Losing Lily (A Finding Lily Prequel)

  Losing Lily

  (A Finding Lily Prequel)

  by

  Rachel Del

  Copyright © March 2016 by Rachel Del

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to business, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely incidental.

  Cover Design by Rachel Del

  Losing Lily / Rachel Del. – 1st ed.

  ISBN: 978-1-31085-095-0

  For Esra, whose strength and bravery inspire me each and every day.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  An Excerpt from Finding Lily

  About the Author

  Losing Lily

  A Finding Lily Prequel

  Lily Gardner thought she’d found her soul mate when she met and married the handsome and well-off Thomas Gardner. But as she soon finds out, life and love hold no guarantees.

  Losing Lily is a prequel to Rachel Del’s debut novella, Finding Lily, that explores what happens when you realize that your life is not at all what you expected it to be.

  Sign up for the authors mailing list and get a free glimpse into Lily Gardners’ private journal,

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  Losing Lily

  (A Finding Lily Prequel)

  One

  Lily

  The moment I decided my marriage was over, that there was no going back, or forward, I was slicing a Gala apple into bite-sized pieces, arranging them just-so on a plastic, mickey mouse plate, next to the organic, sugar-free peanut butter I’d picked up from the grocery store that morning. I managed to make the ten steps over to my son, Ben, while avoiding eye contact with my husband who sat playing beside him, but the ten steps back to the counter felt labored and painful.

  I thought for sure that Thomas could read my mind, that he knew I had just then made the choice to turn our lives upside down. I debated saying it out loud, telling him at that very moment. We’d both had a couple of glasses of wine by then; my declaration would be easier to swallow.

  It’s not like he wouldn’t have seen it coming. We were headed towards the end of our marriage by then, anyway. We both knew it. Some marriages could make it through anything and, at one time, I had thought that we had that kind of relationship. But it became evident over time that this simply wasn’t the case. We’d had six good years, one amazing, perfect child, and this was as far as we were meant to go.

  So as I watched my son lick the sticky peanut butter from his lips, I decided...there was no doubt... that I would leave my husband.

  Thomas looked over at me suddenly, registering the expression on my face and said, “What’s wrong, Lily?”

  “Nothing. Nothing,” I told him, and either he accepted my response or didn’t care either way. After six years of marriage, we were just going through the motions anyway. We’d long ago settled into a routine of hellos and goodbyes, daycare drop-offs and pick-ups and grocery shopping every four days.

  He turned his attention back to our son, and I knew that time was fleeting; that at any minute his phone would ring or an email would come through that just couldn’t be ignored and he’d be gone. Gone into his study for the rest of the night and it would be just Ben and me again. Like it always was.

  I had loved his dedication to work when we first met. He was the most focused person I knew. Nothing was ever done halfway. Nothing was ever left unfinished, untouched, unsaid. I had loved watching him work; loved the way his voice would jump when he was excited, the way he spoke slowly when he was hashing out a deal. When he closed on a particularly lucrative deal he would run at me, carry me into the bedroom and lay me down slowly on the bed where we’d show each other just how grateful we were to have one another. I had loved so much about him: the indentation that his glasses left on his nose, the way he always smelled like fresh laundry, the small vee of soft, curly hair on his chest and the way I felt pressed against it.

  He was Thomas Gardner, one of those men who could rule the world. You know what I mean, don’t you? Those men who take everything from life, who keep on taking and taking with no concern for what they may be stealing from anyone else, who roam the streets with ease and eerie confidence while the planets shift and fall into place for them time and time again.

  While it was true that he had been dealt a good hand in life from the very beginning, he had become successful on his own merit and he made certain that everyone knew it. There was no guessing when it came to Thomas; everything was out there in the open. His house, his car, his suits, his watch and even his wife… we all painted a picture of how great his life was.

  He was in control of everything and everyone and I had loved that about him. I’d see the looks he would get from women of all shapes and sizes and ages and swell with pride that I had been the one to pin him down.

  That was before I had known that holding on to him was like holding on to water and he would forever be slipping through my fingers. There were moments during our marriage when I forgot that this was so, and those were the moments when we were at our best.

  But even as I looked at him now, knowing without a doubt that I was ready to walk away, I knew I owed Thomas everything. He had entered my life when I was at my weakest and most vulnerable, and he had pulled me to my feet. He had made me want to keep on living.

  If you had known me before my mother passed away, it was likely that you enjoyed my company. We were probably friends, or acquaintances at the very least. We had probably talked more than once; not about the weather or what we do for a living, but real things. Things that mattered. The things that keep your heart beating and stop you in your tracks.

