Chapter 1

When The World Grew Still

“Rebecca, I’m so sorry.”

The world slowed, and ice froze in my lungs. It took a minute before I remembered the cell phone pressed against my ear, and an eternity to remember to breathe. The crisp fall day was bright and cheery, a start contrast to the way those three words cemented me in place. It was strange enough for my aunt to call in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, and stranger still that she was apologizing for something. “What, Winnie, what is it?”

My brain was in slow motion compared to my intuition. The world was moving too fast, and yet too slow as my stomach, made of lead, sank in a deep and vile pit of tar and sickness. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I don’t have a better way to tell you this. Your parents are dead, Beks.”

The street started to spin beneath my feet as my body finally forced me to gasp in a harsh gulp of the bitter October air. My breath died again, my lungs unable to keep up the momentum. Someone bumped into me from behind, growling out, “Jesus, move, lady!”

I dimly realized that I had stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk. Chicago didn’t do well with slowdowns, even on the university campus. “Sorry, man,” I called over my shoulder, then directed my attention back to the receiver. “W-what? Did I just hear you correctly?”

The world was shattering. Everything was simultaneously too bright and impossibly dark. Winnie repeated herself. I heard her, but I didn’t process the words, my mouth falling open as my life crashed down around my ears. The sounds of the street were distant, and my eyes darted back and forth wildly, looking for anything to explain the last fifteen minutes. This isn’t real.

It’s funny what you realize when you’re deep in the throes of shock. The fall colors were in full tilt on the campus. I was surrounded in the beautiful golds and oranges as the dying trees blazed in their final color of the year. The breeze was fresh and crisp, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. People were milling between buildings, bustling to their next classes or research labs. Nothing had changed, and yet, everything fundamentally had. Your parents are dead, Beks.

“I… I…” My brain skipped like a scratched record.

“I know, honey, I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t soften the blow. But, you also know I’m all the way in Cali; I can’t make it back to New York with the gala coming up, so you’re going to have to figure it out without me.”

“Wait —” I shook my head blinking once, then again. Swallowing, I shook my head. Breathe, Rebecca, I reminded myself, and closed my eyes as I took in another long, deep inhale through my nose. Where was my control? Where was my grace? I let out the breath and tried again. “W-wait, Winnie, just — just give me a second. What? What happened?”

Winnie was silent. A steady ache radiated from between my shoulder blades and I forced my arms to relax. Blinking my eyes open, I numbly scanned my surroundings. I needed to get out of the walkway. That was something I could do. Move, I told myself, and thankfully my legs obeyed. As I propelled idly forward, Winnie finally answered, her voice distracted and impatient. “A car crash,” she breathed out the words in an exaggerated sigh. “It happened less than three blocks away from their office. Their care flipped and rolled into the river. I’m sorry, honey.”

“Okay,” I heard myself say in a voice that didn’t sound like my own. Small, tight, and scared; my mouth and my brain were disconnected from one another. “Okay. Okay, uh,” I licked my lips, eyes searching for an anchor. “Well, is there someone I should call, or —”

“Sweetheart, I’ve got to go. I was in the middle of a meeting when I found out. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Wait, Winni—” the line went dead— “fred. Dammit.”

I pulled the phone from my ear in disbelief, seeing the red call disconnected message flash across the screen before it went black. Your parents are dead, Beks.

The words kept repeating in my mind, and the campus began to blur as I lowered my shaky left hand and dropped my phone into the deep pocket of my wool trench coat. What do you do when you get news like this? I blinked, the cooling track of tears on my cheeks colder than the rest of my skin. Was I crying? Beks. Move. The detached, logical part of my mind coaxed me into action. I must have stopped walking again when she hung up, but I couldn’t recollect it. Come on, Beks. One foot in front of the other.

My legs were like stilts; locked and wooden, unable to bend at the knees. The persistent knot in my back grew, and I stumbled against the rough iron of a bench. I sank into it, my breath hitching as my sadness dragged me down into the freezing seat. I adjusted the gray woolen scarf around my neck, the choking sensation in my throat begging me to do something to relieve it. What do I do? What do I do now?

