Witness Protection for the Grieving

By Rose Landau

Justin Brown dies suddenly, leaving his uncoventional family to navigate through changing circumstances. His first love, Ryan, goes back to his wife and son to try and repair the family he thought he gave up for good. His first wife, Camila, tries to readjust her expectations after her second marriage ends as abruptly as her first. Justin's widow, Megan, tries to go through the motions of a normal life although she knows she'll never really end her grieving process. This new adult novel jumps in time and place through three generations, examining each character’s daily life, personal struggles and new relationships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rose Landau
• Release date: Jan 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311309600

Rose Landau

Rose Landau is a writer and attorney in Albany, NY. She holds a JD from the University of Miami School of Law and a BA in French from the University at Albany. Social justice is the focus of her career, writing is her creative outlet, and Paris is her favorite former residence/favorite place in the world, with Munich as a close second.

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Witness Protection for the Grieving

Rose Landau

Published by Rose Landau at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Rose Landau

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Chapter 1: January 1967, New Haven, Connecticut

Chapter 2: August 2011, Pasadena, California

Chapter 3: October 1994, Toronto, Ontario

Chapter 4: January 2008, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Chapter 5: February 2009, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Chapter 6: March 2010, Pasadena, California

Chapter 7: September 1969, New Haven, Connecticut

Chapter 8: October 1967, Evanston, Illinois

Chapter 9: January 2004, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Chapter 10: April 1974, New Haven, Connecticut

Chapter 11: April 1974, New Haven, Connecticut

Chapter 12: January 1994, Urbana, Illinois

Chapter 13: March 2004, Urbana, Illinois

Chapter 14: February, 2034, San Francisco, California

Chapter 15: May 2014, Madison, Wisconsin

Chapter 16: March 1994, Stanford, California

Chapter 17: November 1981, Zurich, Switzerland

Chapter 18: December 1993, Stanford California

Acknowledgements

Abouth the Author

January 1967, New Haven, Connecticut

It was twenty two degrees outside and Ryan wasn’t cold. He went outside with his jacket unbuttoned. It was like that Billie Holiday song, he had his love to keep him warm. He and Justin were getting married. Not really, they couldn’t, because they were both men and it was 1967, but they had planned a wedding over Christmas anyway. It was Justin’s idea. The poor thing was only twenty years old and had never been in love or even infatuated. That, combined with the Christmas cheer and the alcohol was making him spew crazy ideas.

They would rent tuxedos and invite all their friends to a wedding in East Rock Park at the end of the semester. Ryan tried to explain to him that it wouldn’t be a real wedding because afterwards they wouldn’t technically be married.

Technically married? Justin scoffed. He was already a bit drunk by this point in the conversation. You mean we won’t have a piece of paper saying that we’re married? I’ll make us a piece of paper, okay? Then it’s a wedding.

That was a week ago. Ryan shook his head and smiled at this crazy, handsome, college kid. He loved the idea though, so much that it made him feel that the inside of his body was all warm helium and butterflies.

A week later, it was time for Ryan to go back to work. Students didn’t go back to Yale for another week, so Ryan had to leave Justin in his bed that morning. Of course he wanted to stay in bed, but now that it was a new semester, a new year, and Ryan was engaged to a boy he still couldn’t quite believe even liked him, he was kind of looking forward to going back to work and rubbing his good cheer in his colleagues’ faces. Could he tell people at work that he was engaged to a student? No, he probably shouldn’t because they didn’t even know that he was divorced or that he was gay. Ryan didn’t even suspect that he was gay until he met Justin.

Ryan got to his office. The stacks of papers on his desk were exactly as he left them there in December. So was the one photograph thumb tacked to the wall, of Ryan holding his son the day he was born. He’d thrown out the picture of Handra. It had seemed like the appropriate thing to do. He picked up his office phone and dialed the number to his apartment. He couldn’t go that long without hearing Justin’s voice.

August 2011, Pasadena, California

Megan lay in the slanting sunlight on the black leather couch. It was an expensive black leather couch. She earned enough money to buy expensive furniture that was in no apparent way better than less expensive furniture, quit her job, send her daughter to an Ivy League school and then enroll in a Master’s program herself with money left over. Ashley had gotten on the plane to Ithaca on Friday morning. Torn between going back to England and staying in California, New York had seemed like a natural compromise.

Megan had offered to go with her daughter and help her move into her dorm room, but Ashley said there was no point in Megan flying all the way across the country to help her set up half a dorm room. Megan thought this was reasonable. She hugged her daughter extra tight at the airport, knowing that they wouldn’t see each other again until Thanksgiving, and that the relationship they had now was probably the relationship they would have forever, polite and lukewarm.