  But in losing a parent you lose a piece of yourself. And if it weren’t for Thomas, I might never have found a way back to myself.

  **

  My mother's house was the town's gathering place for friends and family. We joked that she should charge admission at the rate that people were always coming and going. The moment you stepped through that doorway you were overwhelmed by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, and my mother’s smile and warm greeting were never far behind. No matter the time of day, you would find people gathered around the kitchen table drinking coffee. Everyone loved her. She had this unique, innate ability to be your best friend, your toughest critic and your biggest cheerleader all at once.

  When we found out that she had cancer, I did what most people do and went into complete denial mode. I shut down. My mother was too young, too alive, too in love to be dying. I simply couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of her leaving us; her two daughters, her husband, everyone. She was the glue that held us all together.

  It would turn out that her cancer was far too advanced to give us the only thing we wanted: more time. We had only eight weeks with her before she left us. I was twenty-one, all legs and mouth with no real idea of what life would look like without a mother.

  Before I knew any better I assumed that I was alone in my grief, that there weren’t millions of others who knew how it felt to lose a parent. I had thought that I was the only one stumbling over how to live with my grief, to tiptoe my way around it the way I was doing. I had assumed that o
nly I knew the way grief had no rhythm, no schedule, no concern for your well-being. It was all-consuming. I was a slave to it. I worked and played and laughed, but it did not leave me. It would hit me when I least expected it, when I was far from prepared, and just like that I would be in tears, scrambling for an excuse to get out and away from whatever it was I was doing at that moment.

  When Thomas met me I was angry and closed down and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet. How he didn’t look at me and run for the hills, I never understood. Perhaps, like so many other things in his life, he had simply decided that he could fix me.

  And he did.

  Truth be told...I was drowning.

  And Thomas saved me.

  Some days, far enough into our relationship that he knew when I was feeling receptive, he would ask me about her.

  I would smile sadly, one of a hundred memories rushing into the forefront of my mind. “She was so beautiful, Tom. The kind of beautiful that takes your breath away. And she was smart, so smart. She was the center of our universe; everyone loved her and gathered around her as though her attention and company could solve all of life’s problems. She used to tell us we could be anything that we put our minds to, and that we should never settle for a life that isn’t spent fulfilling our dreams, whatever they may be.”

  Thomas had reached for my hand, lightly squeezing it.

  “She sounds a lot like you,” he said.

  “She would have loved to hear you say that. Everyone always told her that my sister was more like her and I was like my father.”

  “That’s not such a bad thing,” he said, and I had agreed.

  At that time, I hadn’t known about the complexities of Thomas’ relationship with his father. Hadn’t known of his struggle with the cold, indifferent man, or his desire for attention and later, his relentless need for respect.

  “My mom was an incredible cook, and she never followed a single recipe in her adult life. She said recipes were for bakers.” I had smiled at the memory. “She loved my father so much. They were the perfect example of two souls who were put on this earth to be together.”

  I remember so clearly the way Thomas’ hand felt on mine back then. I could feel the warmth radiating from his touch.

  “Do you miss her?”

  “Every single second of every single day.”

  Thomas had taken me under his wing and led me – slowly at first, and then with a much firmer hand – into a better life. One where I could actually live and breathe and laugh and love.

  I owed him my life. The life that he had given back to me.

  What I hadn’t known, what I could never have foreseen, was that he also held the power to take that life back.

  Two

  Thomas

  I could tell by the way she looked right through me that our marriage was over. Somewhere between this morning's small, promising smile when we woke that morning and now, she had made her decision. We had tried so hard to make it work; no one could deny that. But no amount of money, no therapist, and no amount of time was going to fix what had broken between us.

  Our relationship had been troubled for a long time, but even I wasn’t blind to the fact that I had sealed our fate.

  Being with Clare had been a choice I had made, and there was no going back.

  I honestly don’t know how it happened; how we went from a drink at the bar to me following her through her front door, but I knew that the moment I stepped through her doorway there was no going back.

  In all the time I had known Clare, I’d never been any good at saying no to her and it hadn’t gotten any easier with time.

  She had this way of getting what she wanted by making you believe it had been your idea all along. It’s how I ended up agreeing to bright red walls in our living room eleven years ago, and I was fairly certain it’s how we ended up together in bed that first time.

