On Second Thought Read online

  But here he was. And it probably took him two hours to get here.

  "Were you happy together?" Daniel asked.

  The question brought the spike flying back. "Yes," I whispered.

  "Good. That's good."

  The line was stopped, the endless mourners waiting. "Thanks for coming, Daniel."

  "You bet. See you around." He moved on, shaking hands with the Coburns.

  For a second, I pictured four of us--Daniel and one of his False Alarms, Nathan and me, back at Porto's Bar, laughing. We should've done that. Why hadn't we ever done that? They would've liked each other, maybe.

  Unfortunately, Nathan still seemed to be dead.

  So no beers with Daniel the Hot Firefighter.

  I glanced at the casket, which I'd been trying so hard not to do.

  Nathan wore a blue suit and a tie I'd given him for Christmas. Or had I? He had lots of ties. This one was purple with red polka dots. From now on, I'd be obliged to hate red polka dots.

  This was just not funny. Seriously. I was not amused. For a second, I felt like kicking his casket and saying, Wake up, you selfish shit. Look at your poor mother! Look at Miles and Atticus! How is your sister supposed to go through life without you? And what about me, huh? What about our baby? Remember that little project? Huh? Huh? You can't just run out on all this, you know!

  "I'm very sorry for your loss."

  Another tie. This one was navy blue with silver. "Thanks." I raised my eyes. It was Jonathan, Ainsley's boss.

  He'd been great that night. When I started, ah, screaming and stuff--Nathan's slits of blue eyes, those unseeing blue eyes, and please, Higher Power, take that image away from me--Jonathan had been busy. Chest compressions until the paramedics arrived. He drove me to the hospital, I think. It gets blurry around that point. No. He did.

  "He seemed like a very nice person," Jonathan said, and the simple words caused another agonizing swallow.

  "Thank you," I whispered, and he inclined his head in a courtly nod and moved on to shake Eloise's hand.

  "Kate," said a quiet voice next to me. Brooke. "Can I have a word?" She guided me a few steps closer to the...the...the casket and lowered her already quiet voice to nearly inaudible. "Kate, Madeleine is here and wants to pay her respects. Is that all right with you?"

  "Madeleine? Nathan's ex?"

  "Yes. She...she was devastated when Mom called her." Brooke's eyes filled with tears.

  "Oh. Um...well, sure. I mean, is it okay with you guys? The family?"

  "It's up to you."

  Well, I couldn't exactly bar the door, could I? "Sure. Of course."

  Brooke nodded, then walked from the room, and I went back to the hated line.

  Nathan never told me much about Madeleine; it was one of the few subjects he was touchy about. It hadn't been easy, I knew. They'd been married for six years. She'd had a difficult upbringing and was, in his words, brilliant. She worked in...in something cool. I couldn't remember. Otherwise, I knew nothing.

  "Thank you for coming," I said to the next tie.

  "I'm very sorry," said the man, and I was so tired, I didn't bother asking how he knew Nathan.

  "Thank you," I said.

  "At least you didn't have children," his wife said, patting my arm, and I felt like stabbing her.

  And then in came Madeleine with Brooke.

  My husband's ex-wife was stunning. He hadn't mentioned that part. So you were married to Jessica Chastain, huh? I thought. Why isn't she your widow? Doesn't seem fair that she had you for six years, but I'm the sap who has to stand here. Also, my feet are killing me.

  Madeleine was slim in that "Diet? What do you mean by this foreign word?" way. She was a vegan, Nathan had told me; he'd been watching me lay waste to a bacon cheeseburger and seemed quite content with my meat-eating habits. Vegans were difficult, he'd said.

  But they did tend to have great figures. Her dress was navy blue, simple but fascinating, too. Chic, smooth haircut, expensive-looking gold earrings that twisted and swung.

  She saw the casket and froze, her face turning white as chalk.

  Then she let loose a wail that made my blood run cold.

  The place fell silent.

  She collapsed right there, folding (gracefully) to her knees, and put both fists up to her face. "No!" she sobbed. "Oh, Nathan, no!"

  I hadn't wailed, or collapsed. Was this a point in my column, or a demerit?

