The Year of Second Chances, page 1
Dedication
To Dane, my love
Epigraph
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
—Ophelia, Hamlet Act IV, Scene 5, William Shakespeare
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Lara Avery
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Robin L, 33, Brokenridge
My little brother was waiting for me on my front porch, sun streaking behind him, turning the chipped white house and barn behind it pink and gold. I’d texted him my ritual plans, but his visit was a surprise. I should stop calling Theo my little brother. He’s twenty-three. He’s taller than me. But I can’t help it: he’ll always be a baby in my arms.
“Look who it is,” I called from the driveway, loading a grocery bag into the crook of my arm.
He glanced up from his phone, curls framing his face. “I’m gonna help with the lasagna.”
“You mean you’re going to eat the lasagna?”
“Right.”
It was a Friday, so I didn’t feel too bad going home right at five. Sorry, I’d imagined telling anyone I met on my way out of the office. Gotta go beat the shit out of some gluten. Truth be told, I had kind of hoped to run into someone. Someone to ask me how to run a simple function in Excel so I could sit down for a minute and enjoy their little pops of satisfaction as I helped them solve their problems. But the carpeted alleyways between cubicles remained empty—people finishing meetings, people off to their cabins—and I rode the I-35 bumper to bumper, trapped in a time machine.
The secret to Gabe’s lasagna was handmade pasta. Multiple varieties of cheese. Four kinds, if you have them, and I had them. Ripe tomatoes from the garden. None of these are secrets. Any Ina Garten fan will tell you the same. But my husband liked to wield his knowledge as if it were passed down to him on some ancient scroll—he loved to know how to do things, even things he did poorly, muttering memorized instructions to himself with a little satisfied smile, savoring the words blanch the tomatoes and remove the peel as if he were a newly ordained wizard uttering a spell.
Now, with his chicken scratch laid out on the kitchen island next to the ingredients, Theo and I followed the recipe carefully.
Tonight it would be a year, and everyone in Sisters in Grief had said they did a one-year ritual, and whatever my widow-support group said they were doing, I was also doing—or at least whatever things I had the energy to do since I’d joined, which were not that much. Mostly I talked and ate and drank with them at various widows’ houses, appreciating that I never had to worry whether I was piling on too much as we commiserated about taking care of ill spouses, never having to fear that people would think I was too obsessed with my old life (I was), all of us braiding our old threads of memory, unraveling them, and weaving again, like a bunch of Penelopes forever waiting for their Odysseuses. I had also gone to my own counselor for a while, but I was deemed well-adjusted and decided to release myself. I’d been acquainted with grief a long time, anyway. Dad died when I was eighteen. And there had been that chilly morning near Easter a couple years ago when the doctor called to inform us that the tumor in my husband’s liposarcoma had metastasized.
After, the prospect of death had chipped away at the next eighteen months, hollowing out our days. When it came, it was not the earth-shattering bomb it could have been—the world had already crumbled. My subsequent year without Gabe has been more like a medieval torture. Sometimes I’m in howling pain, being disemboweled, and sometimes I’m sitting in my cell—the tiny, creaky corner bedroom of an 1840s farmhouse—sweaty and alone, wondering how long the relief will last.
I slapped the dough on the counter so loud that Theo muttered, “Get it out, girl.” Together we ran the gloopy blob through the rickety old pasta maker we’d inherited from my parents’ restaurant, watching it flatten into a satisfying ribbon.
I’d almost gotten in a fender bender on the way home. Sometimes, for my own safety, I would have to turn up the volume on a Britney Spears song and belt along about the taste of somebody’s lips, stretching my voice so high my throat began to hurt. It was always in the car when loneliness and helplessness would sneak up on me, my mind having nothing to latch on to as I drove the same old routes, no column of numbers to comb through, no budgetary puzzles to solve. Singing took everything buzzing and snapping in my brain and chest and forced it into words. That they weren’t even my words, that they weren’t even applicable to my situation, was the point. No memories to go along with the pink-tinted girl power, none of my story, none of my baggage. Sometimes the voices of pop stars were the only things that held me to the earth, those three-minute containers about nights out at the club keeping me from sliding off the plane of linear time into a thirty-car pileup.
I stirred sauce as Theo read me jokes from Twitter, watching the tomato-red bubbles glisten and pop.
Gabe had stepped away from the town’s annual Easter Saturday parade to take the call from our doctor, I remember. It was unusual to get a call on a weekend, but the doctor had wanted to call us with the results of the biopsy immediately after she’d received them. Gabe had removed his ears—as the mayor and grand marshal, he had decided it was his duty to dress as a giant white bunny—and when the call was over, he looked at me, said, “That’s that,” and proceeded to lead a line of ribbon-twirled fire trucks, tulip-painted mail trucks, and little kids in their church finest looping around the town square. I’d tried not to cry as I watched him, the world’s friendliest Grim Reaper, wondering how he could possibly celebrate spring as he marched toward the opposite. But that was Gabe.