  Bumping into her hadn’t been planned. When she came walking through the door of the restaurant I had already had two whiskeys with a colleague, picking at the near-empty plate of oversalted calamari between us. The second I saw her I dropped my head, hoping that she would pass by me, but then there she was beside me, looking just as amazing as she had the day she’d walked away from our engagement eleven years before. Her pale, tiny hand landed on my shoulder and I instinctively, almost protectively, thumbed the bottom of my gold wedding band. That was the first time I thought of Lily that night.

  It had been one of those god awful days. And maybe I should have just gone home and sought comfort in my family, but sitting down for a drink with a beautiful lady who knew little about how complex my life had gotten was a much more appealing option. She ordered a vodka martini and I had my third whiskey, and we talked about everything except how unhappy we were. She hadn’t changed much, and I found that everything about her still felt familiar, even after all those years. How long had it been anyway? Ten… eleven years? We had been so young then, I knew that much was true.

  Later, I stared up at the ceiling, watching the arms of the fan spin slowly around, trying to imagine that I was back home with my family instead of in her bed, our naked bodies tucked under her extravagant Egyptian cotton bed sheets.

  She had turned to me then, running her finger lightly along my forearm and looked at me briefly. “What do you think Lily would say if she could see us now?”

  “No.”

  Her hand stopped, hovering above my arm. I was almost certain that I could hear the rhythmic thumping of her heart in her chest.

  “No, what?”

  “We’re not going to do this, Clare.”

  “Do what?”

  “We’re not going to talk about her.”

  “I’m just curious.”

  I moved away from her then, tearing the covers from my body and reaching for my pants on the floor. “No… you’re not. You’ve forgotten that I know you.”

  She pushed herself up so that she was balancing on her elbow. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Having pulled on my jeans, I tugged my shirt over my head and responded without looking at her. “It means I know what you’re doing, and I’m not going to play that game.”

  “Don’t do that,” she said, jumping up from the bed. I glanced at her familiar, naked body only momentarily before turning away. “Don’t suddenly pretend that you’re better than me. It takes two people to do what we just did.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

  She laughed, which had surprised me. “Don’t kid yourself.”

  “I mean it. This was a mistake.”

  “If that’s what you need to believe to make yourself feel better than you go right on ahead,” she said, “but you’ve forgotten one thing. I know you. You don’t do anything halfway. You don’t leave things unfinished. This… us… we’re unfinished.”

  In the car on the way home I had turned the music up to an obnoxious level in an effort to drown out the thoughts in my mind; the thoughts that told me what a terrible person I was.

  I told myself that it had all just been a bad dream.

  A mistake.

  That over time I would forgive myself and forget that it had ever happened. I told myself that sleeping with Clare had meant nothing and so felt no need to confess my mistake to Lily. I had been smart enough to know that admitting what I had done would make me feel better about myself, but hurt her irrevocably in the process. And Lily had already experienced far too much pain in her life.

  Somehow, over time, I managed to be able to look at my reflection in the mirror and not see a man who had cheated on his wife, but a man who had simply made an error in judgment.

  **

  Lily and I always agreed that we were among the lucky ones...to have found each other when we were so young and to have fallen so deeply so quickly. I loved her, I did, but then again she was easy to love. She was strong and independent and witty in a way that you didn’t see often in a woman. She loved fiercely. From the ve
ry beginning I knew, that while I wasn’t deserving of that kind of love, I would have been crazy to let it pass me by.

  We were a typical couple back then; me intense and sure of what I wanted and Lily, young and naive, circling around me like I was the last drop of water in the desert. We couldn't keep our hands off of each other. We were all mouths and need and longing, and nothing else came before satisfying our desires.

  We moved quickly, never wanting to waste a single moment. We were different people then. Maybe better people.

  We were certainly happier than we ever could have imagined.

  I looked down at the sand between my toes and then sideways at Lily, who was looking more beautiful than ever in the orange glow of the sunset surrounding us. I had been dreaming of taking her to the beach house for so long but I had forgotten just how much I loved being here. She wasn’t the first woman I had brought with me, but she would be the last.

  “What are you smiling about?” she said, distracting me from my thoughts.

  I threw my arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer to me, sighing as her head dropped onto my shoulder. So this was what being content felt like.

  “I’m just glad that I finally got you out here to Malibu,” I said.

  “Well, you were right,” she said, “It is beautiful.”

  We had been living together for a year, dating for only a little more than that, by that time. We were comfortable with each other in a way that two people can only be once they’ve lived under the same roof, but our relationship was still new enough that Lily got butterflies every time I kissed her. I knew this because she told me often.