  A demerit, it seemed. Eloise rushed to her side, helped her up and put her arms around her. "My deah Madeleine," she said. "Oh, my deah." They hugged, and finally, it seemed, Eloise cracked. Her face spasmed.

  Just for a moment, though. She led Madeleine to the casket, where Madeleine put her hand on my husband's chest--my dead husband's chest--and shook with sobs.

  Six years, the lucky bitch. Eloise murmured to her, and Brooke came in for a group hug.

  Them, the popular girls in high school. Me, my panty hose rolling down.

  "Where's the bathroom?" my grandmother asked loudly. "I shouldn't have had all that Pepsi at lunch."

  "Come with me, Gram-Gram," Ainsley said.

  "Kate." The ex-wife was in front of me, trembling, pressing her lips together. Should I try to out-grieve her? Should I also wail and collapse?

  Then I looked in her eyes, and all my bitchery evaporated.

  She had really loved him.

  "Hi. I'm...I'm so sorry," I said, and my mouth wobbled, because I was so sorry, so sorry I hadn't taken better care of Nathan. She'd kept him alive for six years. I lost him in our first.

  "Forgive me for...that," she whispered, tears spilling out of her beautiful eyes.

  "No, no. It was an honest moment." Sheesh. Listen to me.

  "I'm sure he loved you very much."

  "Right back at you."

  Eloise gave me an odd look.

  How did he ever get over her? She was flippin' beautiful. I would marry her, she was so stunning. And why didn't she want his babies? It would make things a lot better for the Coburns if there was a little Nathan running around this place, let me tell you. Madeleine was probably a selfish whore.

  Eloise put her arm around her and ushered her away. I wondered if I said that selfish whore bit aloud.

  "Thank you for coming," I said belatedly, my voice sounding cheerful, as if I were waving fondly as best friends left after dinner.

  Cause of death: blunt trauma to the head.

  If my sister had gone for wood counters, or soapstone, would Nathan still be alive?

  Apparently, he had a tiny little oddity in one of the blood vessels in his brain. Not a problem, unless one's wife needed a second glass of wine.

  Cause of death: wife wanted to have buzz on during irritating speech by sister's boyfriend.

  Couldn't Eric just have asked Ainsley to marry him in private, like a normal person, I don't know, like maybe five years ago? Instead, he had to make a big production in front of everyone, in front of his Wellness Montage (it had been labeled, and really, who the hell photographs the removal of a testicle?). No, we all had to drink a toast to my little sister, and boom, I'm a fucking widow.

  I looked at the line, which went out the door, out into the foyer and down the street. When we pulled up to the funeral home, the line of mourners was four people thick and wrapped around the block. So much black it looked like the Night's Watch from Game of Thrones had descended. That was two hours ago, and the line showed no sign of thinning.

  Everyone loved him.

  Nine months ago, I hadn't. Nine months ago, I hadn't known him. I'd finally gotten to that happy Zen place, and life had been really, really good.

  If he had tripped nine months ago, I wouldn't have even known about it. Seven months ago, I would've lost a very sweet guy I'd been seeing. I would've been melancholy for a while. Would've made a black joke about how the universe was telling me not to date. Five months ago, I would've mourned him, would've wondered if we had truly been in love or if it was just infatuation. I would've gone to his wake
and introduced myself to his mother as a friend, smiled sadly when I thought of him.

  Four months ago, I would've lost my fiance, but I still wouldn't have known the reality of living with him day after day.

  Ninety-six days of marriage.

  I drifted over to the casket and, for the first time this endless evening, took a long look at my husband's body.

  That woman had been wrong. He looked absolutely dead. His face was hard and stiff, like one of those plastic surgery addicts, pumped up on filler. I wondered if the funeral home used the same stuff. Juvaderm. Botox.

  Oh, Nathan.

  At least his hair felt the same. My fingers stroked it, gently, trying not to make contact with his scalp. Just his hair, soft, silky hair that curled a little when he was sweaty. Roman emperor hair, I said once. We were in bed at the time. His smile...

  "Hey."

  It was Eric. Cause of death: extremely long-winded speech.

  "Hey," I bit out.

  "You doing okay?"

  "Not really."

  He put his arm around me, and I felt a pang of regret. Eric had always been a decent guy, if self-absorbed. "I was telling Sean about how weird this was, given my cancer. Like there's some meaning here."

  The irritation came swooping back like a vengeful eagle. "There's not, so please. None of your platitudes, Eric."

  He blinked. "I...I just meant life is short. You have to live life large."

  "Not now, Eric."

  "It's almost a message from the universe. You know I loved him, too. And I thought I'd be the one who died. You know? From my cancer?"

  "I vaguely remember, yes."

  "It's just so random. When I was getting chemo, there were days when I thought this was the end, and I said to myself--"

  "Here, Kate." My sister pressed a glass of water into my hand. "Mrs. Coburn wants you to meet someone. Nathan's friend from Columbia."

  Saved by the mourners. My sister steered Eric away, and I took another long look at my husband.

  I love you, I thought desperately, and at almost the exact same time, another thought came, hard and defiantly ugly.

  I wish we'd never met.

  Chapter Seven

  Ainsley

  "Just when I'd accepted the divorce," Candy liked to tell people on book tour, "Phil showed up with his child."

  I remembered thinking at age three and a half that it would be fun to live with a lady named Candy, that her house would be sparkly and we'd eat mostly pink foods. There'd be a lot of singing, I imagined.

  There wasn't. Candy sighed a lot. She had a daily headache.

  Hence, my childhood of guilt. Candy would buckle me briskly into a car seat, then wince as she stood up, hands on her back. She was in her forties when I came to live with her, and she'd tell her friends that she'd forgotten just how hard little kids were. She was dutiful, showing up at parent-teacher conferences because Dad was off with the boys of summer. She made sure I ate nutritious--and tasteless--dinners, but it was pretty clear. I was not her daughter. She already had one of those.

  When I came along, Candy had been working on her PhD. It took her four more years to finish her dissertation, which became her most famous book--Stuck with You: Raising the Recalcitrant Stepchild. It took me decades to figure out it was about me.

  Unlike Sean and Kate, I was a day-care kid. From their stories, it seemed they were raised in a magical kingdom of sibling friendship and parental delight. Candy baked back then, coconut cookies and angel food cake. Kate and Sean had stories of the time their mother made a tepee in the living room over winter break, or read The Wind in the Willows out loud, doing all the voices to perfection. Sean and Kate even shared a room until he turned seven.

  There were dozens of pictures of them before I came along, laughing together, arms slung around each other, Sean steadying Kate on her bike, the two of them eating Popsicles on a summer day, or standing in front of the house on the first day of school, Kate's hair in neat ponytails, Sean's freshly cut.

  Day care was fine. To the best of my knowledge, I was never dropped on my head or burned with cigarettes or put in toddler fight club. When I started kindergarten at the age of four and a half, I went to after-school programs, envious of the kids who got to ride the bus home.

  As I got older, Candy signed me up for pretty much anything that kept me out of the house. I was a Daisy/Brownie/Girl Scout, played soccer from the age of five, was forced into volunteering at Adopt-a-Grandparent, spending many a high school afternoon talking to elderly people who kept asking me to take them home.

  My father liked me quite a bit, though he wasn't around too much, always flying off somewhere to do his umpire thing. But when he was home, life was a lot happier. "I'm taking the Ainsburger on some errands," he'd call to Family 1.0, and once or twice a month he would take me off, my little hand so happy in his. We'd visit one of his friends, and I'd get to have ice cream and watch TV, maybe play computer games, something Candy forbid. Dad and his friend would go into the bedroom to "have a little talk in private," and hey, I didn't care. Dad often took me to the toy store for a new stuffed animal after the visit. For years, I thought errands meant visiting ladies.

  Kate and Sean were fine. They didn't hate me, beat me, tease me. They just kind of...ignored me. Not in a mean way, but in a slightly confused way. I remember knocking on Sean's door, asking him if he'd play with me. He looked utterly baffled as he groped around in his desk for something I could do with him. (He showed me how to shoot an elastic band, then told me he had to study.) Kate wasn't the type to brush my hair or play dolls with me, though she would, if I asked.

  I just got a little tired of asking.

