Lover Beware

girl? What did you see?”
    Jess whined and turned her head. A long pink tongue streaked out and licked Jane’s wrist. Jane released her hold on the little dog and stood beneath the white blue arc of the sky, a hand shielding her gaze as she watched Jess disappear into the edge of the bush.
    Minutes later Jess scooted free of the trees and trotted toward Jane with a stick in her mouth.
    The saliva-coated offering plopped on the ground beside Jane’s foot, and the tension holding her rigid dissipated. For the first time since Patrick had died, her home hadn’t felt safe— she hadn’t felt safe—and the feeling had rocked her. Maybe there had been no cause for alarm and she had over-reacted, but she still felt unnerved and a little shaky.
    But then nothing had felt normal or right since Patrick had died. She was still unsettled, still adjusting. Still on edge with her new status as a widow, and with being alone on an isolated property.
    When Patrick had been alive, he’d filled her every waking moment with his schedule of medication and bathing, the hours she’d spent trying to coax him to eat—the regular visits to the hospital for chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Later on, when the treatments had stopped, there had been hours spent with the pastor and the steady stream of relatives coming to say good-bye.
    When Patrick had finally lost his battle with the cancer that had struck out of the blue, stunning them both, and all of the rituals and formalities that accompanied death had been completed, she’d found herself abruptly alone—wrung out and empty, as if Patrick’s death had sucked away all her emotions, and she was simply running on automatic. It was as if, when Patrick had died, a part of her had shut down, too. She went through the motions. She ate her meals, and she slept eight hours a night; she cleaned her house and weeded her garden and tended to the animals. She’d even started doing the extra jobs, like painting the barn. The physical exertion helped fill the void, but the numbing repetitive work didn’t solve the curious sense of blankness, as if, like a pupa, she was isolated and enclosed, caught in a curious stasis, waiting for change.
    According to her doctor, there was nothing physically wrong with her, other than the natural cycle of grief. The way she was feeling was perfectly understandable given the strain she’d been under. He’d prescribed antidepressants if she wanted them, but so far Jane had resisted medication.
    The years of taking prescription medication for an ulcer that hadn’t disappeared until she’d walked away from nervy stocks and volatile futures, which shifted like wet sand with every ebb and flow of the markets, had been enough, and besides, she was stubborn. She was thirty-two, and she’d finally grown into a quiet acceptance of the slow rhythm and flow of country life and her own body. If what was happening to her was a natural cycle, then she would let it run its course.
    A shiver struck through her despite the heat and the hard-earned comfort of logic and reason, and wrapped her arms around her middle in automatic reflex. Sometimes she felt so blank and hollow that the emptiness would roll up from deep inside in cold, aching waves, the chill so intense that her skin would roughen, and no matter what she did she couldn’t get warm.
    Objectively she could feel the warmth, see the intensity of the light, but it was as if the sun, as powerful as it was, couldn’t warm her, as if some essential part of her—the hot flicker of life—had been extinguished.
    She’d been married to Patrick for ten years. In that time they should have had children. Before they’d found out about the cancer they’d tried, because they had both wanted a family, but nothing had happened. It had been the fertility tests that had shown up the cancer. Once Patrick knew the reason he hadn’t been able to make her pregnant, and that he was going to die, he’d begun to make plans. He’d worked for as long as he could at his teaching job. He’d painted the house and finished building the barn. He’d leased out the orchard so that Jane didn’t have to cope with managing the fruit trees at the front of the property. He’d even tried to convince her to sell the sheep, but Jane had put her foot down at the thought of letting the southdowns go. There weren’t that many—she was down to thirty now—and the sheep kept her in a steady supply of wool for her weaving business.