The Long Way Home Read online

  The Long Way Home

  Jasinda Wilder

  Contents

  Part 1

  1. [a handwritten note on Christian St. Pierre’s personalized stationery; August 3, 2015]

  2. [From Ava St. Pierre’s blog: Confessions of a Working Mommy; August 5, 2015]

  3. [From Christian’s computer journal; January 10, 2015]

  4. [From Ava’s blog: Confessions of Working Mommy; January 20, 2015]

  5. [From Christian’s journal; February 14, 2015]

  6. [From Ava’s blog: Confessions of Working Mommy; March 17, 2015]

  7. [April 5, 2015]

  8. [From Christian’s journal; May 3, 2015]

  9. [From Christian’s journal; June 10, 2015]

  10. [From Ava’s blog: Confessions of a Working Mommy; July 3, 2015]

  11. [July 25, 2015]

  12. [August 3, 2015]

  13. [A handwritten letter from Christian to Ava; postmarked August 9, 2015]

  14. [Email from Ava to Christian; 3:23 a.m., August 11, 2015]

  15. [Email from Christian to Ava; 12:33 p.m., August 13, 2015]

  16. [Email from Ava to Christian; 8:23 p.m., August 15, 2015]

  17. [Email from Christian to Ava; 6:04 a.m., August 20, 2015]

  18. [Email from Ava to Christian; August 21, 2015]

  Part 2

  19. [Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela; September 1, 2015]

  20. epistle #1

  21. [Off the coast of South America; October 23, 2015]

  22. Epistle #2

  23. [Jamestown, St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan de Cunha; December 24, 2015]

  24. The Selkie and the Sea

  25. [Cape Town, South Africa; February 14, 2016]

  26. Epistle #4

  Part 3

  27. [Email from Ava to Christian; April 9, 2016]

  28. [Email from Christian to Ava; April 11, 2016]

  29. [From Christian’s journal: April 18, 2016]

  30. [Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean; May 15, 2016]

  31. [Ft. Lauderdale, FL; May 16, 2016]

  32. [Somewhere in the South Atlantic; date unknown]

  33. [Ft. Lauderdale, FL; May 19, 2016]

  34. [Somewhere in the South Atlantic; date unknown]

  Epilogue

  Sneak Preview

  Chapter 1

  Also by Jasinda Wilder

  I

  1

  [a handwritten note on Christian St. Pierre’s personalized stationery; August 3, 2015]

  You look at me with blame in your eyes, as if this is somehow my fault; you look at me with disdain, as if I willed all of this to happen; you look at me as if you don’t even recognize me anymore, as if all of this has somehow irrevocably altered me on some intrinsic level.

  You are not wrong, about any of it.

  No, I could not have prevented Henry from dying; obviously I didn’t want this—I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy; of course this hellscape that is our life has changed me—how could it not?

  It is not my fault.

  Yet still, I accept the blame. I accept the disdain. I accept the distance in your eyes.

  I accept it, because I am weak and empty and dead. I am a husk of a man, and it is better to be filled with guilt and self-loathing and sadness than to be so utterly empty and alone as I have been these last weeks.

  Ava, my love: you have always been the best part of me, and through you we created Henry, our son, and in him I found completion and strength and purpose. Now that he is gone, I have lost those things, and I have lost you, and thus I have lost myself.

  I’m sorry, Ava.

  I wish I had the strength to go on, but I don’t.

  Goodbye.

  2

  [From Ava St. Pierre’s blog: Confessions of a Working Mommy; August 5, 2015]

  He’s gone. He left. The coward. He just LEFT, vanished, poof…no more Christian.

  When I found that handwritten note on his desk, my immediate thought was that he’d committed suicide, but my next thought was to dismiss that notion as utterly preposterous: Christian is nowhere near weak enough (or strong enough, if you look at it perversely) to do something like that. He wouldn’t even consider it.

  If you’ve been following my blog for the last nine months, dear reader, you’ll know that I’ve been predicting some kind of third and final blow to my already-fragile psyche. This is that final blow. Neil Gaiman wrote in his amazing novel Neverwhere that events are cowards, not occurring singly, but instead running in packs and leaping out all at once; I have found this to be utterly and bitingly true in my own life.

  First my blog crashed and I had to have the website totally rebuilt, and then everything with Henry, and now this. My husband, my best friend, my lover, the father of my son…has left me.

  I know where he is, of course.

  He’ll have bought himself a giant ocean-going sailboat, and he’ll have boarded it, and sailed away from me, away from Henry’s grave, away from our fractured marriage, and away from the chaos of a successful career.

  That’s the irony in all this: his career is going gangbusters. He’s never been in higher demand. Movie studios want rights to his books, his publisher is ordering renewed print runs on at least half of his backlist, fans are clamoring for sequels and prequels and spin-offs…

  And he chooses now to literally sail away from everything. Of course, he has to be so damned dramatic about it—writing a wrenching goodbye note on his custom stationery, using his Mont Blanc fountain pen.

  What am I supposed to do?

  Please, guys, sound off in the comments if you have any suggestions; at this point I’ll consider just about anything. Do I go after him? Let him go? Send him a sternly worded email? Oh yes, he’ll have his email connected; that man can’t live without internet any more than I can, and you all know how I feel about my interwebz—call me nasty names, take my house, take my car but, dear god, at least leave me my social media; it’s all I have left, now.

  So.

  Do I forget him and move on?

  Mourn him, and the loss of our son—alone?

  Become a crazy cat lady?

  Get heavy into drugs? I could be a druggie. I could totally rock the heroin diet and lose those last twenty pounds I’ve been wrestling with since giving birth to Henry. I could rock the heroin-chic look, the old ratty clothes, the too-big canvas jacket, maybe even a pair of fingerless gloves…wait, I think that’s hobo-chic, which is a different aesthetic entirely. I don’t know, though. I’ve tried drugs before and they just make me twitchy and paranoid. That one time I smoked pot back in college, I ended up sitting on the roof of my sorority house eating Cool Ranch Doritos and waiting for the mothership to come take me. Of course, I later found out that the pot had been laced with something else which contributed to the bad trip, but that was enough for me—I’ve known ever since that I’m just not cut out to be a stoner, tweaker, or any other type of drug addict.

  I’m content to be addicted to Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and a good dry cabernet. And 70% dark chocolate. And Darcy, my labradoodle puppy, my best buddy. And Bennet, my calico kitten, my other best buddy. Those are my addictions, and I’m sticking to them.

  But will they be enough to get me through this chapter of my life?

  We shall see, dear reader. We shall see.

  * * *

  PS: People have been asking about a Kickstarter page, and I honestly considered it. But I don’t really need money, so in lieu of monetary donations please send contributions in the form of dry red wine to my P.O box, the address of which can be found under the “Contact me” tab. Yes, I’m dead serious. Dry red wine, the drier the better, and it doesn’t have to be expensive, but no two-buck Chuck, if you please.

&nbs
p; 3

  [From Christian’s computer journal; January 10, 2015]

  Henry is sick, and they don’t know what’s wrong with him. It started as a low-grade fever that wouldn’t go away, and then he became colicky, crying literally all the time, nearly every moment of every day, barely even sleeping. Which means I’m not sleeping, and Ava’s not sleeping. Ava is out of her mind with panic. Something’s wrong with him, she claims. Something serious. She knows there is, she says, she just doesn’t know what. We’ve taken him to the doctor; we’ve taken him to several doctors. He’s been X-rayed, MRI’d, CAT scanned, poked, prodded…they just can’t figure it out.

  Even when Henry finally manages to fall asleep, I can’t find rest. My eyes close, my body demands rest, but my mind will not quiet. The only way I can slow or quiet myself enough to sleep is through medication, which leaves me groggy and unable to wake up, or self-medication by way of excessive amounts of scotch. I don’t care for either option, and Ava says I’m a different man when I’ve been drinking.

  But without those options, I don’t sleep.

  It’s four in the morning right now, and I tossed and turned from the moment I laid down at eleven until finally giving up and opening my laptop to this journal a few minutes ago.

  I have the baby monitor beside me, and I can hear Henry fussing. Tossing, turning, mewling, as if he, too, cannot rest.

  I’m not a praying man, but I’ve found myself begging any deity that might exist to give me Henry’s illness, to take it from him and give it to me. He’s an innocent little boy, not even a year old. He doesn’t deserve this—no one deserves this, but a baby?

  I think about that, and I get angry, and I’m reminded why I’ve never been a praying man.

  Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. There is no justice.

  I know this is ridiculous and selfish and petty and horrible, which is why the only place I’ll ever voice this complaint is here, in this digital journal, but…

  Ava and I haven’t had sex in months. Since before Henry was born. I know, I know—she gave birth, she needed to heal. No problem. But then once she got the okay from Dr. Gupta, she didn’t feel ready. She still had the baby weight, she said, and she felt like she looked like roast beef down there—her words, not mine—and didn’t want me anywhere near it. And then Henry started crying all the time, and that’s taken all of our time and energy, and now she’s too panicked and exhausted and stressed to even think about intimacy.

  And I know I shouldn’t be thinking about that, but I can’t help it. I need that intimacy with her. Yes, I also need the physical release and relief, but it’s more than that. It’s the connection. The closeness we find, especially in the afterglow.

  God, I feel like such an asshole, but the need for her is yet another stone on the pile weighing me down. And I dare not say anything to her. Dare not make a move. It would hurt too much to be rejected yet again, and would only upset her more than she already is. I know she doesn’t mean it as a rejection of me, per se, but that’s still how it feels.

  Now more than ever we need each other, yet…I feel us drifting further and further apart.

  4

  [From Ava’s blog: Confessions of Working Mommy; January 20, 2015]

  Let’s talk about sex.

  Ha, now you’ve got that song stuck in your head.

  But for real, I’ve got some dirty thoughts I need to muse on, and you naughty vixens out there seem to enjoy getting glimpses into the inner workings of my fucked-up mind, for some reason, and so you’re going to be my sounding board.

  Henry was born seven months ago.

  The last time I had marital intercourse with my husband was exactly twenty-four days before that; I know the exact date only because I blogged about it (which you can find here). So, it has been eight months since I last had sex.

  Eight months without any nookie whatsoever.

  Ya’ll.

  That’s not okay.

  NOT OKAY.

  Mama needs her nookie, all right?

  I mean, yeah, the first three months or so are understandable: I had just pushed a human being out of my vagina, and Henry was not a small baby, at nine pounds six ounces. So yeah, six to nine weeks of recovery for poor Ava St. Pierre’s hoo-ha is to be expected.

  And then…and then…?

  Nobody tells you about the hemorrhoids, nor what I’ve been calling the Arby’s poon—which is when your lady bits rather closely resemble a sandwich from the aforementioned purveyor of meat-like-substance imitation sandwiches. Yeah, I’d like to have learned about that shit in the My Baby and Me class. Screw Lamaze, let’s talk about roast beef pussy. Yeah, sure, of course Chris told me I looked totally normal and was more beautiful than ever; he had to say that because he knew I’d kill him—

  The other thing nobody talks about is that your hormones don’t go back to normal right away either. I mean, yeah, you hear all about how you’ll be hormonal during pregnancy, and you’ll have weird cravings and alternate between loving your hubby more than ever and wanting to strangle him with his shoelaces—which you couldn’t reach because hello, you’re pregnant. Do you ever hear about still feeling like an unhinged lunatic months after the baby is born? NOOOOOO. I didn’t, at least. Yeah, they talk about postpartum depression, but what about postpartum homicidal rage because you’re not getting laid? What about feeling stabby because your baby is three months old and you haven’t had wine or coffee in almost a fucking year, and now they’re telling you that you STILL can’t have it because you’re breastfeeding?

