Take Care, Sara

room reminding her of him, but it was no use. Her eyes were drawn to all that had a piece of him to them. He lingered in the room. Sara thought she could smell him even. Coffee and cherry Carmex.
    There was the rocking chair he would sit in and read as she painted. Pressure formed on her chest, pushing down, making it hard to breathe. There was the easel that still held her last painting, the one with the greens and blues. The pressure built. The walls they’d painted a cheery yellow, getting almost as much paint on each other as they did the walls. Her throat tightened painfully. Vision blurred with wetness, she stumbled from the room.
    “I don’t want to do this,” she said in a shaking voice. “I want you to leave and I don’t want you to come back. This isn’t helping. It won’t help. You can’t just make me get over him. I can’t get over him. I’ll never get over him.”
    Mason stood near the door and she had to look away. He was out of place. He didn’t belong here, in her house, standing where her husband used to stand.
    “What makes you think I’m trying to make you get over anyone? I’m just trying to get you to stop hiding from everything, from yourself, from the world, from your emotions. There’s a difference. It’s been over a year, Sara. What are you waiting for?”
    Her face crumpled and she hung her head. Staring at her purple-socked feet, she said quietly, “Do you know what happened?”
    “Yes. Spencer told me.”
    “Then you know why I am the way I am.”
    “I’m no one to judge. I’m nowhere near an example of how to be. Derek died four years ago. I spent the first year hating myself and living in self-pity, doing every kind of drug I could get my hands on. It’s amazing I’m even alive, actually. I overdosed a couple times, had my stomach pumped. I have scars from other dumb things I did.” Mason held up his arm and slid the sleeve of his sweater back, revealing a jagged, raised line of skin pinker and paler than the rest of his arm.
    Sara swallowed, tearing her eyes away. She crossed her arms, hiding the veins she’d studied so carefully more than one time.
    “You and me, Sara, we’re two peas in a pod,” he said in a low voice. “But you…you have it better than me. Derek died instantly, without me having a chance to say I was sorry or goodbye or anything. Without me being able to tell him how much I loved him and admired him. You have that chance. Embrace it. Don’t hide away until it’s too late.”
    “It is too late. He died a year ago. I keep…thinking he’ll come back. I know it’s crazy, but that’s what I keep thinking. Only I know he really won’t.” She blinked her tear-filled eyes. “Please, Mason, just go. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
    Mason’s eyes searched the kitchen, pausing on the fridge. He grabbed the magnetic pen and paper pad from it, jotting something down. “Here’s my cell phone number. Call me anytime, Sara. I’ll be back next Sunday. Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. “I have a task for you. Open up your art room and work . Create something. Anything. See you in a week.”
    After he left, Sara stared into the room, the door now open. She took a hesitant step toward it, and another, until she hovered in the doorway. Sara hugged herself, imagining it was him hugging her, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t even close. Sara let her arms drop away and walked to the painting. She trailed a finger along the clumpy surface, seeing his face, seeing his eyes. This time, though, they weren’t laughing or shining. This time, they were dim, unseeing. They were as they had been the last time they’d been open.
    ***
    The phone was hard and cold, quickly warming from the heat of her ear against it. They were like a drug; these one-sided conversations with Lincoln. The soothing pull of his deep voice was an addiction; the peace Sara felt as she listened to him was unable to be imitated in any other way. She could hear the television in the background as she stared at the empty blackness of hers, almost able to see herself sitting beside Lincoln as he talked, watching the same rerun of ‘King of Queens’ right along with him. Absently twirling a strand of her long hair around a finger, Sara silently devoured his words.
    “Remember that painting you made of the forest outside the house that Cole lost? I have a confession to make: I stole it. It’s in my bedroom, on the wall above my bed. Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry.