Cherish (Covet #1.5) (8 page)

You can’t bully someone out of their depression, but you can help them get moving in the right direction.

This time around, I’m the one who will have to point Daniel toward the light. I won’t give up, because it’s a hell of a lot easier to fight for him than it ever was to fight for myself.

I pull into Daniel’s driveway and park my car next to his in the garage. After I switch off the ignition, I grab my purse and start to get out of the car. Daniel doesn’t make a move, so I let go of the door handle.

Minutes pass by in silence. Finally Daniel takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “Don told me there were some things I could try. To help me feel better.” He sounds utterly defeated.

“I’ve been in your shoes, Daniel. And I walked in them a lot longer than I should have. Admitting you need help is the hardest part. Once you say it out loud, it starts to get easier.”

“Is that what happened to you? Did you finally admit you needed help?”

I don’t like to think of those dark days, but I want Daniel to know I understand and can empathize with what he’s going through. “Yes. It seemed like happiness was on the other side of a very tall, very unforgiving mountain, and just thinking about reaching the top felt daunting. But what I discovered was that when I finally started to climb, it wasn’t quite as hard as I thought it would be. It was still hard, and it will be for you too. But suddenly there were more good days than bad. I spent more hours outside than I did in bed. I registered with the temp agency, and when I completed a job, I asked for another. But it didn’t happen overnight, and I had to actively participate, not just sit on the sidelines and wonder how it had all gone so terribly wrong.”

“I don’t have the strength to climb that mountain, Jess. I don’t.”

“You’ll have to climb it anyway.”

Sitting in my car, in the semidarkness of Daniel’s garage, I pull him toward me. He doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t resist. He rests his head on my chest, the console of my Honda digging uncomfortably into both of us, and lets me hold him. I cradle his head as if he’s a child and stroke it gently.

The days that follow aren’t easy for Daniel, but as I watch him begin to climb his own mountain, my heart can barely hold all the love I feel for him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

DANIEL

After I get out of the shower, I find Jessie in the kitchen stirring chili on the stove. The smell of garlic and onions reached me in the back bedroom while I was walking on the treadmill, and the smell is even stronger now. She is singing and dancing along to a song on the radio like she couldn’t care less who’s watching her. This Jessie reminds me of the larger-than-life girl I fell in love with. That’s how Dylan referred to her once: larger than life. Of course, he said it with disdain, but that’s only because Jessie had dared to steal some of his thunder. Whether or not she’d meant to was of no concern to Dylan. One of the things I remember now is the type of relationship Jessie had with Dylan. She could spar with him like nobody’s business. If you ask me, he enjoyed it.

“How was your workout?” Jessie asks when I reach into the fridge for a bottle of water.

“It was okay. I walked three miles. My balance felt really good. I wish the doctor would clear me to run.”

She smiles. “Patience, grasshopper.”

Regular exercise is one of the ways I’m dealing with my depression because my doctors are all about the endorphins. Jess also sees to it that I eat well, sleep only the amount I should and not a minute more, and that we get out of the house every day. If Jess has errands to run, I go with her, and lately I’ve spent more time at the grocery store, mall, and Target than I have in the past two years
combined.

It helps, though. Every single bit of it helps.

“Smells good,” I say, lifting the lid on the pot.

“It will be. Just needs to hang out on the heat a bit longer.”

The song ends and a new song comes on the radio. There’s something about the opening notes that captures my attention immediately, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s like this sometimes: certain things float just beyond my grasp.

Slowly, she turns around and looks at me, and I can tell by her expression that she desperately wants me to make the connection.

The wheels are trying to turn, but it’s as if someone has poured glue into my brain and everything is stuck. Jessie waits patiently, but I can’t. I just…‌can’t.

“Tell me,” I say.

