Wish You Were Gone(5)
Oh, how she missed those days.
Now, Saturdays meant work. And the worst work of the week. Because Saturday was when the browsers came. They came with their sticky-fingered children and their cell phones, picking things up and putting them down, looking around almost as if they didn’t understand how they came to be there. Then they’d shoot Lizzie all sorts of smiles—apologetic ones, pitying ones, commiserating ones, promising ones—as they pushed their strollers out the door. A browser was a browser, and they never bought a thing.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. She actually loved people. She liked to chat them up and hear their stories, listen to their proud-mama boasts or commiserate after a long day at work. People were endlessly fascinating to Lizzie. People who bought things? They were, currently, her favorite kind of people. Especially now that her situation had changed.
With the holidays coming, the decorating side of her business would slow, as people began to concentrate on entertaining and not overhauling. Yes, the retail side would pick up with gift shopping and holiday swaps, but never enough to compensate for the big commissions that reappointing some Wall Street mogul’s great room would bring in. Or renovating the kitchen of another bored housewife.
Lizzie paused beneath the skylight in her entryway and tilted her chin up. It looked like a perfect blue-sky autumn day outside, all pumpkin spiced lattes and crunchy leaves underfoot. There would be a ton of traffic on River Street. She should do a flash sale this afternoon. Twenty percent off all ceramics from noon to four? Was it gauche to run a sale the day after your best friend’s husband died?
No. Emma wouldn’t care. In fact, she would never even know. Lizzie needed to make a living. She’d put out the chalkboard as soon as she opened the doors. Maybe she’d do a special on Emma’s photography prints, too. It would be nice to be able to tell her friend that she’d sold a piece or two. Hearing of a sale always brought a smile to Emma’s face—imagining her work hanging forever in the living room of some young family. Not that Lizzie thought it would change anything, but it could give Emma a spot of joy on what was sure to be a horrible day.
Horrible days. Lizzie knew from mourning, having lost her beloved dad just five years earlier. This was going to be months of horrible days. She was going to have to make more time for Emma. Be there for her. Help her with whatever she needed—funeral plans, hanging out with the kids, bringing food. She saw lots of spa treatments she couldn’t afford in her future.
With a huge yawn, Lizzie dragged her tired ass into the kitchen. She hadn’t slept more than three hours, tops, and the skin under her eyes felt dry and heavy. Her nose remained clogged no matter how many times she blew it, the back of her throat was coated in gravel, and even though her whole body was moving at a snail’s pace, her mind raced.
James Walsh is dead. Emma is a widow. Everything is going to change.
When he woke up yesterday morning, had he known? No. How could he? He had probably figured that day was going to be just like any other day, and he’d be waking up this morning for breakfast with his family, taking Hunter out to shag balls at the batting cages, or popping by the gourmet deli to order cold cuts and salads, or doing work in the yard. Did James Walsh even do yard work? Probably not. People with that kind of money had landscapers.
Lizzie couldn’t get the ambulance—the lumpy form of James Walsh’s body under the white sheet—out of her mind. The police had cleared out soon after Lizzie brought Kelsey home and when Lizzie tried to ask Emma what had happened, all Emma would say was, “It was an accident. They’re not sure…” Her friend had been so exhausted and distraught, Lizzie hadn’t wanted to press further.
James’s inner life—if he had one—was a mystery to Lizzie. She had barely even spoken to the man in the last ten years. Back in the day, when the kids were in grade school and Emma used to throw barbecues or parties for their birthdays or on the last day of school, he was often away on some business trip or other. If he was in attendance, he’d spend the whole party in the back corner of the yard, smoking cigars with his buddies and laughing his booming laugh. He’d ignored Lizzie’s existence, basically, not that she could blame him. In retrospect, she realized he’d ignored most—if not all—of Emma’s friends. That was the kind of guy he was.
But he’d always seemed so healthy. So robust. She couldn’t make sense of it.
“Coffee?”
Willow, standing near the window next to the Keurig, startled Lizzie half out of her skin. Her daughter, tall, square-shouldered, a presence. She clearly hadn’t slept either, or bothered to remove her heavy eye makeup. She looked like she’d just come home from a KISS concert.
KISS. Had Willow ever even heard of KISS?
“Of course coffee. Do you even need to ask?”
Lizzie took out a box of organic granola—no more sugar cereal for her—and sat down at the table, dragging over a bowl that may or may not have been used yesterday. Willow popped a pod into the Keurig and then handed her the soy milk. Lizzie ate on autopilot. Willow fixed her coffee for her and put it down next to Lizzie’s bowl, and Lizzie, for a moment, considered diving headfirst into it.
She’d call Emma when she got to the shop. Or maybe she should wait. What if she was sleeping? Lizzie didn’t want to do the wrong thing, but the only thing she knew for sure was wrong was not calling. So, she’d call, but later. When would Emma start cleaning out her husband’s things? Lizzie couldn’t even imagine.