Since then, every day, maybe even twice or three times a day, the air around my palms and chest would start to feel pressurized, as if a substance were being sucked out of it. I’d be dizzy for a few minutes, but in the space of a few heartbeats, coherence would return, and I’d still be standing. If Gabe were nearby, I’d hold on to him as if he would soon dissolve. Now, I had to pretend he was still there to hold on to, and that was how I was still waking up, still going to work, still leading meetings about changes in corporate tax code. I held on to routine. Objects. My mouse. My steering wheel. Somehow I was still here, and the one-year ritual should be something meaningful to commemorate Gabe, the other members of the Sisters in Grief had mentioned, something to show him, wherever he was, that I had not forgotten him. As if I could ever forget Gabe. As if anyone who knew him ever could.
I divided the fancy deli sausage I’d bought into chunks, handing each one to Theo to layer with the noodles and the cheese. Gabe used to weigh each tiny portion, insisting that it would be noticeable if the perfect ratio of sausage to sauce was off, even by a fraction of an ounce.
“Hang on,” I told Theo, holding my hand over the dish.
“What?”
“Maybe we should put the portions on the scale. Gabe always weighed the sausage.”
“Uh, no. I am not going to pick pieces of sausage out of this lasagna. No.”
“But then we’re not executing the recipe exactly as he would have wanted it.”
“So? Gabe doesn’t care.”
“But . . .” I swallowed the swell of emotion rising in my throat. I tried to breathe as a small something inside me burst. A bit of nonsense and sadness I had not entertained in a while. The lasagna was a ritual, but it would not conjure him, I reminded a childish part of me inside. He wouldn’t be coming back. Theo proceeded.
As I tore basil leaves to sprinkle on the top layer, my phone rang.
I ignored it. Could be a relative. Could be Gabe’s parents, Juana and Jim, though we had made plans to speak on Sunday afternoon. Could even be some constituent or volunteer, who held my hand last year at the church, looking at me with silent, wet eyes, as if they knew me, as if Gabe belonged to them, too.
As the phone continued to ring, Theo glanced at me.
“I don’t feel like it tonight.”
He shrugged, looking back at his task. “I didn’t say anything.”
But it rang again. I opened my messages to find a frantic series of texts. Hey love are u home from work?? Accidentally left my keys inside the restaurant. Call when you can.
“Mom locked herself out,” I told Theo, rolling my eyes, relieved it wasn’t something more serious.
Theo erupted in laughter. “Classic. Put it on Speaker.”
My mother’s smoke-crackled voice resounded after the first ring. “Oh, my gosh,” she said instead of a greeting.
“Did you check your apron?” I asked.
“Of cou
“What happened?”
“Well, geez, we were slow tonight, so Nance and I were relaxing at the bar . . .” Nancy Kelleher had been Mom’s best friend since childhood. By day, a legal secretary at the courthouse. By night—or most nights, at least—she sat at the bar at the Green River, keeping Mom company while she manned the host stand.
“Focus, Mom.” Theo said aloud what I was thinking.
“Is that Theo?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“My baby boy! I didn’t know you were in town. Don’t you have classes?”
“It’s the weekend,” he said toward the phone by way of an explanation. Theo was working his way toward an anthropology degree. Slowly. He avoided my eyes. “Anyway.”
“Yeah, so, I had gotten that new pinot noir that Bill and his wife, what’s her name . . .”
“Carol,” I muttered.
“Carol. So Bill and Carol had recommended this wine. You know, when they came up from the Cities. They said, ‘Margie, you have to have proper wine, not this cheap stuff,’ so I said, ‘Sure’ . . .”
I made a get on with it motion toward the phone. Theo, on the other hand, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying this. He would often get my mom talking and post it on social media—there were quite a few Margie stans among his college friends.
“Mom,” I interrupted, “why are you locked out?”
“Oh! Yeah. Nance and I were having a sample of the wine, and we stepped out for a smoke, and I’m seeing now I forgot my keys inside.”
“What do you mean, a sample?”
“Taste of the bottle. You know, to pair it with the right dish.”
Theo snorted. “You sound like you had a big ol’ taste, Ma.”
“Once Nance and me get to talking, well, you know. I had her rolling silverware with me, and she was telling me about that bear they saw at their cabin in Four Oaks . . .”
Theo was right, Mom’s speech was a bit wonky. It was a familiar sound to both of us. My mom’s tipsy lilt was one of the sounds of our childhood, me a preteen, Theo in preschool, my parents stumbling in the foyer, whispering to each other as they tried not to wake us after they’d “closed up the restaurant” with their friends. Sometimes I couldn’t get Theo back to bed, so we’d all sit at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, eating crackers slathered with peanut butter, the two of them red-faced and relaying to us the funny thing Nance had said, or the way Gus had fallen when they’d cleared the tables out for a dance floor. “So I must have turned the latch out of habit or something,” Mom was saying.
“What about the back door?” I asked.
“That’s always locked automatically, you know that.”
“You didn’t prop it open?”
“I didn’t prop it, no. Or maybe Rick kicked out the prop, I don’t know. But if you could get down here . . . It’s getting chilly.”
