If ever I could take something back, it would be going on that trip. Yasmen wasn’t due yet, and we both agreed it would be best for Grits if I attended, but I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as soon as the plane took flight. I kept texting and calling to make sure she was all right. By then, we’d already buried Aunt Byrd. Maybe it was the fragility of life that made me anxious, having just lost someone I loved so much. Maybe it was a premonition. Whatever it was, it kept me up the first night in the hotel. The next day when the hospital called to say Yasmen had lost the baby, one fire-torched thought ran through my mind.
I should have been there.
If I’d been there, she wouldn’t have been closing. The restaurant wouldn’t have been empty. She wouldn’t have fallen. Those precious moments wouldn’t have been lost with her cell phone in another room while Henry wasn’t getting air.
And then he was gone.
“Do you want to talk about the trip to Santa Barbara, Josiah?” Dr. Musa asks, his soft, kind voice cutting into the riot of my thoughts.
I swallow past the emotion scorching my throat.See, this is why I don’t do this shit. This is why I leave well enough alone.
But is it really well enough?
“Do you think the losses you experienced so close together contributed to the failure of your marriage?”
A rough chuckle rattles in my throat. “You could say that. I knew things were really bad, but one night she just…”
I used to alternate between blocking the events of the night Yasmen ended things and playing them over and over in my head, analyzing if there was anything I could have done or said differently that would have changed the outcome. That would have saved us.
“Do you want to talk about that night?” Dr. Musa asks. “We have plenty of time.”
Hell, no.
Why would I unpack one of the most painful nights of my life with this stranger? My mouth is open, and the refusal rests on the tip of my tongue, but an image intrudes, shakes my absolute certainty that this dude can’t do a damn thing for me. It’s Kassim, walking into Dr. Cabbot’s office, looking back over his shoulder at his mom and me. Nervous, scared, uncertain, but assured because Yasmen said it was okay not to always be okay.
You, too, Dad?
Me too.
I clear my throat, swallowing the sharp response I had planned for Dr. Musa and look down at my hands gripping my knees.
“Doyou want to talk about that night?” Dr. Musa repeats, his voice quiet like I’m some skittish animal who might bolt.
“Sure,” I finally answer, hoping I don’t regret this. “What do you want to know?”
Dr. Musa glances at his watch and smiles. “We may have time for everything.”
Chapter Thirteen
Josiah: Then
Idrive home from Grits slowly, barely registering all the things that so captivated us about Skyland when we first moved here. My mind is still buzzing from a day that started before the sun was up and ended long after it was down. I turn onto First Court, our street lined with well-manicured lawns, neatly trimmed bushes fronting seven-figure homes. It had been the perfect setting for all our ambitions. You don’t live in the heart of Skyland without paying the price for location, and the price is high. Had things gone according to plan, we’d have no problem paying that price, but things went to shit, and our mortgage has become an albatross hanging around my neck. Mentally drowning in a sea of bills and past-due notices, I almost miss the white paper pinned to the garage door.
“What the hell?” I mutter, taking in our slightly overgrown grass and shabby bushes. The landscaper who services most of the houses on our street was scheduled to come today. I get out of the car and snatch the note.
Check bounced.
It’s scribbled on the grass-stained paper, stark and offensive. A muddy trail of shame and fury wends through me. I haven’t bounced a check since college, and now that I live on a street of million-dollar homes, it happens?
I pull out my phone to check our balance. Sure enough, our account is overdrawn. To save money while we’re finding our footing again in Byrd’s absence, Yasmen and I took pay cuts. It made sense, especially since she’s barely been to Grits since we lost Henry. With our reduced revenue, I had to trim fat somewhere, and I wasn’t going to reduce pay for our staff. They have families, responsibilities. We can weather this better than they can.
Or I thought we could.
Pulling Deja and Kassim out of Harrington would feel like yet another admission of failure, but we may have to do it.
I crumple the paper in my fist, my emotions as tangled as these bushes. My life as overgrown and unkept. One more thing I’ll have to deal with tomorrow.
I walk into our dream house and immediately want to turn right around and leave. The curtains are hung with hurt here. The floors are waxed with it. It lingers heavy and pungent in the air. I’d rather work at Grits fourteen hours a day than do the work of grief waiting in this house. The last few months have been a sinkhole. Of course, we all need time, but there’s something so dark and cold and desolate about the place Yasmen’s in now. I can’t reach her. I want to grab her and drag her back into our life, or what’s left of it. I want to beg her to remake it with me. To rebuild this restaurant’s reputation with me. We’ve always been partners. Am I being selfish to want her at my side again? Or am I just lonely? Frustrated? Bitter? All of the above?