The phone buzzed in my pocket, but I hardly registered the vibration against my thigh. My chest was on fire, my heart gone in the wreckage left by my aunt’s bomb. I couldn’t blame her for being so blunt; I’d seen her all of two or three times in my life. Winnifred Sinclaire, the event planner for the stars; estranged from her lawyer sister and brother-in-law.

The thought was bitter. My mother being gone was barely a blip on her radar. For her, the news was the emotional equivalent of being told there were no more of her favorite candies in stock at the store. She only called to tell me she wouldn’t be coming to New York in the aftermath to help. Which leaves me to navigate the funeral, the costs, the obituary, the lawyers…

What was I going to do? I had my thesis to think about. My jaw began to ache; I was clenching my teeth. My lungs were still burning, and I pulled in a long, low inhale. Breathe, Rebecca. Think. Step one, you’ve received information. Upsetting, but just facts. Now, what is step two?

It may have been a callous way of navigating, but overwhelm was par for the course. Logic is a comfort. Thinking can do what emotion can’t. It can break something down into a series of steps, a rigid structure that can carry you through the apocalypse. My hair fell into my face, but I could hardly see the platinum blonde strands through the blur of tears. I closed my eyes, reaching up with a gloved hand to wipe them away. My eyes stung.

Before the phone call, I’d been on my way to meet a professor. That was step two — going to Hewitt’s office for the meeting I was currently late for. “Right,” I said aloud, more to reassure myself than anything. I winced at how small and tight my voice was. “Right. Hewitt. Step two is to get to Hewitt.”

Doctor Conroy Hewitt was the head of the art history department, and the professor currently overseeing my thesis on Impressionists — a breakdown of their artwork, the processes, and how it was a reaction to their environment. The Impressionist movement was a rejection of the rigidity of the Academy and a reaction to the world’s political climate changing with expansionism and the Industrial Age. Everything in art was a reaction to the world.

Hewitt had been particularly kind about my over-analytical and blunt writing. I’d been a journalism major in my undergrad and graduated with an art history minor — journalistic writing doesn’t exactly allow room for nuance or lyricism. He was an understanding person, so I could only hope he would work with me.

I couldn’t handle the white hot pain that was my parents’ sudden and unexpected death, but I could at least handle Hewitt. “Okay,” I said aloud again. “Okay. I have to get to Hewitt. Okay.”

Jesus Christ, anyone walking around me had to think I was insane. Students were always in a hurry. They didn’t often have time to deal with anything outside of their studies and their own problems. Their heads were full of schedules, homework, and theories about their chosen fields. They were giving me and my emotional support bench a wide berth, unable to handle the thought of someone else’s mental breakdown.

I wiped at my eyes before I cleared my throat and leaned back, staring up at the bright sky. The window of clear blue between the tall campus buildings was dizzying. “Okay,” I murmured, repeating the word that was quickly becoming my mantra. The word was an anchor in the spinning tsunami of the last fifteen minutes. Ripping my eyes away from the sky, I forced myself to my feet and smoothed my black coat across my stomach. Adjusting my laptop bag, I turned towards my original destination and began to walk, one foot in front of the other.

Hewitt’s office was small and stuffed full of papers, books, and file cabinets. A singular book case sat behind his desk, various museum purchases and biographies haphazardly strewn across the shelves. Most of them were tilted askew. The dark beige tile and dirty white walls were spattered with a chaotic array of paintings and giclée prints. Some were in stacks, partially knocked over.

Hewitt was in the center of the chaos, sitting and hunched over in the eye of the clutter storm at his uneven, dented metal desk. Aside from the cramped square foot of clean space directly in front of my teacher, the desk was just as much of a disaster as the rest of the room. The man had a perpetual air of exhaustion around him. Today was no different as I slipped into the room and shut the door behind my, shoulders shaking with tension.

