Sometimes I walked aimlessly through the condo looking for hidden liquor; I envied Elliott’s selection of pills. Sometimes the chasm of loss engulfed me until I fell asleep. Other times, I tiptoed onto the pages of Facebook. Facebook lives. My own page looked unfamiliar to me, hardly reflective of the life I was now living. I scrolled through other people’s lives, other people’s smiling family pictures and sundrenched vacations, perched on ski slopes. The app only opened a window to my envy. I shut it down.

The holidays approached. This year, they were just muted days on the calendar. I outsourced my gift-buying to Henry for Hank, Daddy, and Griffin. Even though Daddy’s brain had been boarded up by dementia, he was sweet and held my hand any time we were together. The week of Christmas and New Year’s had always been my favorite time of year. We were approaching my one-year wedding anniversary, which was really just a reminder of my failure.

I got through Christmas Day, but my sympathies threw in with Scrooge this year.

Reggie and Elle had talked about flying down for a few days after Christmas to visit me, and then Reggie came up with a plan. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you allow us to buy your ticket, and you fly up for a couple of days? A belated Christmas present. It would be a whole lot easier for us to chip in on one ticket for you than for us each to buy a ticket and have the baby in tow. I know coming to the city might be hard. Just think about it.”

I was learning two hard lessons: to let go of a married life I thought I had in New York and, perhaps the hardest of all, I was learning acceptance—accepting myself as I was and also accepting the help of friends. I went to New York. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

Seeing Reggie, Elle, and Kendall was tonic for my soul. We found new places to dine. When we went out, I would just order an appetizer or a bowl of soup, and when the bill came, both girls would wave me away. “It’s ten dollars. It is not going to break us,” they repeated. One night, we just went out for drinks. I picked up the tab. Without the alcohol police, the three of us got tipsy and were so happy. I flew home on December 30. Griffin stayed home with me on New Year’s Eve.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Forty-Nine

“I thought New Year’s Eve was one of the biggest days for a mixologist like yourself,” I said to Griffin as we were eating an easy dinner of grilled salmon, sautéed spinach, and quinoa—nothing like the elaborate New Year’s Eve dinners I had had in previous years.