On Tenterhooks (7 page)

Chapter
9

Steve returned to work
exactly seven weeks after Julie’s death
.
He
neede
d
to be
“doing” rather than “thinking.”
  Setting up hardware, troubleshooting network latency issues and taking the occasional help desk call
would keep
him busy
.

On his first day back, he spent the
morning
at the tech bench, catching up on the backlog of new servers waiting for him to load an operating system
.
He went out to lunch by himself
, grabbed
a
sub sandwich
and
took
it down to
Freedom Park
in downtown Charlotte
.

Julie’s days had kept her mobile, so they had r
arely met for lunch
.
L
ong ago, Steve had discovered how much he enjoyed the peace and quiet of a solitary lunch sitting
on the edge of the small creek
that
traced its way
through the park
.
The birds overhead, the fish below and the sounds of dogs barking in the background made for some nice
Zen
moments before
he tack
l
ed
his often-busy afternoons
.
Today, he was glad to be back, and even more thankful that it still felt good to be here
creek
side
.

He spent m
ost of
his
afternoon
responding to help desk requests
: replacing a network c
able, installing print drivers or tweaking a projector
.
Usually he left
the direct customer work
to the technicians, but
he was happy to pitch in today
—
anything to ke
ep
doing
.

Randy had already issued the corporate email letting everyone know that Steve had lost Julie in a “truly tragic auto accident
.
”
His co-workers were respectful of his privacy
.
He had not shared much of himself in the past with them, so
he knew
they were not going to pry for details
.
He got the occasional awkward
,
but sincere
,
questions of “
How
are you doing?”  and “
Is
there anything I can do
to help?” But most of them kept
it strictly business
.
Death was a funny thing: it wasn’t generally contagious, but you
certainly
had to be
careful when treading around it.

M
aking it to his desk at the end of the day, he was exhausted.
His efforts at
normalcy combined with
countless
restless nights
had worn him down
.
Tired as he was, he was afraid to return home
.
He knew what would be waiting for him, and more important, what wouldn’t.
M
icrowave dinners
and nightmares didn’t make for
a warm invitation.

I
nstead of leaving, he sat down at his de
sk and leafed through the piles
of mail waiting for him
.
On the
top of the
stack, he saw
the pale yellow envelope
that he
had known
would be there
before he had even entered the door that morning
.
He tore it open
to reveal
the generic “we-all-signed-it-even-though-some-of-us-don’t-really-give-a-rat’s-ass-about-your-problems”
sympathy card
t
hat he knew all too well
.
But he couldn’t be bitter. He
himself had been the signer of many of these in the past.

He closed the card and put it in a drawer
.
He didn’t want to keep it
.
It wasn’t
as if
he could whip
it
out at the office Christmas party to remember the good times. He guessed he’d probably never open it again, but somehow it seemed
wrong
to throw it away
,
at least this soon.

He dug through the
rest of the
mail, scanning the teasers on the
trade
journal covers
.
N
othing exceptiona
l
grabbed his attention
.
A
t the bottom of the
journal
stack, he found another
envelope.
I
t looked out of place among the glossy magazine covers
.
Small
and
lavender
,
it carried
a simple handwritten label: Steve.

He opened
it
and found a matching single page of stationery
,
with a note written on it in the same hand as the label:

Say Goodbye One Last Time
Do you miss a loved one?  Did someone you care about die without any warning?  We know that pain
—
we’ve experienced it ourselves
.
That’s why we built Say Goodbye To Me (
www.saygoodbyetome.org
)
.
Say Goodbye To Me is simply a way for you to send that last message to your loved one
.
It’s not a gimmick
;
there is no catch
.
There is no cost to use this service
,
and you can remain completely anonymous
.
Through experience, we’ve learned that an abrupt end can leave deep and painful scars, scars that will last a lifetime
.
Say Goodbye To Me is simply an online forum that will allow you to address some final words to your loved one
, and l
et them know how you feel
.
No one else will ever see the message
.
It is your private opportunity to add closure to this sad chapter of your life.

We encourage you to visit us online at
www.saygoodbyetome.org
and see for yourself
.
Take the time
.
Y
ou’ll be glad you did!

No signature line
.
No date
.
Nothing but what sounded like yet another
Internet
start-up
, this one
targeted at the grieving.
He laughed to himself. T
he last place he’d consider going
for counseling or
closure was the
Internet
.
In his line of work, he knew far too much about the dangers
of online
anonymity
.
He knew
how it could damage someone’s self-esteem, credibility an
d even
his or her
relationships. W
hoever
had sent it
was either naïve or
overconfident in the all-
powerful
Internet
.