Joshua wasn’t home. She wasn’t sure where he was. Even though he hadn’t moved out, Megan had hardly seen her son all summer. He was a cashier at a health food store during the day and at some social gathering or another, the details of which he never shared with his mother, in the evenings. He had been like that in Cambridge, too, but now he had a car. He had summer reading to do for English and European history. His classes started next week. At some point, Megan was going to have to sit him down and tell him that she expected him home by a certain time once the school year started.

Of course, I have no authority over my children anymore, she thought as she twisted so that more of her body would be in the sunlight. The last few years her best hope was Valentina’s long distance mediation. It was always over the phone or the internet that Megan would tell her step daughter her concerns about her teenage offspring, and Valentina, or sometimes Gabriela, would convince them of things Megan was powerless to convince them of: to reconsider their weekend plans, or go to bed earlier, or worry less (Ashley) or more (Joshua).

This never happened in person. Valentina’s trips to California and their trips to see her in Minneapolis were spent pretending everything was okay. But Valentina was ending a sixteen year marriage and jumping into a new one, which is to say she had her own problems to deal with. So now, the only leverage Megan had was financial support, which she couldn’t earnestly threaten to withdraw. Megan was starting to doze off. She thought, maybe she could just give up now. She had tried to be a good mother and have a good relationship with her children for eighteen years now. If she stopped making an effort now and just concentrated on her classes at Cal Tech, who would notice, let alone judge her poorly for it?

The sun slanting from the window felt nice on Megan’s skin as she began to dream. She dreamt someone was knocking on the door, but for some reason she wasn’t getting up to answer it. Then she realized she wasn’t dreaming. There was someone at the door, and there was no reason not to answer it. Without first checking what she looked like or who was on the other side of the door, Megan opened it. The woman who had been standing there had started to walk away, but turned and smiled so hard that she actually started to laugh when she saw Megan’s face.

"Megan Brown, it is you!" she said as if this had ever been disputed. Maybe Megan was dreaming. Her dreams weren’t usually so realistic, but they were filled with people like this woman, whom Megan recognized but couldn’t remember from where or what her name was. Usually they were people who didn’t mean anything to her—people she frequently passed in the parking lot on the way to work, parents of her children’s friends in Cambridge whom she’d only met once. But this woman she used to know. Megan simultaneously realized that she wasn’t dreaming and who this woman.

It’s Sofia! From Berkeley?

Of course! Megan opened her arms in surprise, which Sofia took as an invitation to hug her. Megan hugged her back tighter. Was this what it felt like to be happy? She couldn’t remember. Megan invited Sofia inside. They sat in the sunlight on the expensive couch, and Megan was happy that she kept her house compulsively clean, and that Joshua wasn’t home yet. If he were there, Sofia would have to say something about how she couldn’t believe how grown up he was now. And Megan didn’t want to share this moment with Joshua. She’d noticed that about herself—as she and her children got older, Megan was less willing to share with them.

Your house is beautiful! Sofia said. She had aged since Megan last saw her eleven years ago. As a college student, Sofia wore hardly any makeup and kept her hair long and tangled. Now her face was theatrically painted. Her green eye shadow coordinated with her silky shirt. Her hair fell short and curly around her almost deliriously happy face.

Thank you, Megan accepted the compliment humbly, knowing that for Pasadena her house wasn’t so beautiful.

"So we just moved to Pasadena, Lucie and I. We live on East Walnut Street. Anyway, I was going for a run down your street one day and I saw the name Brown on the mailbox and thought, wouldn’t that be great if that was Megan Brown from Berkeley? Then I though, no Sofia, that’s impossible. I mean, how many people in the world have the last name Brown? But then another morning I ran past your house again and I saw two teenagers getting into a car in your driveway, and I thought they looked an awful lot like Ashley and Joshua. And then I was just sitting there by myself because Lucie and the kids are out back-to-school shopping and I thought I should just come over and see if it was you or not who moved here."

Megan just smiled and stared back vacantly for a minute. Then, I’m so sorry I didn’t keep in touch with you. I don’t know why I never tried to contact you when we moved back to California. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. She felt tears coming. She wasn’t sure why.

You’ve had a hard life, Sofia said, and hugged Megan, like a child who needed to be comforted after falling off the monkey bars. Without lifting her head from Sofia’s shoulder, Megan shook her head, smearing around her tears.