“‘Tupelo Honey’ by Van Morrison. When we first started dating, I was in this big Van Morrison phase. Everyone was all into grunge, but I was in my dorm playing Van Morrison on vinyl. I played this song so much you used to call me tupelo honey. When I’d walk into the room you’d say, ‘Hey, there’s my tupelo honey. She sure is sweet.’ Eventually you just shortened it to honey. I’d go for weeks without hearing you call me by my real name. Some of your friends even started to call me honey, but you didn’t like that at all and put a stop to it pretty fast. When you woke up in intensive care, you looked right at me and said honey. You said it with such clarity and conviction that it stunned me. Your mom and I went nuts because we knew you were with us again.” Her eyes fill with tears.

“Are you upset because I don’t remember?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. But now she’s really crying and the tears are running down her face. “I’m crying because this was our wedding song. And if anyone had asked me on that day if I could ever imagine not spending the rest of my life with you, I would have looked at them like they were crazy.”

I may not remember everything about my relationship with Jess, but it doesn’t take much to know when someone needs comfort, and I pull her into my arms. Her body shakes as she cries, and I stroke her back and say, “It’s okay, Jess. It’s okay.”

She lifts her head off my chest. “No, it is not okay. I’m the reason we’re no longer married. Not you. Me. If I could take back everything I said, every time I shut you out, I would. I was in a dark place, and no matter how much you tried to help me, I didn’t know how to get out.”

I cradle her face and brush her tears away with my thumbs. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be the one in that dark place.”

“I owe you that.”

“I’m not keeping score, honey.”

This brings a round of fresh tears, but they seem more like happy tears. After she pulls herself together, she steps out of my embrace and turns back to the stove. “The chili should be ready soon.”

“Hey, Jess?”

She wipes her eye with the back of her hand. “Yeah?”

“You took my breath away that day, and I remember thinking I was the luckiest man on earth to be marrying a wonderful girl like you.”

“I’m the one who was lucky,” she says softly.

I squeeze her shoulder on my way out of the room, wondering if Jess and I might get lucky again and hoping with everything in my power that we can.

“Do you want to watch a movie?” I ask after we’ve eaten the chili. “We never did watch
Foul Play
. Who knows? For me it might be like watching it again for the first time.”

She smiles. “I love that you can joke about it now. You’ve come such a long way. I know it may not feel that way, but it’s true.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Let’s watch it,” she says. “But first let me make some popcorn. You like yours with M&M’s in it.”

I snap my fingers and point at Jess. “We used to buy a package of M&M’s at the theater and pour them into our tub of popcorn.”

“You refuse to eat movie popcorn any other way.”

“God, it feels good to remember things,” I say. “Even the inconsequential crap.”

Jess pops the popcorn, and I dim the lights. I’m sitting upright on the couch with my feet on the ottoman, and she’s lying next to me with her legs bent. Halfway through the movie, almost unconsciously, I reach over and grab her feet, settling them in my lap. I don’t know if it’s because I suddenly remembered that’s how we like to watch movies on the couch together, or because it just feels right.

Jess’s focus remains on the screen, but she doesn’t move her feet away. When the movie is over, she yawns and sits up, placing her feet on the floor. “Well? Was it as good as you remember?”

“Better.”

“I’m going to get ready for bed,” she says.

I lock up and turn off the lights in the kitchen. When she returns to the living room wearing her pajamas, she makes up her bed on the couch.

“Good night,” she says.

“Good night.”

I turn off the living room light, but before I reach the doorway that leads to the hall, I stop and turn around. “You don’t have to keep sleeping on the couch.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I know you don’t, but I’d like it if you slept next to me.” Sometimes I feel lonely, and I lie in bed thinking of Jess out here on the couch, wishing she was beside me.

She rises silently from the couch and follows me down the hallway into my bedroom. She slips under the covers, and there’s a bit of tossing and turning as we get comfortable and settle into our positions, but that night I sleep better than I have in a very long time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

JESSIE

In an effort to jostle some more memories loose, we’ve been going through the contents of Daniel’s home. We’ve already made our way through the boxes in the spare bedroom, but they’re mostly filled with receipts, our old tax returns, and owner’s manuals for things Daniel and I don’t own anymore, like the big-screen TV from our old house and the snowblower he replaced last winter. We eliminate what we can, and Daniel organizes the rest in the filing cabinets in his office, which is something he said he’s been meaning to do since he moved in but never made time for. It’s tedious work, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Reviewing and cataloguing the information helps him feel more in control of his surroundings, and according to his therapist, tasks like these will help him improve his attention span and concentration skills.