I
t
still
didn’t make sense
.
No
doubt,
this came from someone in the office, trying to do him some good
.
But why handwrite a note?  W
hy not email him the link or send him a voicemail
?  To Steve, handwritten notes had their place
.
He often left them for Julie, especially on days when he
went to work
early, before she was up
—
a little something to let her know he was thinking of her
.
But this was nothing like that
.
He couldn’t imagine who here at work would have taken the time to send him any handwritten note, partic
ularly one that read like an ad.

He re-read the note
and turned the card over
, looking for something mor
e about its origins
.
Nothing. It
was a plain simple piece of stationery that someone either
forgot or chose not to
sign.

His curiosity was piqued, but he was too tired to be troubled with it any more tonight
.
He’d ask around tomorrow to find out who sent it. He put the letter back in its envelope and
dropped
it inside his desk
drawer
,
on top of
the sympathy card.

It was six o’clock
.
He was tired
.
And for
the first time in a long time
, he was hungry
.
He shut down his computer, grabbed his jacket off the back of his office door and headed down the hall
toward
the front of the building
.
As he got to the parking lot, he
worked
up a mental
list of places he could go to keep his mind from moving back to home
.
He decided to head down to the
c
ineplex
at the mall
.
No doubt a mindless comedy or sci-fi flick and
a bellyful of nachos and
cheap chocolate
would stave off those inner demons he knew were waiting a
t home, if only for a few
more
hours.

Chapter
1
0

Abby sat at her
desk, muddling her way through c
alculus homework
. Yawning, she
stretched her arms out above her head
and
her eyes drifted to the alarm clock on her nightstand.

“Jesus,” she
said aloud
. “10:50 and I haven’t even cracked my
history
book yet.”

She looked back at the calculus text
.
As t
he
numbers swam
, s
he closed the book
.
If she skimmed the history chapters on the way to
school in the morning,
she could finish the calculus during lunch.

She jammed her books into her backpack and zipped it up, determined to get some sleep
. Deciding
to check
her social network
one more time before she called it a night
, she
smacked the spacebar on her keyboard with a dramatic
flair
.
When the
screen popped into view
, s
he
logged in and checked her
profile
.
Nineteen
friends online,
but she wasn’t in the mood for any conversation
.
She had several new notifications
.
She
scanned the
teaser
s
:
info
rmation
from the prom committee chair on discount limo rides
,
a reminder from the library about her overdue books
,
and two pleading
help
requests from
classmates
about
the calculus homework that she
hadn’t finished
.
As she scanned the list, a new one popped up:
“Thought This Might Help You Sleep
,
” it said.

She clicked on it and the screen filled with a disappointing form-letter advertisement
.
She was about to delete it when the headline caught her eye:

Say Goodbye One Last Time
Do you miss a loved one?  Did someone you care about die without any warning?  We know that pain
—
we’ve experienced it ourselves
.
That’s why we built Say Goodbye To Me (
www.saygoodbyetome.org
)
.
Say Goodbye To Me is simply a way for you to send that last message to your loved one
.
It’s not a
gimmick;
there is no catch
.
There is no cost to use this service
,
and you can remain completely anonymous
.
Through experience, we’ve learned that an abrupt end can leave deep and painful scars, scars that will last a lifetime
.
Say Goodbye To Me is simply an online forum that will allow you to address some final words to your loved one
, and l
et them know how you feel
.
No one else will ever see the message
.
It is your private opportunity to add closure to this sad chapter of your life.

We encourage you to visit us online at
www.saygoodbyetome.org
and see for yourself
.
Take the time
—
you’ll be glad you did!

Abby stared at the screen
.
She read it again
.
Who was it from? 

Her pa
rents would not have sent her a message
.
They
both
considered
technology a necessary last resort
.
Besides,
they wouldn’t trivialize
their shared
grief with an automated message
.
What about her friends?  Abby didn’t believe any of her close friends would send her this without an explanation
.
 
S
he didn’t
broadcast
her sadness to her wide
swath
of
Internet
friends
or use
her online presence a
s a virtual heart on her sleeve
.
Then who sent it?  
Only her closest friends and her parents knew that she was having trouble sleeping
.

It looked like a simple
ad, like all the other
pitches
crawling through
the web
.
No obvious
sender
,
and nothing that proved it was personalized
.

