A long, almost unbearably hot shower soothed Sara and she thought maybe, just maybe, this one time she wasn’t crying. But when the water stopped and the wetness continued to trickle down her face, she knew otherwise.
Wrapped in a towel, she combed her long hair and brushed her teeth. When she looked in the mirror, the face she saw was close to unrecognizable. It was too pale and the bone structure was overly prominent. The red and puffy eyes couldn’t be hers. But who else’s could they be? The life had been sucked from her brown eyes, leaving them dead. Her brown hair was limp and hung past her shoulders.
Never one to consider herself beautiful, or even that pretty, Sara had always found it odd that he told her she was on an almost daily basis. She was average. Average in height, in weight, in looks, and yet he’d looked at her like she was incomparable to anyone; like she was more than. The way her nose upturned at the end had forever been a recipient of his kisses. The fullness of her upper lip had repeatedly drawn his finger to it to trace and receive her kiss.
He wouldn’t like seeing you like this, a voice told her.
Sara blinked and turned away.
She quickly dressed in a pink nightshirt and left the bedroom before too many memories ensnared her thoughts. A look at the clock told her it was eight. Sara grabbed a blanket and a pillow from the closet in the bedroom and set up her bed on the couch, as she did every night. Sara lay in the darkness, looking at a ceiling she couldn’t see. She held her hands together to pray, the act so ingrained in her she almost did so without thought, but caught herself in time. Prayers hadn’t helped before. Why would they help now? And what exactly would she pray for?
Restless, she got up and turned the light back on, her agitated fingers continuously twisting the silver-banded ring with the lone diamond it. Around and around it went over her bony left-handed ring finger too small for the ring to properly fit on anymore. Remembering the wedding proposal brought a fleeting smile to her lips. He’d put the ring around a single red rose and presented it to her with an achingly honest speech.
The walls were ivory and bare, but she still saw the framed photographs that used to grace the walls; their first picture taken together; the engagement photo; Christmas; their wedding. A photograph of them making silly faces at the camera. They had been too painful to look at them, day after day; mocking her. Reminding her of what she’d lost. Sara had taken them down and put them in a box and in the garage they now resided.
Her eyes landed on the pale green recliner that had been his. He‘d complained about the girly color at first, but it hadn‘t been long before it was his favorite place to sit. Sara ran a trembling hand along the back of it, leaning down to sniff its scent. Pain, sharp and immobilizing, shot through her. It didn’t smell like him anymore. When had his scent disappeared? It was one more thing she’d lost of him, and the knowledge was too much to bear.
Sara grabbed the blanket from the couch and climbed onto the recliner, pretending his arms were around her holding her close. She curled into a ball, huddled beneath the cover, and wept until she fell into a fitful sleep.
The nightmares began with a flourish, as they did almost every night. Her mind replayed the otherworldliness of it; how it had started in slow-motion and still somehow ended before she knew what had happened. In Sara’s mind she saw the smile that had mutated to horror, the instant pain, the smell of blood, and the heat; the screech of heavy metal crashing and the eerie silence that had followed.
Sara awoke screaming, tangled in the blanket. She struggled to free herself, to sit upright. Covered in sweat and shaking, her heart slammed against her chest. And of course, there were the tears. They streamed down her cheeks, warm and unwanted, and dropped onto her lap. Sara covered her face with her hands and rocked forward and backward, trying to remove the images from her mind. She would cut them out if she could.
A kaleidoscope of that final moment with him raced through her brain. His smile she loved, the striking blue of his eyes, warm with love and happiness; his hand on her shoulder. Sara squeezed her eyes shut, but it didn’t block the remembrance of his grip tightening painfully, and then jerking away, as though something wrenched him from her. The shouts ripped from his lips. The fear on his face. But not for him; for her. Always for her.
She found it strange the way she remembered it all; as though she had watched it from afar and her eyes had seen him and nothing else. Nothing but him had registered. Which made it that much more terrible. Because that’s what she remembered, what she relived, every single day.
Him.
In fine detail.
Dying.
***
“You have to move on.”
Sara looked at her clasped hands. “I can’t.”
“You have to. It’s not a matter of can or will; it’s have to.”
“He’ll come back.”
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”