My skin crawled under the intensity of his gray eyes, peering at me over the rimless glasses perched low on his nose. His curly gray hair fell in front of the smudged glass as he studied me. I expected a gruff and disapproving, “You’re late,” but it never came. Unable to quite meet his eyes, I leaned back against the door and traced the patterns of the linseed oil stains flecked across his crumpled olive green sweater.

Hewitt was intimidating at the best of times, but he’d only ever been kind to me. I was closer to his age than I was to most of the nineteen and twenty year old students. That didn’t matter; something about his quiet calm amidst the chaos constantly surrounding him always felt so unreal. Nervously adjusting the strap of my bag, I made a beeline for the only other chair in the room — an old, modernized captain’s chair with a hole in the front corner. The yellow stuffing spilled out of the tear in a stark contrast against the drab gray fabric and the dark wooden frame.

“Miss Sinclaire,” Hewitt finally greeted me, “Is something the matter?”

I snorted softly, laughing through my nose. The sound was neutral enough, but it came from a bitter place. Hewitt didn’t deserve the sting of my cynicism, and so I tried to dampen it with a weak joke. “Do I really look that rough, professor?”

“That, and you’re never late for a meeting. It’s fifteen minutes past our appointment time.”

Something about the slight edge of concern in that calm voice lit my nerves on fire, and my jaw clenched in irritation. I stared at the pile of papers on the right corner of the desk and resisted the immediate urge to snap, I’m fine. Instead, I cleared my throat, fidgeting with the button on my sleeve. “Actually, I’m only here because it was faster than e-mailing,” I admitted, cheeks heating with shame. “I…”

I swallowed, my eyes welling up. Why was it suddenly so hard to talk? I gritted my teeth; I would not cry in front of my teacher. “Um, I got some bad news just now. M-my parents are—…”

I couldn’t say the word aloud.

It refused to push past the painful lump lodged in my throat.

With shaky hands, I pulled my phone from my pocket and did a search for my last name. I assumed my aunt had seen the news in an article, and the search engine didn’t disappoint me. My mother had disowned her three years before, and there was no way she would have left Winnifred as an emergency contact. As the plethora of articles began to load on my screen, the phone blurred in my vision. I clicked the first blue blur beneath my thumb and tossed my phone onto the small cleared section of the desk.

Hewitt’s papers shuffled as he shifted to reach for it, and I sniffled and angrily wiped at my eyes. Dammit, I told myself I wasn’t going to cry…

I cleared my throat. My eyes slowly cleared, and Hewitt’s face slowly came back into focus, eyes wide and mouth dropped. “Oh… Oh, Rebecca, I’m so sorry…”

“I need to, to go back to New York. I need to call my parents’ lawyers, and deal with the funeral arrangements, and fuck, Hewitt, I need to drop out, I need to—”

“Rebecca.”

My mouth snapped shut, taken aback by the sharpness in his tone. He held my phone out to me, and I nearly dropped it with how badly my hands shook. Hewitt leaned back in his chair, and I fidgeted uncomfortably. The chair was both too firm and too soft, and my skin prickled. I wanted to run out of the tiny office and hide in my bed until I woke up from this nightmare.

Hewitt sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose. He scrunched his nose, pulling the glasses off and grabbing a cloth from the wreckage of the desk, cleaning them as he spoke. “You’ve had a terrible shock. But please, slow down for a moment.” He placed the glasses back on his face. “You’re in your last semester, and obviously not in the mindset to think about this with a clear head. Take the day to go home and process what you’ve just learned, alright? Don’t drop out, not this close to finishing your program.”

“But what am I supposed to do? I’m not going to be able to focus on classes, I can’t be on site—”

“These are extenuating circumstances, Rebecca. You need a day. Tomorrow, I can help you with what to do in terms of school. I’ll arrange a meeting with the Dean of Students, and we can navigate this together. You aren’t alone, not for this.”

I sniffled, my eyes stinging. “I don’t know what to do, or even really where to start.”

