Lost Without Me

I pushed Elliot's urn into Owen's hands and got behind the wheel myself.

Neither of us said a word the whole way.

Owen looked guilty and pressed a hand to his head as he apologized.

"Grace, I'm sorry. I went over the route last night. I don't know how I still—"

I thought of the map he'd been studying before bed.

The pin he'd dropped was his assistant's house.

Owen really couldn't hold a route in his head. He'd gotten lost countless times since he was a kid, and someone always had to go find him.

Before the wedding, our friend Nadia used to tease him about it.

"Grace is basically your GPS. Let's hope the baby doesn't take after you."

Only now did I understand that there were places he could remember.

The winding roads had never been the problem.

He could sit up all night with the lamp on, studying one route.

He didn't spare a thought for the wife crying beside him over the son they'd lost.

What was I to him, exactly?

At Cedarveil Memorial Park, I lowered the small urn into the grave and couldn't hold back the tears.

Right at the heart of the service, in the middle of the remembrance, Owen stood up to leave.

"Grace, something's happened to Paige. I have to go."

Paige Norwood was his assistant.

I'd lost count of how many times he'd walked out on me. The prenatal appointment he swore he'd be at — one phone call and he was gone.

Our anniversary, the restaurant booked for months, canceled without a second thought.

This time I screamed at him.

"If you walk out now, we're done."

Owen stopped.

"It's urgent. Don't make a scene."

My laugh came out wretched.

"I'm making a scene? Our son is gone, and his own father can't spare five minutes to say goodbye to him? Don't tell me it's company business, Owen. Who else can't handle it? What is so important that it has to be you?"

Owen bit his lip and hesitated a couple of seconds before he answered.

"Paige says she's going to kill herself. Something terrible happened to her family. I can't just leave her to it—"

I cut him off.

"I gave every driver the day off. You'd be useless anyway. You'd never find the road. Call the police and let them run a welfare check."

He left anyway.

I stood there alone in black and said goodbye to my son.

It was like the pregnancy all over again. I'd talked to him alone then too. From the first day to the last, I was the only one who ever showed up for him.

Once the service was over, I opened the location app and watched Owen cover three hundred miles without stopping.

A few hours later, the pin settled precisely on Paige's hometown of Foxmere.

He hadn't wasted a single minute.

Reading the directions must have taken everything he had, because I couldn't reach him for the rest of the night.

There was nothing left to misread. I pulled up Vivian Marsh's number.

"Draft me a divorce agreement."