Coincidence?
Abby was tempted to log onto the site itself to test it, but she
hesitated
.

“What am I scared of?” she asked aloud.

I’ll t
ell you what you’re scared of.
You tell yourself that you’ve been looking for a w
ay to say goodbye to him
.
W
hat if this works?  What if it is legit and you have that chance to do it
,
to drop that pain off your chest. Will you take it?  Will you do it?  Will you put it to rest?  Are you willing to take that chance or are you g
onna be a chickenshit about it?

Her hands trembled
,
and s
he gnawed on her bottom lip as
a
simple decision suddenly became
huge
.
Tasting the warm coppery flow of her own blood in her mouth, she absently wiped her bleeding lower lip
with the back of her hand
as she read and re-read the computer screen in front of her.
She moved the mouse
across the screen and hovered over the
Web address
.

If I say goodbye like this, I might lose him forever
.
I want to hold on to him, to his memory. It might hurt worse than losing
him
,
this finality of things
. . .

“To click, or not to click,” she mused, “that is the question
.
Whether ‘tis better to suffer the slings and arrows of losing
Zack
so abruptly or to take action that might seal him away forever.”

Her finger hovered over the
button
that might take her down a path she didn’
t want to
be on
. She groaned
,
slammed her laptop shut
and
stood up, knocking over her chair
.

“Fine!
I
am
a chickenshit!”

When Abby
picked up the
desk
chair and shoved it
roughly
back under the desk
, she
smashed her thumb between the chair and the desk. She
yelped in
pain
, then
crawled into her bed
, her mind boiling hot with rage and pain. She turned off her lamp and focused hard at the ceiling, angry and confused. Slowly the anger melted, as it always did, into private tears.
She used a tissue to wipe the tears from her eyes and the blood from her
bleeding
lip as she sobbed
. Her thumb throbbed
,
and her brain was on fire with
the
questions that haunted her
every night
.

She pulled the comforter up over her head an
d tried to slow
racing thoughts
.
With several deep breaths, s
he tried to clear her head for sleep, but she knew it
was pointless
.

Hours later,
Abby stared at the red
LED
displ
ay on her alarm clock:
3:
06
AM
.
She had slept a little, but couldn’t seem to stay asleep
.
She was too tired for homework and
had
never
enjoyed
late night television
.
Normally
,
she’d have half a dozen good books on her nightstand
,
but she hadn’t been to the library in over a month.

She finally
kicked off the covers and sighed
, then
sat up and stretched, yawning
.
Across the joint of her
thumb,
a wicked purple bruise and lump h
eralded
her run
-
in with the desk
.
She ran her tongue over the inside of her
swollen
lip and gingerly touched the self-inflicted bite wounds
.
She
peered warily into
the tiny makeup mirror on her dresser.

Lovely.
Dark circles, fat lip, purple hand. I am gonna have
Extreme
Teen
Makeover
showing up at m
y doorstep if I keep this up.

She sighed and shook her head at the face staring back at her from the mirror
.
She gave
up, got her laptop off the desk,
and brought it back to the bed.
When she
logged in
, she
saw that
her social network
was still open
.
No new messages.

“I guess they gave up on the calculus too
.”

The latest message, from Say Goodbye To Me
,
was still at the top of the queue.
E
ven if it
were
a fake, maybe it would do her some good to get her thoughts out of her head and onto the page.

“Seriously, what can it hurt?” she asked herself
.
“I’ll keep it short, simple and safe
.
Maybe once I spit it out, I’ll get some decent sleep.”

She clicked on the
link. A
simple black and white page loaded in the browser
.
“
Say Goodbye to Me
”
in tall, plain letters covered the top of the page, and underneath was an italicized tagline:
A chance to tell them how you feel, even though they’re gone.”

Beneath
the header
was a simple form
that looked very much like an email
message. The
date automatically showed at the top of the message
.
Below it, in the
To
field, she typed
Zack
.
In the
From
field she typed
:
Abby
. She shook her head and deleted it, replacing it with:
A
.
in
the Subject field, she wrote:
Goodbye
. She pressed the
Enter
button
,
and her cursor landed in the open field below
.
As she pondered her next words, she unconsciously bit her lip again.

“Ow!” she
said
aloud, “Jesus
,
I gotta stop that!”  She took a tissue from the
desk, wadded it up,
and shoved it in her mouth, behind her bottom lip
.
Several times she
began
typing
, only to
quickly delete
her words
.
The empty field and blinking cursor taunted her for several minutes
.