Single Lady Spy 01 - The End of Me

I could watch my minivan. This wasn’t going to be a habit. I was going to be a better parent than that. Once I buried him and he was gone and I crawled out from under the rubble, I would try harder to be better.
    "I'm so sorry about your husband," he said pleasantly, as he sat in the chair across from me. His way of speaking made me uncomfortable; how many times a day did he have cause for that sentence? How many apologies did he hand out? If he had known about the type of husband I had had, would he still offer condolences, or would I be getting the glass of wine I wanted?
    "How are they taking it?" he glanced over his shoulder at the silver van.
    I shook my head blankly, "They're sad, but it’s just regular sad." It was true. They were no sadder than they would have been, if it had been Ralph, our cat. James had always worked away a lot. It wasn’t anything new for them. It made me sadder they accepted it so easily. In the eight weeks since we had learned of his death, they had completed all of their stages of grief. I had to repeat all of mine, when I had found out about the other things.
    I had been the grieving widow for a few days and then the angry ex-wife. Now I was somewhere in the middle, making me a terrible combination of both.
    He nodded, "Of course they are. How old are they?"
    I answered him. I didn’t want to, but my mouth wanted to move. I wanted someone to know about my sadness. "Ten and five. He was having an affair." There they were… those words. They slipped out before I could stop them.
    His eyes lifted but he didn’t miss a beat, "I'm so sorry. That’s a tragedy to lose a father so young."
    I hated that word. Lose. I didn’t lose him. They didn’t lose him. He wasn’t lost, he was dead and so was I.
    I would never be whole again. James and the kids had been my everything, because I made them that way. I believed his lies and drank the Kool-Aid, and not even the funeral director would pay attention to the pain that I had laid out for him so clearly. He moved past it, like he didn’t hear it, but we both still felt it there in the air where I had left it. James was having an affair and no one cared.
    “The kids bounce back faster than we do,” he said softly, letting that be his comment on the subject.
    But I was having a sickeningly hard time, making my kids be my everything or the focus. Their pain had somehow taken a serious backseat to the betrayal, I had let overcome me.
    Being a mom used to be the easy part, but my pity and shame had gotten bigger than I could handle. They had joined the avalanche and I was buried.
    "Do you have any questions?" he asked.
    I snapped back, "Costs mostly." I felt hollow and dead.
    Somehow the director of the funeral home was calming with his general lack of personality. He made me numb, as if I were dead inside like him. His dark hair had no sheen and his dark eyes were lifeless. He was surrounded by so much death that he actually seemed dead. He was a vacuum that pulled all of my emotions away, leaving us both hollow shells.
    He clasped his hands, "Of course. Well, the military covers some of the funeral costs for a man like him, but the remaining balance will be yours. The VA only covers about three hundred dollars of our bill for a person not on active duty, at the time of death. The remaining few thousand will have to be covered by you." He didn't sugarcoat it. I didn't mind that. I think I preferred the fact he was dead inside too.
    "Can I write you a cheque?" I asked calmly.
    He nodded and put his cold pale hands on his cherry-wood desk, "Of course. The service is planned for Sunday, still?"
    I nodded and shivered and fought the dark places my brain wanted to go, “It is. They finally cleared the body.” The military had been slow to transport him home and even slower to release his remains.
    He slid a document to me and passed me a pen. I took it and signed where the red lines were. My fingers shook, making my name look different than it ever had. It wasn’t my name, not really. It was the name of a lady who was married to a guy named James Evans. A man who loved his family, worked hard, and made his wife feel like she was safe.
    That lady was gone and I was left in her stead. I didn’t know what my next move was, but the safety was gone, and the love was entirely based on his being with me. The love and warmth left with him.
    I was stuck living behind the wall of bullshit he had built around us. The wall I never bothered to try to