  Switching Henry to formula so I can have wine and coffee would make me a horrible mother, wouldn’t it? Yes, I know I can have beer while I’m breastfeeding because of something to do with lactation or something, but honestly, beer? Probz not, folks.

  But I digress.

  Sex.

  Which I’m not having.

  Why?

  Because I’m still twenty pounds away from my post-baby goal weight, and it seems like a goal I’ll never reach because Henry is colicky and difficult and I think he’s sick but they can’t find anything wrong with him. But I’m his mama, dammit, and I know he’s sick. I’ve been around colicky babies before. My sister’s son, my nephew Alex, now he was a super colicky baby. He was just cranky all the time, and hated life and hated being put down and hated being hungry and hated being wet and REALLY hated being poopy, and guess what he was all the time? Hungry, wet, and poopy. That was colic. He grew out of it, turned into the sweetest, cutest, happiest little walking, talking kid you could ask for.

  This, with Henry? It’s not colic.

  There’s something wrong, and nobody knows what.

  So that’s not helping the get-Ava-laid program.

  Also not helping is the fact that Christian is under deadline and took two months off from writing to help me with Henry and take care of me. God bless the man, he did so much in those two months, and I don’t know how any woman has ever survived those months without my Chris, because he made me breakfast in bed, brought me endless mugs of herbal tea, brought me snacks, held Henry so I could sleep, changed diapers, went to Walgreens whenever I ran out of Tuck’s pads AND brought back chocolate. He had pizza and the Thai place on speed dial, and could get in and out with our order in less than ten minutes, so I wouldn’t be alone with Henry for too long while I was still so sore I could barely walk.

  Yeah, they also don’t tell you about that. Giving birth hurts—that’s not news; what’s news is that it continues to hurt for weeks and weeks afterward.

  So yeah, Christian was an actual angel from heaven, and now he’s got sixty thousand words due in six weeks and did I mention that Henry cries ALL…THE…TIME? Poor man isn’t sleeping, and he’s still trying to be there for my every want and need, and he’s got insane stress from the due date.

  The only thing he can’t do for me is make me capable of sex.

  See, that’s the issue. I WANT sex. I NEED sex.

  My man and I hav
e wicked powerful chemistry, okay? I’ve blogged about this before (here and here). Chris and I? We’re, like, world champions at sex.

  But…my body is all like NO, AVA, NO SEX FOR YOU and my mind is like FUCK YOU, BODY, GET WITH THE PROGRAM! RIDE THAT DICK! And my heart is like I just want intimacy. I want him to whisper sweet nothings and tell me how beautiful I am and kiss me and make me feel desired and needed.

  And I’m freaking out about Henry. Freaking out seriously hardcore, and that’s just shut down my mojo completely.

  Even worse is, I know Chris is feeling it too. He needs it as much as I do, if not more so simply because he’s a dude and dudes require crazy amounts of sex to function. My point is, he needs me. He needs us.

  And I can’t give it to him.

  I wonder if he ever reads my blog?

  If you’re reading this, Christian, then please know it’s not you. I love you more than ever and want you more than ever, but I just…can’t. And I feel horrible about it, and I’m sorry.

  Who am I kidding? Christian’s never read my blog, and never will. Not because he doesn’t care—he does, and he supports me, so don’t get the wrong idea, here.

  I don’t know, though. Don’t let my pithy blog style fool you, dear readers: I’m a damned mess right now.

  5

  [From Christian’s journal; February 14, 2015]

  Valentine’s Day.

  Fitting that this would happen today, on Ava’s and my least favorite holiday of all time.

  Henry has officially been admitted to the pediatric oncology ward. It’s 2:30am, and I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours, haven’t eaten in sixty. Ava is curled up on the chair/bed thing beside Henry’s hospital crib, her hand over his, a troubled expression marring her features even asleep.