Chapter Text
Sitting by the pool, with Joey in her arms, and a smile plastered on her face, Jen tried her best to hold herself to the Earth.
These days, more often than not, it felt as though at any given moment she could just scream or cry or call out or collapse. A lot of the times, she wished she just would, wished she could bring her body to do something that made her feel solid and real. But she didn’t feel capable of emotion like that anymore, didn’t feel capable of feeling hard enough or strong enough to reach anything close to a catharsis.
She could feel herself falling apart. Like she was made of sand or gravel or water or wind, something impossible to keep together, impossible even with glue. She’d be grabbing fistfuls that would only slip through her fingers and pool at her feet, but her feet were disappearing now too.
With every passing day she was stunned to realize there was still more of her left to scatter.
She’d find herself in places she didn’t remember heading towards, standing by the open fridge, the tip of her nose gone cold, and she’d wonder how she’d got there and when.
She’d find herself alone in the backyard, the hairs on her arms pin straight in the night breeze, realizing that the sweet familiar humming she’d followed outside had never been there to begin with.
After Ted had been all red fire, rage, and reckless desperation. Now, Jen mostly just felt like she didn’t exist. Like she wasn’t controlling her mind or her body, just living by the whims of a lazy puppet master, moving through her environment in a thick and clumsy fog.
Even now, watching Ben and the kids play in front of her, splashing in the pool and howling with laughter, it all felt like some sort of mirage.
How could the world keep turning if Judy wasn’t there to see it. How could that even be possible?
And Jen often had to remind herself that it wasn’t just a possibility but actually the truth. And it was in those moments that the fog seemed to swallow her whole.
She felt Ben kiss her, his wet hair splashing her face a little. She might have kissed him back, she wasn’t sure.
The only thing that felt real and solid to her now was warm Joey in her arms, her small body an anchor, her gentle breaths a grounding metronome.
“I’m going to go take a nap,” she heard herself say.
“Do you want me to take her?” Ben asked.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll put her down in the—” she trailed off, already heading towards the guest house, Joey snugly wrapped up in her arms.
…
After Mexico, Charlie had moved back into the main house. He’d had Henry help him pack up everything that had been hers — Jen couldn’t bring herself to touch any of it— and asked Jen where she’d like to keep it all. They knew better than to suggest getting rid of it, knew better than to tuck it all away somewhere before Jen could have a last look.
Jen had told them to just leave everything in her room for the time being, and though anyone besides the Hardings might have thought it strange for Jen to choose to live in a cluttered mess of boxes and frames and stacks of silky garments that she couldn’t even bring herself to touch, it seemed like the only thing that made sense at the time, and the boys knew better than to question her.
Ben hadn’t stayed the night in quite some time. To his credit, he seemed to recognize that Jen needed her space to grieve, or maybe just space from him. Jen hadn’t quite worked it out herself yet, what they were, where they stood. If she were honest, he was far from the forefront of her mind, but he seemed to be a good distraction for the kids at least.
Jen knew that he was trying, but she also knew it wasn’t right, knew he could never quite be right no matter how hard he tried. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t begin to fill the Judy shaped hole in her heart.
So Jen had let her room become full of Judy , a small part of her praying that having her things surrounding her might make Judy feel close by.
It didn’t work.
Seeing all of her beautiful belongings around the room, piled neatly, undisturbed and untouched, was a painful reminder of her absence. Still, Jen couldn’t find it in herself to put it away. She wasn’t ready to close that door. To put Judy behind her.
One morning, the too-bright sun illuminated the fact that a thin layer of dust had settled on Judy’s box of trouble, sat atop Jen's dresser, and it was all too much.
Jen had immediately began gathering up Judy's things, piling them into her arms, barely able to see behind the hot tears stinging her eyes, and before she could figure out where her feet were taking her, she found herself in the guest house, empty and echoing, save for an old gatorade bottle Charlie’d forgotten in the corner.
Jen began recreating the space from touch memory.
By late afternoon, the guest house was returned to its former state. Paintings on their easels, crystals on the nightstand, the tapestry back on the wall.
It was perfect. So perfect that it felt for a moment as if maybe Judy’d just nipped off to the store, and she’d be back in time to make dinner and bake pie and warm Jen’s hands with her own in the outdoor living room and laugh with her about their tv shows and their neighbours and their kids and get older with her and then be old with her and share her whole life with her like she was fucking supposed to.
Jen spent a lot of time in the guest house these days.
And maybe it was kind of fucked up to keep this sort of shrine , but it just felt right to keep the space as Judy’s. Jen felt safe there.
Sometimes, when the light was just right, it was like Judy still lingered in the air.
Better still, Joey seemed to take her best naps in the guest house, and Jen hoped that Judy knew that, somehow.
She had Ben build a crib there, and while Joey took her afternoon naps, Jen curled herself up on the daybed. Jen slept better there too.
They spent most afternoons like that, Joey in her crib and Jen on the daybed, and it brought her some small comfort. Or maybe it just let her live in a sort of delusion for the briefest of moments when she'd wake up dazed in the safe familiarity of Judy's space. Either way Jen didn’t care. She’d take the comfort where she could get it.
…
Tripping over Sammy as she opened the guest house door, Jen felt a jolt as a wave of bergamot and amber seem to overtake her. Lately, it seemed like the guest house had even started to smell like Judy again. It was getting stronger by the day, a sign Jen took that her delusion might be turning fast into full blown hopeless insanity.
Oh well.
Jen settled Joey into her crib, and settled herself into the daybed. Turning onto her back, and pulling the sheets up and over her shoulders, Jen stared up at the ceiling and breathed in her imaginary Judy. This time, she was asleep before the first tear hit the pillow.
…
Jen woke with a start.
The sun was setting, and long orange beams of light stretched across the guest house. Joey was already awake, baby-babbling in her crib.
Jen stretched out, rising from the daybed and crossing the room to the crib.
She carefully picked up Joey, who started babbling even more the moment Jen touched her, the happy kind. Despite Jen, Joey was a happy fucking baby, always clinging to her mom with everything her little body had, giggling and cooing like she knew Jen needed it. Over the last few weeks, Jen had noticed that the few hairs growing on her little head were a deep chestnut brown, and she was simultaneously overjoyed and heartbroken that Joey already seemed to be so much like her namesake.
Heading towards the door, Jen’s eyes settled on the desk, where an impressively neat stack of mail sat right on the corner, waiting for her.
Had it been there before her nap? She hadn't noticed.
Jen shifted Joey in her arms and picked up the top envelope, it was this week’s mail— just more bills and flyers, but as helpful as the boys tried to be, they never got the mail, and Ben didn’t set foot in the guest house.
Weird.
Jen shrugged it off, tucking the stack under her arm, and headed back to the main house with Joey.
Maybe Charlie was turning a new leaf.