Chapter 2

Maggie had signed her name so many times over the last month, the signature she’d had since marrying Tom in the District Courthouse of Rhode Island sixteen years ago was now almost unrecognizable. Nothing more than an inconsistent scribble that would unlikely hold up in a court of law, if it ever got to that. But she continued signing, regardless. Paper after paper, desperate to get everything finalized in the hope that it might help her start to move on.

Her husband was dead. At thirty-six years old she was a widow. Even now, a whole month later, she couldn’t believe he was gone.

She dropped the pen once she’d finished scrawling on the final form, giving her cramping wrist a vigorous shake. Sliding the stack of documents across the shiny walnut table, she met James’s sad eyes, finding him smiling at her. He was just trying to be kind—she knew that—but that smile flared her anger and resentment.

She’d known James more than ten years. He and Tom had gone through law school together. They’d started as interns at the same questionable strip mall ambulance-chaser firm. They went on to top their class and then make junior associates at one of Boston’s most prestigious law firms six months after one another. But James was still here. Tom was not. And that smile James now wore, the one laced with pity and sadness, didn’t help one bit despite whatever good intentions were behind it.

“How are you?’

Maggie heaved a sigh, her eyes flitting to the legal papers on the table. “I’m okay,’ she lied. It was a lie she’d perfected over the last few weeks.

“You should come over for dinner sometime. Bring the kids,’ James suggested with a shrug of one of his broad shoulders. “Marissa would love to see you.’

She swallowed the lump that seemed to have permanently wedged itself at the back of her throat over the last month. With a noncommittal nod, she offered the sincerest smile she could manage as silence thick with tension settled in the air between them.

“It gets easier, Mags. I promise,’ James said after a few beats, his words tentative, like he wasn’t sure he should say them.

Maggie almost laughed. She couldn’t even begin to count the number of times she’d heard those exact words over the last month. If she had to hazard a guess, it would’ve been at least a thousand. Neighbors, parents she hardly knew and rarely talked to while waiting at school pick-up, people at the grocery store. It was ridiculous how many times she’d been forced to listen to that exact same shell of a promise from people who only said those words just to say them. Filling the uncomfortable void of silence that hung around her wherever she went.

“When?’ Maggie asked.

Of course she didn’t expect James to be able to give her an answer. God, she didn’t want an answer. Frankly, she was terrified of whatever it might be. The truth was it hadn’t gotten better yet. Not even a little bit. And it’d been a month. So, when was it supposed to get better? Tomorrow? A year from now? Ten years? When would she finally be able to wake up in the morning and not spend the first fifteen minutes of her day smothering herself with a pillow so her sons couldn’t hear her cry?