He gave me a pitying smile, and I gritted my teeth. I’m fine, I yelled internally, but I knew better than to push back. Hewitt wouldn’t believe me, and I don’t think I believed myself in that moment. “Where you start,” his voice was too soft, “is you go home, make yourself some tea, cry for awhile, and bum around in your pajamas while you let yourself process. Take a break, Rebecca. You’re smart, but you aren’t invincible. The order of operations can wait a day.”

Despite my annoyance at his pity, he made perfect sense. His heart was in the right place. The words dislodged the block of ice that had been stuck in my chest since Winnie’s phone call; something about being told what to do made things easier. I may be barely holding it together, but at least I had help. “Thank you, Hewitt.”

With that, I pulled myself to my feet, adjusting the strap of my bag at the shoulder. Hewitt also stood, though he didn’t round the desk. There wasn’t much room for us to both stand on one side. “Yes. Take care of yourself. Remember, Rebecca; one step at a time.”

I nodded and turned on my heel to rush out of the cramped room and into the hallway.

I held myself together with careful control, quiet for the entire walk through campus and down the road to my apartment. The trek only took about twenty minutes, but it may as well have been a marathon that had taken me all day. I was lost in my thoughts the whole way, and by the time I reached the apartment door I couldn’t catch my breath. My chest burned with every shallow hitch, hiccups refusing to let air in between each suppressed sob.

I struggled with my keys as my vision blurred for the umpteenth time that day. The cheap bronze doorknob scratched with the intensity of the shake in my fingers. That will be a ding against us with the landlords, I thought bitterly. As soon as the key slid into place, I let out a victory cry and threw the door open, rushing inside and slamming it behind me. Pressing back against the door, I shouted, “Fuck!”

The curse devolved into wail as I slid down against the cheap wood, the clatter of my bag hitting the ground across the room startling me. I didn’t even realize I had thrown it until it made the clatter. The rational part of my mind added, your laptop better have survived that outburst.

“Holy shit,” came from the back of the apartment, and I fought the urge to scream again. Could I not have a single fucking spot to break down alone? I banged my head against the door, reaching into my platinum blonde hair and tugging at the roots to lessen the pressure in my mind. I needed to focus on something other than how badly my heart hurt. Footsteps rang down the hallway.

My ex-boyfriend. Mark.

I thought he was going to be at work.

Goddammit. God Damn it.

He knelt in front of me, and I cursed our agreement, refusing to look at him. I didn’t want to touch him; didn’t want to be this weak in front of him. We’d only been broken up for a few weeks, but it was technically his apartment. His name was on the lease; he’d graciously allowed me to stay so that we could split rent. I’d been living on a cot in the corner of the living room since we broke up. His hands found my shoulders gently rubbing them. “Hey, blue eyes, hey…”

There was a slight edge of panic hiding behind the reassurance in his voice. The touch broke me; as much as I mentally wanted to withdraw, his presence promised comfort that I desperately needed. Another wail ripped from my chest as I flung myself at him.

I didn’t want to touch him.

I needed to touch him.

Nothing felt real. Nothing made sense. My parents were dead. Hearing the nickname — blue eyes— was a comfort that I both craved and wanted to throw into the ether. He had only reserved it for our most tender moments, and I thought I’d never hear it again.

Thankfully, Mark didn’t ask. He didn’t push me away either. Instead, he held me until I ran out of tears, rocking me back and forth gently as I exhausted myself. At some point, he pulled me from the floor and half-carried, half-led me to the couch. I laid my head on his chest, listening to his muffled heartbeat. The heat was stifling. I hadn’t even taken off my trench coat, but I didn’t dare pull away from the comfort of Mark’s chest. At least the steady thump of his heart was familiar.

Everything was overstimulating and annoying, except for that.

He was the first to break the silence, a light-hearted lilt to his voice as he asked, “Bad day at the office?”

I gritted my teeth. He didn’t know what had happened, but it still stung. I couldn’t soften my tone as I bit back, “My parents are dead, Mark.”