Light in the Shadows

              “Uh, I’m not really sure. I guess I’ll just see how Ruby gets on.  I don’t want to just leave her, you know?” I forced myself to meet his eyes and pressed my lips together.  I sort of wanted to tell him it was none of his damn business.  I didn’t need his disapproval. 
                    But for the sake of harmony, I kept my mouth shut.  It was Rachel who nodded in understanding.  “Well, you can only take it one day at a time.”  She spoke as though from experience and it made me wonder what more there was to Maggie’s unassuming best friend.  I had never paid much attention to her except as an extension of Maggie.  But her eyes glowed with their own hidden pain and I knew she got it. 
                    “Yeah,” I murmured, not knowing what else to say.  And apparently they didn’t either, so they moved on down the aisle, finding their place beside Maggie.  I watched the three of them huddle together.  Daniel and Rachel on one side, her parents on the other.  They circled her in their support and love and I found that I was unreasonably jealous.
                    Not for the unconditional affection she was receiving but for the fact that I wasn’t the one to give it her.  She should be by my side.  With me.   We should be holding up and leaning on each other.  But I had given up that right when I had left her.  When I had written that fucking letter that at the time seemed like the right thing to do.
                    Now I was seeing it was a huge mistake.  Because I had effectively robbed myself of the one thing that had ever made me happy.
                    I finally understood all too well what people meant when they say the path to hell is paved with good intentions.  Because I was stuck in the middle of my own personal purgatory.
                    People started to find their seats and I realized the service was about to begin.  So I went to join Ruby and Lisa’s parents at the front of the church.  She reached over and grabbed ahold of my hand when I sat down and we held onto each other as the minister began his sermon about the beauty of heaven and Lisa entering God’s Kingdom.  What a bunch of sanctimonious bullshit.  Lisa would have hated every minute of this over indulgent, trite nonsense. 
                    But funerals were for the living and really had nothing to do with the person who died.  They were meant to give those left behind some sort of solace.  But I found none.  I just felt empty. 
                    Looking over at Ruby, with her head bowed low, her hair obscuring her face I knew she was feeling the exact same way.  How do you go on living when the love of your life was gone?
                    I looked over my shoulder, taking in the row after row of people come to pay their respects.  Lisa’s family, her friends, her co-workers.  And my eyes rested on Maggie.  She was listening to the minister with an unreadable expression on her face. 
                    As though she could feel me looking, her gaze met mine.  Her eyes were wet, I could see it from here.  But one thing was for certain; those eyes of hers had always been my undoing. 
                    I had to look away.  My heart felt too full in my chest and I could barely breathe.  So I tried to focus on the rest of the service.  Before I knew it, it was over and people were filing out of the church.  Ruby clutched my arm as I led her out the side door and toward my car. 
                    “How are you holding up?” I asked quietly into her ear as I opened up the passenger side door.  Ruby shook her head, letting out a muffled sob as she sank into the leather seat.  I closed the door behind her with a soft click and went around to the driver’s side. 
                  And then we made our way to the cemetery to put Lisa into the ground.  Ruby said nothing, lost in her own world.  And I had never felt more alone.

C HAPTER T WELVE   
      - M AGGIE-
     
     
     
                    God, that was horrible. 
                    The crying, the misery.  It was like a knife to my heart.  Ruby’s grief had torn me apart.  The once infectiously happy, she had now been reduced to the blank woman standing beside an open hole in the earth.