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I told her I would, but I already knew she’d never hear from me again.

Chapter 13

i can’t help but

think that

madeline

lost the better of

her two parents.

I knew that I was going to have to learn to live alone with Madeline, so I figured the best thing to do was to jump right in. As the sun went down on our first evening alone in the house, I sat on the top stair of our front porch. Madeline was cradled in my left arm, and I was staring across the small valley that separated our hilltop house from the next, trying to keep from thinking about what should have been. As hard as I tried to focus on the distant sounds of birds, the thoughts just kept creeping back into my head. Liz should have been sitting here next to me, just under a month to go until her due date. I should have had my left arm around her, my hand gripping her shoulder, while the other, placed firmly on her belly, waited to feel our unborn daughter’s next kick. We should have been making fun of the annoying couple in our birthing class and talking about when she planned to start her maternity leave. Madeline shouldn’t have been here, not yet, anyway. And sitting there alone with my daughter, I tried my best not to completely lose my shit.

I was emotionally exhausted, and I knew that I should go to sleep because Maddy would wake up in a few hours, ready for her next diaper change and feeding. I walked through the house turning off the lights, careful to leave one on in the living room just so any potential burglars would know that someone was home, which I’d been doing nightly since the incident last January. I went into the bedroom, my bare feet sliding over the silk rug Liz had purchased during our trip to Nepal. I placed my tightly swaddled baby faceup in her bassinet and climbed into my bed still wearing jeans and a T-shirt. No sense in getting undressed, I figured, since I no longer had any idea of whether it was morning or night. I lay there, watching the ceiling fan spin above me and listening to the analog clock on Liz’s dresser tick away the seconds. I don’t know how long she’d had it, but this was the first time I had ever heard it. Suddenly I felt a pulsing in my head that was beating in time with the clock. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, just like they do in those commercials for Tylenol, trying to massage away the pain.

I reached for the television remote on my nightstand, hoping to find a new episode of Robot Chicken on the DVR to make me laugh without having to think. There were some shows that Liz had recorded but hadn’t had a chance to watch: a few episodes of The Hills, three hours’ worth of A Baby Story, and some other pieces of supreme television shit. I hit the menu button on the remote and moved the cursor to Delete, but then I paused. I had no desire to ever watch any of this trash, but I couldn’t get rid of it. By deleting Liz’s shows, wouldn’t I be deleting part of her? I let out a mixture of laughter and tears as I thought about how stupid that was, and decided to turn off the TV and read a book instead.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep, but the sound that awoke me sent a wave of panic through my body; it was the same noise I’d heard come from Liz the day that she died. I jumped from the bed and found Madeline with vomit coming from her nose and mouth, choking and gasping for air. Independent from my mind and the rest of my body, my arms reached for her and my hands lifted her from the bassinet.

I didn’t need to remember what I’d learned in the baby CPR class I had taken in the hospital—I just started doing it. I flipped Madeline over, her stomach on my leg, her head hanging over my knee. I firmly smacked her back, hoping I’d be able to clear her airway. It didn’t work. My baby cradled in my arms, I ran to her room and with my free hand, searched through the mountain of unopened baby products piled in the corner. Frantic, I found what I was looking for: the booger sucker, as it had