why did they need to have her see him if they had his identity? It turned out that she had screamed at the staff to let her see him. They finally gave in, and that was how she had ended up in the little room with the window.

  Her mother had magically appeared because the staff asked if there was someone they could call. The blur of getting home and finding herself in bed was due to the sedative the doctor at the hospital had given her.

  It had been a kindness.

  Chapter 2

  Isaac would have been great in that kind of crisis. Solid and steady handed with plans and support for those in need.

  Except he wasn’t there. People surrounded her, yet she was utterly alone. There was enough of a moment of lucidity to take Hailey into her room after Evie’s sister had picked her up from daycare. She laid down on her daughter’s bed and curled around her baby. Even at three, she was still a baby. Hailey asked why she was crying and she told her. It was truth mixed with lies, things you said to someone that couldn’t possibly grasp the complexities of death.

  Daddy was gone, he wasn’t coming back. It was okay to be sad, angry, scared. Daddy still loved them; he was still all around them. He was sorry that he had to leave without saying goodbye, but their memories would keep him alive in their hearts.

  They were just words to ease the pain of a small child. The debt she owed her family for keeping Hailey’s life normal was one she could never repay. She went to daycare, played, and laughed. They took her to playgrounds, movies, and kept her entertained while the business of Isaac’s death was dealt with.

  Every time she turned around those first few weeks, Isaac was there. A note left in her bedside drawer attached to a bag of Hershey kisses that read: For the next time Midol doesn’t cut it. She absent-mindedly folded the clothes that were still in the dryer and put them away in his drawer before realizing that he’d never take them back out.

  Isaac was a planner, and had planned for the possibility that he might not always be around. He had life insurance, he had funeral plans, and he had letters written to Evie and Hailey that had been locked away in a safe deposit box.

  Evie read her letter and it was exactly what she had expected it would be. It was a declaration of love, and a request for strength. Not only for Hailey, but also for herself. He asked her to be brave, to fight for the life she deserved, and to remember that she always deserved love, no matter what.

  It was a nice thing to say, something you could easily say when you were happily in love and committed to someone. The reality of being brave was not as easy. The reality of ever being able to love another person again was even harder.

  She had taken Hailey’s letter and put it back in the safe deposit box hoping that when the day came when she needed to hear her father’s words, Evie would be strong enough to give them to her.

  Evie let a month slip away, during which time they had a funeral, and then a memorial service that was more of a party. Isaac would have loved that they BBQ’d and watched football. The house was filled with flowers, cards, and more food than her fridge and freezer could hold.

  There were stuffed animals everywhere for Hailey. Her bed had been covered in them, which was okay since she had taken to sleeping with Evie every night. People were trying to replace her father’s arms with ones that were stuffed and could be there for her in the dark. They were kind gestures, but it was almost too much for Evie to bear.

  It was another few weeks before she went back to work. She was on autopilot, going through the motions of accepting the condolences of those around her. Surprisingly, things went back to normal much faster than she had expected. Her coworkers weren’t being insensitive; they just had lives to live. They continued to laugh and work around her. They had already moved on.

  Evie knew that it would have been the same for her if this had all happened to someone else. It was a small reminder that life went on. It just didn’t seem to want to go on for her. />
  She pretended, in fact she got amazingly good at looking human. Hailey saw her mommy smile, play with her, make star-shaped snacks, and be willing to play dress up. It was just an act, but it was one that she felt worse about every time she lied to her baby by not really being there.

  Her sister had taken them out to a pottery painting place one night and Hailey had made an ornament to hang on their Christmas tree. It was a reminder to Evie that Hailey’s birthday was coming up. The poor baby was stuck between Thanksgiving and Christmas; her parties would always be full of fall decorations or tinsel.

  The pottery store had a flyer up that advertised classes at the local community college. Evie had always loved pottery, ever since high school; and she had been quite good at it when she was younger. Her sister had ripped the flyer off the wall, called, and signed her up for the class without asking. Evie went because honestly it was a few hours every week that she wasn’t just pretending to be alive. Her instructor quickly realized that she needed more advanced classes and moved her into a group that was learning much more complicated skills. Evie took to it like a fish to water. All the memories of how relaxing she had found pottery started to give her brief moments of relief from the daily struggle of living.

  Being in a class full of people that didn’t know her story, didn’t ask about her life, and only talked about clay. It worked better on her psyche than the antidepressants her doctor had put her on. She had started with bowls, and then she moved on to vases, she even made figurines for Hailey. It was the mental break she so desperately needed and it gave her an outlet for the emotions she didn’t always know how to express.