Love, Alice by Barbara Davis

Author:Barbara Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-10-10T15:07:19+00:00

TWENTY-SEVEN

Dovie hugged her paper coffee cup with both hands, savoring the fading warmth against her fingers as she stared at William’s headstone, the dark sun around which her life had seemed to orbit for the last thirteen months. She was exhausted, and chilled to the bone.

A storm had blown in sometime around three a.m., rattling the windows until she’d finally gotten up to open the blinds. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there in the dark, watching the lightning flash and listening to the rain lashing the marshes, but she’d done a lot of thinking. When dawn finally came she got dressed, left a message for Jack that she wouldn’t be in, and grabbed her keys.

Now, sitting on a chilly bench, huddled against an even chillier wind, she wondered why she’d come at all. Habit, she supposed, a default setting somewhere in her brain that said this was where she went, this was what she did. Only there was no reason for her to be here now, no reason to sit vigil, no reason to pay penance, and no more answers to seek. She had her answers, and they had turned out to have very little to do with her.

Without warning, a pang of anger struck her full force, like a wave slamming her from behind, driving her under. She hadn’t felt one of those in a long time, perhaps because she’d trained herself to stop feeling them. After William’s death, she hadn’t let herself be angry. It had seemed wrong, somehow, to be mad at someone who’d been in so much pain that the only way out was a handful of pills. And so she had stuffed it down, focusing on her guilt instead. It was better that way. Anger was a selfish emotion. Guilt, on the other hand, was allowed. Guilt was pure. Guilt was selfless. Even if you didn’t know what you were guilty of.

And then, suddenly, she understood why she had come. She had come to cry, to rail, to rage, to surrender to the emotions she’d been keeping in check because she didn’t believe she had a right to them. Now, finally, she was giving herself permission not just to feel her anger, but to throw open the floodgates and allow it swamp her, to let it come with all its fist-clenching fury and break her wide-open.

She had no idea how long she sat there, rocking and crying in the eye of the storm, but when she finally wiped her eyes and looked around, Josiah was heading in her direction. She was still blotting her cheeks with her sleeve when his shadow fell over her.

“Don’t go mopping up on my account,” he said matter-of-factly. He was wearing gloves today and a heavy gray jacket. “You ain’t fooling no one with that face.”

Dovie sniffled and gave him a watery smile. “Hey, Josiah.”

“What are you doing here first thing on a Monday morning?”

“I called out sick.”

“You called out sick? Or you are sick?”

“All right, have it your way.

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