I made a list of our favorite movies, and we’ve been working our way through them. We watch them on the couch together. Daniel holds my feet in his lap the way he always used to. It feels every bit as good as it did when we were together.

Sleeping together feels good too. It took me a few nights to get used to it again, and even though there is nothing romantic about it, there is something peaceful about sleeping next to him again, especially because I’ve spent almost two years sleeping alone. It’s a king-sized bed and we stay on our respective sides, but I can feel his presence. I’m aware of the smell of his skin and the sound of his breathing. It calms me.

One day while Daniel is walking on the treadmill, I make my way down to the basement to start tackling the Rubbermaid storage tubs that are lined up against one wall. I can’t even begin to imagine what’s in them. When Daniel moved out of our home, I spent the day with my parents so I wouldn’t have to be there. When I returned, not much had changed. He left all the furniture and took only his clothes and personal items. There appeared to be fewer things in the basement and garage, but I’d never taken the time to figure out exactly what was missing. Shortly after that, I sold the house and all the furniture I no longer needed and moved to my apartment.

The basement is partially finished, but the tubs are in a room with a concrete floor next to the furnace and water heater. I pry off the lid of the first tub and come face-to-face with my old maternity clothes. I have a vague recollection of Daniel gathering up anything baby related and packing it away so I wouldn’t have to see it. But now that time has passed, the sight of the clothes doesn’t upset me as much. The pain is still there, but it’s outweighed by the memories of how happy I was during my pregnancy.

After pulling out all the items, I lay them on the floor and sit down, not really caring that the concrete is hard and uncomfortable. I hold up each item, remembering the places I wore it. The clothes in this first tub aren’t actually maternity clothes at all, but rather regular clothes in bigger sizes. As I’d outgrown them, I’d washed them and put them back for the next pregnancy.

The second tub holds the clothes I’d worn in the middle months. I pull out the striped long-sleeved T-shirt I wore when I first started to show. I’d been so excited to finally look like a pregnant woman instead of one who’d just gotten a bit thick around the middle. When I pointed out my barely-there bump, Daniel insisted on taking a picture of me while I was turned to the side. He took one every week after that as I grew bigger and bigger.

The last tub holds the clothes from the end of my pregnancy. I remember telling Daniel that the baby needed to come soon because I only had a few things that fit by then, and I was tired of wearing them.

We tried for another baby after Gabriel, because everyone thinks that all you need when you lose a child is a replacement. Our lovemaking took on a subtle, procreational vibe, with whispered inquiries from Daniel in the heat of the moment about whether or not it was a good time.

When my depression really sank its teeth into me, the sex ended and so did Daniel’s hope for another baby.

I don’t know what to do with the clothes, so I put the lid back on and pull out another tub.

The contents take my breath away.

Gabriel’s baby book is on top and underneath it a hodgepodge of items, as if Daniel packed everything away with urgency. There is the outfit we dressed Gabriel in to bring him home from the hospital. It’s yellow, because we didn’t want to know the sex of our baby in advance. There are giraffes and elephants on the front, and it came with a matching cap. I pick it up and hold it, as if Gabriel is still in it, and I hug it gently. My tears fall fast and furious, but I’m not sad or upset. I am filled with a sense of joy that I’ve never felt before. I can
feel
Gabriel’s spirit in the room with me, full of love and peace and happiness.

After Gabriel died, I couldn’t bear to look at or touch any of his things. They felt as cold and stiff as he had felt when I reached into his crib to pick him up that morning. But now I rub the fabric against my cheek, and it’s warm and soft. I can still smell the faintest trace of him, or maybe it’s just the special detergent I washed his clothes in. I don’t care because it’s a wonderful, heavenly smell.