“Can you?” I whispered to Theo, making a driving motion.
“Jay drove me,” he whispered back. Sorry, he added silently, doing a theatrical cringe.
A giant sigh I’d been holding escaped.
“Hello?” my mom called from the other end.
“Of course,” I said to her. “We’re on our way.”
“Oh, you’re my angels. Love you bunches.”
“Bunches,” Theo echoed. I hung up.
Theo poked at his phone, making a face. “Ugh, you’re going to hate me, but I’m supposed to meet high school friends at the Red Lyon.”
“Totally. I’ll drop you at the bar after.”
“Ugh, thank you. Sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry.” I scanned the spare keys near the back door. “So you and Jay are . . . ?”
“We’re talking,” he said as he typed a reply to his friends. “We’re enjoying each other’s company. Nothing serious.”
I called something back to him, lost in a memory. It had been a while since I’d had a reason to look at the spare keys. They hung in two rows on a jagged section of wood, a rack I had made for Gabe for one of his birthdays.
“You find ’em?” Theo was standing at the counter, slipping on his shoes.
We had so many sets of keys—people seemed to trust us with their homes—we had to color-code them with electrical tape to keep them organized. Warm colors for my family, purples and blues for his, black for his bike locks. From the row, I nabbed a set of green. Green for the Green River Supper Club. “Geez.” I gestured to the key rack. “I should get rid of some of these.”
Theo looked uncomfortable. “Want to come out with me? Get your mind off . . .” Theo gestured vaguely to the key rack “. . . things?”
I touched my eyes to make sure nothing was coming out. Dry. “Nah. I’ll be fine. I’m actually looking forward to a little downtime.”
“What about the lasagna?”
We both looked at the meticulously layered pile of noodles and sausage and cheese on the center of the counter, ready for the oven. With Gabe, it would last two nights and a lunch, tops. Alone, it would feed me for weeks. “I’m gonna stick it in.”
“Without preheating?” Theo raised his eyebrows. “Someone’s feeling wild tonight.”
“Woo-hoo,” I droned. I lifted the pounds-heavy dish, turned on the oven, and set the timer on my watch.
When I straightened, Theo had a small, sad smile. He looked like our dad when he smiled like that. “You know I love you, Robbie.”
I grabbed his shoulders and gave him a push out the door. “Love you, too, ding-dong.”
The last traces of September sun were disappearing as Theo and I pulled up to the Green River Supper Club, the best restaurant in town, or so it claimed in fading cursive. It was the only restaurant in town, besides the McDonald’s attached to the gas station near the highway. I suppose you could also count the pub food at the Red Lyon, but any resident of Brokenridge would recommend at least three beers before consuming their mozzarella sticks, otherwise you can taste the freezer burn.
Our dad and mom’s place used to be somewhat fancy, a place to go for dates and birthdays and anniversaries, serving fresh-caught walleye or pork brats from the Sandersens’ farm down the road. Dad set the menu and ran the business; Mom ran the front of house, and she was famous for it. Just as she could recite the worst gossip about her customers, she could also remember their grandkids’ names, what teams they rooted for, the way they liked their steak. People came from miles away on a Saturday night because everyone knew that if you stuck around long enough after dinner service, Margie and Bart would tap a keg on the house, maybe set up a card game or clear the tables for dancing. The cops only ever came twice, my mom always likes to tell the story, once because Nils Gauer ran his snowmobile into the oak nearby, and the other because Sheriff Rundle himself was too smashed to drive home.
Tonight, the decorative iron bench under the green awning was empty of my mother. Cigarette butts overflowed from the concrete planter.
“Where is she?” I wondered.
Theo pointed to the side mirror.
We both turned in our seats. Mom was creeping around the back corner of the building, taking weird, light little steps, her hands up as if in a hostage situation. She was sixty-four, but she didn’t look it from far away, her thick brown hair feathered like an ’80s centerfold, her figure trim in her jeans and Vikings sweatshirt. A closer view revealed crags and sags from decades of laughter and menthols, and she’d never given up her blue eye shadow, no matter how much I pleaded. She held a single finger to her lips and motioned us to get out of the car. Theo and I followed directions, taking care to shut the doors quietly. My heart began to pound. Was it a robber? An animal? Bears did amble through here quite a bit.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
“Hush,” my mom called over her shoulder.
Around the back we went, Theo recording on his phone, stifling laughter, me trying to figure out if this was, in fact, a little bit hilarious or purely annoying.
Near the dumpsters, Mom paused and pointed, her laughter escaping in snorts. It appeared Mom’s friend Nance had fallen asleep sitting up against the brick wall. As a blanket, she had repurposed an industrial-size plastic bag of toilet-paper rolls.
Mom bent close to Nance’s ear. “Nance!”
“Yuh,” Nance almost shouted, straightening with urgency.
“The kids are here.”
Nance blinked at both of us, then at my mom. “Holy smokes, Margie.” She shoved the toilet-paper roll bag off her lap. “What the hell did you put in them drinks?”