I know I was a widow before I was thirty, but I’ve always had a job, my health, my children and even some really good friends until I neglected my friendships and pushed people like you away.

Megan, Sofia was now petting Megan’s head and wondering how someone eleven years older than her didn’t have a single grey hair when Sofia had to pluck one out of her head almost every day. I didn’t come over here to make you feel guilty. I came over here because I was hoping to rekindle one of the best friendships I’d ever had. Can I just pick up where we left off?

Megan lifted her head up and nodded yes, that was exactly what she wanted.

October 1994, Toronto, Ontario

It was Camila’s forty third birthday and the sky over Toronto had sobered itself up for the occasion. She didn’t tell anyone at work that it was her birthday. It wasn’t a secret or anything. If someone would have said, Camila, is today your birthday? she would have admitted that it was. If the topic of birthdays had come up she might have even volunteered that information. But no one asked her and the topic never came up, so none of her coworkers knew that today was her birthday.

Her older daughter Valentina had left a message on her answering machine. Mom, I keep trying to call you, but I don’t think we’re going to catch you tonight. Gabriela and I are going to sing to you anyway. Then between lots of giggling, they sang happy birthday to Camila. It did make her smile. Gabriela is Valentina’s fiancée and the reason Camila doesn’t completely approve is because Gabriela is a little too perfect. Because both girls are only twenty years old, and when Camila was twenty years old she was engaged to someone pretty perfect too.

Yeah, things were different then. It was the seventies, she was at Yale and Justin was older than Camila with a job and already once divorced. But she sees the way Valentina and Gabriela interact with each other, and they are in the same euphoric kind of love. They think it’s almost too lucky that they found each other and can be so carelessly happy, just like Justin and Camila were twenty three years ago. Or, just like Luiz and Camila were up until six years ago. Somebody is going to mess it up, and both of them are going to get hurt. Camila thinks that if Gabriela were a bit more flawed, that would keep them grounded, or it would foreshadow the end of their relationship so that no one wound up too devastated. Or if Camila didn’t love Gabriela like a third daughter she could at least hope that when it all came undone that all the hurt would fall on Gabriela.

Both of Camila’s daughters were mistakes, or the result of mistakes, really. The difference is that Valentina was a happy accident, like accidently pouring too much beer into a cup so that you have to bend down and suck up some of the foam before you can pick it up, whereas Yasmin was more like falling down the stairs and breaking your ankle after too many of those beers.

Yasmin paid attention to her appearance, but Luiz’s genes did not combine well with Camila’s, and if you’re being generous you would describe her as ‘plain’. She’d also been abandoned by her father and ripped from the country she grew up in. Considering that, she was doing well. She brought Camila cupcakes from the bakery today for her birthday. Camila gave her a hug and told her to eat the strawberry off the top to make up for her coldness that morning when she was feeling old and tired.

Yasmin had signed up for all honors classes, and now in October it was clear that they were too difficult for her. Camila could see that she was never going to Yale regardless of her alumni connections, but she didn’t tell her daughter that. Yasmin wouldn’t believe her anyway. Camila told her that it’s better if she stayed in Canada with her, which was true, because she was her daughter and she loved her even if she didn’t always act like it.

Camila had a day-dream that she would go to the library to return her book about the plague, and Al would be there to give her flowers—sun flowers—and tell her that she doesn’t look a day over twenty-five. Camila was so sure that this was not going to happen that she didn’t plan to return her library book today even though it was due and she had finished it. She just couldn’t bear the disappointment if she went in there and saw the lady with the coffee stained teeth behind the desk, or worse, she saw Al and he wasn’t excited to see her.

Camila met Al back in Zurich, not long after Luiz left, and when they found themselves both accepting job offers at the University of Toronto this year, she knew she should really force herself to be attracted to him. They had taken coffee breaks together in Zurich, and he had flirted with her in the clueless, noncommittal way she expected from a man the same age as herself who has never been married or, as far as she knew, been in any relationship that made him in any way vulnerable. She had always found ambiguous ways to respond to his advances. She wasn’t especially enamored with him, but he didn’t completely repulse her either. He seemed like a nice distraction and, as she was feeling today more than ever, she was getting too old to be picky.

So she made goals, like meeting for coffee when it wouldn’t be too convenient for either of them. They went to Café Felix am Bellevue and he even offered to pay. Then they spent a whole day at his studio on Mühlebachstrasse, because the night would have been too much to explain to Yasmin. Then she invited him to spend the night at her place on short notice when she found out that Yasmin