Free Thought I Knew You by Kate Moretti Page B

officially acknowledge my pain, many people chose the option of unofficially pretending it wasn’t there. Because of the anger I carried at all times, I didn’t care about the discomfort of others. I reveled in it. I was a vampire, and other people’s discomfort was my sustenance.
    “Hi, Nicole,” I said loudly.
    She nodded curtly at me and quickly pushed her cart past the milk she surely needed for her three children.
    The only person who didn’t avoid me like the plague was Sarah, who called several times a week, sometimes to relay some bubbly gossip about her life, a distraction I welcomed. Other times, she’d just call to check-in and accept my moods however she found me. I found myself looking forward to her calls. She treated me like a person. Like I was normal.
    Drew stayed another week. He helped me adjust to everyday life, giving the right amount of distraction to aid in the transition. I got out of the bed every morning because small hungry bellies didn’t care if I wanted to pull the covers over my head and hide for the day, or the week. I tried to resume our routine of kid activities.
    At night, after I put the girls to bed, I’d sit in Greg’s chair, a physical and sensory barrier between Drew and me, while Drew would take the far corner of the couch. We’d talk and laugh easily, as though our near miss had never happened. Briefly, I wondered if the air between us would shift, but it didn’t. Perhaps it was purely accustomed to the years of pulsing electricity, high-voltage moments intermingled with the steady line of friendship. An electrocardiogram of our relationship.
    Before he left, he pulled me into a longer than normal hug. Part of me wanted to cling to him. Stay. Stay and fill the hole in the house. Impractical, of course. Probably also unhealthy.
    “Are you going to be okay? Alone?”
    I assured him we would be fine and promised to call. As he drove away, I waited on the front steps, hoping he’d come back. I knew he couldn’t, but I stood paralyzed, unable to face the emptiness of the sleeping house, truly alone for the first time in my life.
    Chapter 12
    A mazingly enough, my body continued to function even when my heart felt eviscerated. I could breathe. I could talk. I made dinner, did laundry, ran the vacuum. However, I didn’t think. I couldn’t feel.
    Numbness overtook me, and I went through the days on autopilot. With Drew gone, the house resumed its hollow quality. Voices bounced off the walls like pool balls reverberating in the seemingly empty rooms. I grew impatient with the girls.
    I noticed a change in Hannah’s behavior. She became selfish. Leah could no longer play with her toys. She would yell, “No, Leah. I said you can’t touch that! ”And Leah would cry. I would bang my hand on the counter out of frustration. I blamed Greg’s absence, but my reactions were also damaging, and I didn’t know how to change them. The days just progressed with the conclusion of hours, and end to end, those hours comprised the days.
    I tried to take the girls to the library, toddler gym, and the playground. I wrote a semi-sincere apology note to Miss Katie. But mostly, those first few lonely weeks were colored by anger, intense, unmitigated fury. I slammed pots and pans in the kitchen, as if the cacophony would summon Greg home, if only to display annoyance at the racket and my need to slam things. At night, what kept me awake were the memories, specifically the good ones. I reconstructed happy events in our lives, looking for clues that would reveal the current ending.
    On our first New Jersey date, after Greg returned from Rochester, we went to a distant cousin’s wedding, where I met Greg’s entire extended family. Greg drank too much champagne, an unusual occurrence as I later discovered, and I had to drive his car home. His car was manual transmission, and I had no idea how to drive it. I think I stayed in third gear the entire time, with the engine rev drowning out any