When she got the news she had just come back from the pharmacy. She’d run out and the last couple of days were bad. The wine didn’t help. Neither did sleep. They weren’t what she needed.
“That phone never worked,” she said and then told her mom how she found out.
She was already feeling better when she answered the phone. Her face fell loose almost immediately. Her back was warming over.
“Hello,” she answered, her eyes slipping away, catching a fuzzy glimpse at the yellow grass through the window. “Oh, Robert.”
You never get used to someone dying. You don’t get through death like you get through a shift at work or a high school crush. Some things have a short life span. Like the life of a fly. She snapped the phone from the wall and wrapped it tightly, trying to choke it off.
That summer she not only gave up smoking but also broke up with Craig. Not because he didn’t believe in God, or was fucking another woman, but because she realized what was inevitable. Didn’t want to roll into the years to see it happen. Those long slow winters. Those dead yellow summers. Didn’t want to get the news one day that something bad happened to him.
“I hope this is not about God,” he said, turning over his truck.
“It’s always about God.”
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