  So instead, I made up friends. Lolly and Mr. Brewster, the tiny humans who lived in the mountains of my blankets, would ski and slide down the hills made by my knees and have terrible crashes and vivid arguments about whose fault it was. There was Igor, a tiny elephant who lived in shoe boxes I decorated with scraps of fabric and paint.

  I sound tragic, don't I? I wasn't, I'm pretty sure. By the time I was eight or nine, I had friends, and it was such a relief, having people who really seemed to like talking to me. In middle school, I joined everything, did the grunt-work jobs (always secretary, never president, equipment manager rather than star player). High school was the same; I was always Switzerland, staying friends with everyone, never taking sides.

  I didn't have a boyfriend. But I was great at giving advice to my friends who did have boyfriends, and I got a vicarious thrill every once in a while, approaching Seth to tell him that Lucy really liked him, and did he like her?

  When Kate went off to NYU, my parents and I moved to Cambry-on-Hudson, and I made the most out of being the new girl. I'd learned long ago that being a superfriend was the way to make people like me back. Adore, and ye shall be adored.

  Sean went from Harvard to Columbia Medical School, because he was a show-off. After NYU, Kate got an MFA in photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and immediately started working as a professional photographer. She was dazzling to me, so sophisticated and urbane, living in Brooklyn (I barely knew where that was back then, but it sounded so cool).

  I went to a pretty nice college in New York City--well, it was Wagner College on Staten Island, in the shadow of the mighty skyline but technically still in New York City.

  Unlike my siblings, I wasn't driven to achieve or study anything in particular. College was wonderful, and I loved being away from home. My siblings were off leading their fabulous, very adult lives; Sean married Kiara, also a surgeon, specialized in some kind of brain surgery and did the occasional TED Talk. Kate lived in her brownstone, a world away, it seemed, though she had me over for dinner once in a while, always nice but a little unsure where I was concerned.

  Then, junior year, I met Eric.

  Wagner was a small school, but somehow, we didn't know each other. He was an accounting major; I was studying philosophy, because doesn't the world need more philosophers?

&nb
sp; I saw Eric as we were moving back in on the first day of the new school year. His parents were saying goodbye, hugging him, and his mom was laughing and wiping tears. He kissed her on the cheek, hugged his dad, not the awkward thanks, gotta run hug of most boys our age, but a real hug, a loving hug.

  And Eric was handsome. Dark hair, dark eyes, attractively dorky glasses, lanky build.

  He looked up, saw me watching and smiled, and that was it. I fell in love.

  It took two weeks for me to speak to him, which was getting awkward, since we lived in the same dorm that year. But one happy night, my key card wasn't working, and I was patiently reinserting it for the fifteenth time when Eric came up behind me and said, "Want me to try, girl who doesn't talk to me?"

  I blushed.

  He smiled. "Maybe we could grab a coffee," he suggested, and my heart ricocheted around my chest.

  We grabbed a coffee.

  By the weekend, we were a couple. It took him all of two weeks to get me into bed; basically, the amount of time it took for the Pill to kick in. I couldn't believe love had finally found me in the form of affable, well-liked, dorktastic Eric Fisher...my boyfriend!

  And even more remarkable...he felt the same way about me.

  We could talk all night. It was more important to talk than sleep. He was funny, and he was so nice that it took my breath away. I hadn't met any boys like that. Boys who held the door and bought you cold medicine when you were sick and snagged a blueberry muffin from the dining hall just because you loved them.

  With Eric, I finally belonged. Finally, I was special.

  That summer, we both got internships in Manhattan, me with a tiny publishing house, him with a bank. His parents let us stay in their apartment on 102nd Street--the building was named The Broadmoor, which I thought was so sophisticated. I'd never lived in a building with a name before. The apartment had belonged to Eric's maternal grandmother, and it was a tiny, unglamorous place with a bedroom so small it could fit only a double bed. The living room was also the kitchen, and our table could fit only two people, and even then, our knees had to touch.

  Mr. and Mrs. Fisher approved of me, which in itself was dazzling. "Are you religious, sweetheart?" his mom had asked on our third dinner together.

  "Not really, Mrs. Fisher. Don't let the name O'Leary fool you," I said. "I can't remember the last time we went to church. Maybe when my cousin got married a few years ago?"