Climbing into bed, I leaned back against the headboard and with my phone in hand, completed my nightly ritual with a text to Tristan. Is it night where you are? I’m in bed, even though it’s barely 7. I miss you more every day. New people come into my life but still no you. I’ve begun learning sign language to speak to the new gardener. I’m sure you know about him from Daryl. I think he’s a relative of his. They have similar beards.
I read over my text and lightly snorted a chuckle. It sounded like a crazy person wrote it. That was okay. It wasn’t like I’d get an answer anyway. The texting just made me feel like I still had Tristan’s ear, except now he spoke even less than usual.
Clicking Send, I waited as I always did for a message back, but none came. It never surprised me but instead just added a tiny new layer of disappointment to everything else I’d felt for months. As I did occasionally, I added a text to Jordan in the hopes that she’d answer back. She never did anymore, but it was always worth a shot.
Hey you! I hope this finds you doing great. I’d love to hear what you’re up to these days. Nina.
When no text came back after twenty minutes, I stopped staring at the phone and covered my head with the sheet, preferring to hide away and hope that tomorrow would be a better day.
Not an hour after waking up, I knew my wish for a better day had been shot to hell. I’d barely gotten out of the shower and Daryl was knocking at my bedroom door like the house was burning down. I quickly tied a towel around me and threw open the door, a combination of irritation and dread coursing through me.
“What? What do you need from me now that requires the damn banging on my door before ten o’clock in the goddamned morning?” I barked at his shocked face.
“I just wanted to remind you about the Stone Foundation groundbreaking today. As the appointed representative of the foundation, you need to be there.”
I took a deep breath and adjusted the knot in my towel so I didn’t give Daryl a show right there in the hallway. “It doesn’t seem like poor form to you to have me attend a Stone Foundation function with Gage right at my elbow?”
I wanted to go to this groundbreaking of the newest Stone Foundation center in Poughkeepsie like I wanted someone to break off my right arm and beat me with it. Tristan’s family had established a foundation to help local food banks across the country when he was a small child, and since the plane crash, he’d been the representative of the foundation. With his disappearance, somehow I’d been chosen as the one person to attend functions, even if I stuck out like a sore thumb around all those well-dressed men and women there to ironically celebrate helping starving people each of whom could probably live an entire year on one of their fur coats.
Daryl twisted his face into an expression that told me he was considering what I’d said. “Fair enough. Maybe you should do this without him as the boyfriend, but he and West will still be there as your bodyguards.”
At least I didn’t have to perform my rendition of the whore of Babylon again. That was something.
“Fine. What time do I have to be ready?”
“The groundbreaking is at eleven, and the luncheon is at noon.”
“Do I have to attend both? I’m not really what people want at these kinds of things anyway.”
Nodding, Daryl agreed with me for the second time that morning. “No. I think you can leave after the groundbreaking ceremony.”
“Thanks. Do me a favor and tell everyone I’ll be ready to go in a little while,” I said quietly as I closed the door on Daryl and all the responsibilities of the world.
A half hour later, I’d transformed myself into the well-dressed representative of the Stone Foundation, complete with charcoal grey designer suit, black pumps, and hair up in a bun. Whenever I dressed like this, I felt like an actor in a costume. I wasn’t a suit kind of woman, especially these days when I spent more time in yoga pants than in anything else. However, this was what was expected, so this was what I wore.
I saw by the looks on my bodyguards’ faces that they were surprised by my look too, but unlike when Gage and I pretended to be together, I said nothing, preferring not to discuss the performance I had to give today. It seemed like I was constantly acting these days. If it wasn’t trying to convince the world that I’d moved on, it was trying to make everyone around me believe that I wasn’t falling apart a little more every day Tristan stayed away.
All this acting was exhausting.
Hiding behind big sunglasses, I smiled for the camera as a group of men in suits symbolically dug gold shovels into the ground for the new center, and then I quickly tried to escape the entire affair. As I stepped back into the shadows behind a tree and away from the throng of people who loved occasions like this mingling on the lawn, I ran into a woman and her son I’d noticed when I arrived. They were obviously out of place, dressed in clean but inexpensive clothes that looked nothing like what any of the other attendees wore, including myself. The mother appeared to be in her thirties, but I couldn’t be sure because her face was wrinkled far more than most women’s that age. Her dark blonde hair was brushed back into a barrette clipped at her nape, and she wore a navy blue pantsuit and black flats. The little boy couldn’t have been more than six or seven, and he wore dress clothes, which looked completely out of place on him.