They’re just kids, for cripes’ sake. It’s gotten so bad that they’re changing their behavior because of my outbursts. They hang their heads a lot and don’t look at me. I see Annie giving Timmy hand signals not to talk about certain things when she thinks the subject will upset me. Annie’s built this tent in her room out of blankets and chairs and whatnot, where she goes and hides when I get angry or talk about the bills. God. The bills.” Luke raked his hair. “You can’t imagine how tough it is to make ends meet.”
Jerry stood up, put his coffee mug down and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. From underneath his driver’s license, he pulled out a crumpled business card. “I’ve been saving this for you for two years. I knew eventually this moment would come. When you would need help, I mean.”
Luke took the card and read it. He burst into sarcastic laughter. “A shrink? I just told you I can’t afford peanut butter! Forget it.”
“Margot is a friend of my wife’s. She runs a free bereavement counseling group on Wednesday nights. I can get all the details for you. It’s not as good as a one-on-one, but that can be expensive.”
“Free, huh?”
“You’ll like Margot. She’s brilliant and compassionate.”
Luke looked down at the card. “I’ll think about it.”
Jerry picked up his coffee. “Luke. You can’t go on like you’ve been. I’ve had complaints from some of the guys in the crews about your drill-sergeant tactics with them. Something has to change, Luke. You have to change. This is eating you up.”
Luke’s eyes bored straight into Jerry’s face. “You’re right. That’s exactly how I feel. Physically sick inside.” He looked at the card. “I’ll give her a call.”
Jerry walked over to the desk and lifted the receiver, shoving it toward Luke. “Good idea.”
* * *
SARAH ARRIVED AT the cheery meeting room in the library, carrying a dozen cupcakes from Maddie Strong’s café. She met Margot Benner, the counselor who would be leading the bereavement group, a bright, happy-looking woman in her mid-fifties with streaked, blond hair that she wore in a French braid.
“Thank you for the cupcakes, Sarah,” Margot said, motioning toward a refreshment table under a bank of huge windows that looked out onto the library’s lushly planted gardens. “I provide coffee and tea for everyone, but this is a real treat.”
“Maddie makes the best,” Sarah replied with a smile.
There were eight folding chairs arranged in a circle. Each held a blue folder with reading materials and book lists. All books, of course, were available in the library.
Within minutes, five people came into the room and introduced themselves to Sarah and Margot. Alice Crane was in her mid-forties and had lost her fiancé in a car accident one week before their wedding. That had been a year ago, Alice explained.
Pete Grobowski’s wife died of a heart attack a month ago. She was sixty-three, he said. Robert Bell had been the caregiver for his father through six long years of Alzheimer’s disease. Julie and Mary Patton had lost their mother on Christmas Day. Sarah conversed easily with all the people in the group, and as far as she could see, they all appeared to be coping fairly well with their losses. Or they’re darn good actors, she thought.
Just as everyone was sitting down, the meeting room door opened abruptly. A tall, lean, young man with broad shoulders and thick, dark, brown hair entered the room. He wore a faded blue-and-white-striped, button-down shirt that he’d tucked into his worn-looking jeans. He barely looked at anyone, and went straight to a chair directly opposite Sarah and sat down. He folded his hands and stared down at them.
Sarah recognized him immediately as the angry man with the two children at Puppies and Paws. She was curious as to why he was there. Perhaps he’d lost one of his parents, just as she had. He looked awfully morose, with no greeting smile for the others. She wondered if she looked like that to her friends. If she did, there was no wonder they were worried about her.
The man kept folding his hands one over the other as if he couldn’t get it right. Then he clasped them to his thighs and looked up at the people in the room. For the first time, Sarah noticed that he was rather good-looking, with brilliant blue eyes that shot right through her as if he were a hawk seeking out prey. She wondered if he recognized her.
Then he looked back down at his hands, which were pressed deeply into his legs as if he were holding himself to the spot. She wondered if he was angry again.
Margot walked to the center of the circle and introduced herself formally to the group, explaining that she was a psychiatrist who had been practicing privately for over twenty years.
“I conduct these bereavement groups once each quarter, free of charge, because I had a death in my own life that was so traumatic for me, so depressing, that I withdrew from my family,” Margot told them. “Frankly, I withdrew from everything. I sat in a rocking chair and stared out a window for over half a year. I went through my days in a fog. I couldn’t hear what people said to me and most of the time I didn’t acknowledge their presence. If it hadn’t been for a friend who happened to be a counselor, who dragged me back to reality, I never would have pulled out of it.”
Margot instructed everyone to introduce themselves to the group and mention only their relationship to the person they had lost.
Alice Crane went first. Sarah was next, and explained that her mother had recently died of cancer. Sarah hadn’t finished her sentence when she heard a derisive snort from across the room.
Luke lifted his head. “Sorry.” He dropped his head once more and then shook it. He stood immediately. “Sorry. I can’t do this. My coming here was my friend’s idea. This kind of thing isn’t going to help me.”
Before Luke could leave, Margot rose and placed her hand on Luke’s forearm. “What was her name?”
Luke fixed his eyes on Margot’s face as he replied with a quaking voice, “Jenny.”
He’d said the woman’s name with so much awe and love, Sarah knew instantly that he wasn’t divorced, as she’d surmised earlier. He was a widower.
“What’s your name?” Margot asked.
“Luke Bosworth,” he answered carefully.
Sarah noticed that he held his hands in tightly clenched fists at his sides as if he was struggling to control himself from hitting something. Or someone. And when he returned answers to Margot, the words were pelted through clenched teeth. She glanced around the room and noticed that no one else was as angry as Luke. They look depressed and sad, possibly even in denial, but not raging like he was.
“How long has Jenny been gone?” Margot inquired directly, but softly.
“Two years, four months and five days.” He ground out the words.
“And to you it seems like yesterday?”
“Like it was this morning. She was just...here,” he replied, his voice trembling with emotion.
Sarah thought she saw a glint of tears in his eyes.
“Tell me about her, Luke,” Margot urged.
