The girls' enthusiasm for tending to veggies quickly waned in the following days after they got their wish to see Hayden again--especially when pitted up against going to the movies or on hikes with their friends.
Rani didn't count on running into him most of the times she went to the garden on weeknight evenings, but she unexpectedly found him there more and more as July went on.
"Something definitely went down," Andrea said after meeting him again for the first time, and walking away stunned by his standoffish demeanour.
"I know something did, I don't know what it was, and we're not going to talk about it," Rani curtly told her friend. "He's not ready and no one's going to mention it until he does."
"Aren't we protective?" Andrea smiled.
Rani found Hayden emerged a bit more from his shell when his former students came around, laughing and talking with them like they were a brief anesthetic from his pain. She let him be and only responded to him when he came over to chat with her. It was a relief enough that he seemed like he was gaining back a bit of weight.
"Hey," he called out when joining her in the garden one weeknight evening at the end of July. "It looks like I'm staying. The school confirmed I'm teaching a grade three class in September." Rani beamed and gave him a quick hug, relieved he was regaining some of the normalcy of his old life.
When they broke apart, Rani's eye caught Hayden's left hand for a split second, and she was astounded to notice he no longer wore his wedding band. She was dying to know what happened over the last three years--and what had changed in the last few weeks to make him take off his ring--but she bit her tongue.
The first week of August rolled around, and Dhanush took that first Friday off work to pick up Lavanya and Payal for his one week per month with them. The girls weren't thrilled it coincided with the August long weekend, but Rani reminded them they barely saw their dad as it was. She'd taken the Friday off as well to have a four-day weekend, so she took advantage of the early morning cool to get some fresh air in the garden.
Even as she exited her car, she smiled to herself at seeing Hayden's lone figure already there, opening the gate with one hand while gripping his spade with the other hand. Rani had become accustomed to the easy silence between them as they worked, and didn't expect today to be any different.
"Good morning, stranger," she winked at him before surveying where she'd left off in her weeding the previous day.
"Good morning," he said, looking at her in a tranquil manner. Rani briefly thought it seemed a bit odd but turned to head into the far corner of the lot. "I think I'm ready to talk," Hayden stated, making her stop and swivel around in surprise.
"Hayden, you don't have to," she told him. "I don't... I don't require you to. Whatever happened in the last three yea--"
"No, I want to, Rani," he said. She could see that it had taken a herculean effort for him to get this far, so she slowly nodded and went over to weed where he'd been working. Hayden took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts.
"So you know you and I last saw each other at the end of the summer three years ago," he started, "and that I began teaching downtown near mine and Lisa's new place a few days later. At that point, Lisa was maybe seven months pregnant.
"She dropped me off at school every day on her way to work; it was only a few more weeks before her maternity leave would start. One day at the end of September I got a call during morning recess. About a kilometre away from the school, she had been taking a left turn when another car going straight through the intersection t-boned her from the left."
Rani dropped her weeder and froze on the spot, but Hayden continued on, his voice unwavering from its cold monotone.
"The impact was mostly against the driver's side backseat, but it totaled our car. The other driver didn't survive and Lisa was rushed into surgery. Luckily, she had an in-case-of-emergency card in her purse so they were able to contact me sooner than later."
Rani unconsciously wrapped her arms around her stomach, hoping against hope the story wouldn't end the way she suspected it would.
"The baby didn't survive, obviously," Hayden said as though he were discussing the weather, "but I thought she might. I think I may have been in the waiting room of the hospital for an hour before they came out and told me she was legally brain-dead. I took her off life support myself."
"Oh my god, Hayden," Rani's covered her mouth with her hands, her vision slightly clouded at the sheer horror of his ordeal.
"It gets better, though," Hayden said, his tone coated in detachment. "At the funeral, there was a man there I'd never seen before."
No,
Rani thought, closing her eyes.
Please, no.
"I mean, there were a lot of people I hadn't seen before; I assumed they were from Lisa's office. But this guy was just inconsolable. Maybe he saw me looking at him or something but he came over to talk to me. And the way he was talking..." Hayden pursed his lips and looked at the ground.
"He didn't clearly say anything that gave away he'd been in love with Lisa. But I couldn't stop thinking about it, or her, or him. I mean," he gave a lopsided smile, "I could barely sleep anyway. So I called my sister, Christine, one night asking how I could get a paternity test done. I'll spare you the details, but it was never more useful that she's a forensic pathologist.
"She tried to talk me out of it. She said there's nothing good that could come of such an invasive and disturbing procedure on the remains of a newborn, but I begged her. I told her I had to know whether I was mourning my wife and child, or just mourning my wife."
Rani held her breath, knowing what Hayden would say next.
"It turned out I was just mourning my wife."
Rani couldn't stop herself this time, bounding over to Hayden to hold him. She wasn't even sure whether she was embracing him for his sake or her own, especially since it took him a minute to put his hands on her back in turn. Then he stepped away toward the tomato vines.
"So there I was thinking I would be a dad when I was never going to be one, even if the accident had never happened. And I was in this bizarre place where I was going through grief, betrayal, and rage all at the same time. After the time off that the school allowed me, I thought it would be helpful to just dive back into my job.
"I got through the rest of the school year," he sighed, looking a bit guilty, "but I started drinking. At first it was just a bit of wine when I got home to take the edge off. Then a couple of glasses, and then I was just hitting a bar on the way back from school. Eventually, I started stocking up on the hard stuff on Friday nights and staying in all weekend to get plastered."
Rani put her hand to her face, trying not to cry.
"When I was struggling to wake up Monday mornings, I knew I had a problem. I quit my job and moved back with my parents up in Ottawa. The time together, I think, did all of us some good because I used some of Lisa's life insurance payout to do some repairs around their house. And I spent that next year getting grief counselling and drying out in AA."
"That was the meeting you had when Payal invited you for dinner," Rani realized out loud. Hayden nodded with a small smile.
"Yes. I found a local branch as soon as I got back into town," he explained. "Just passed 13 months without a drink. After I left Ottawa, I came back down south and taught at the same school downtown for this past year, but... I couldn't keep doing it," he shook his head. "Everything in that neighbourhood was a reminder.
"My therapist suggested I try to recreate the time and place where I felt like I last had my life together. And that happened to be right here, at this school, three years ago."
Rani nodded weakly, in sheer disbelief at the hell Hayden had gone through.
A lesser man wouldn't have been able to go on living after all that,
she thought.
"So that's what's been going on with me all this time," he finished. "Now regale me with the gory details of your last three years." Both of them had long ago dropped their garden tools and were just sitting among the vegetables.
"Hayden, there's no way the worst thing that's happened to me can compare with anything that's happened to you," Rani answered. She sat on the corner of one elevated garden bed that housed the eggplants, and Hayden perched on the elevated green bean bed opposite her.
"That's a relief to hear," he said. "I need a feel-good story right about now." Rani failed at not snickering, despite the fact her eyes were still misty.
"First of all, you're the strongest person I know for surviving all that," she started.
"I almost didn't, you know," he admitted.
"And you stopped yourself and got help when you realized which way you were headed," she countered. "Most people wouldn't have fought against the tide like that, especially if they were left with no answers after the worst betrayal of their life." Hayden simply stared back her. "I'm not sure why you trusted me with all that," Rani continued, "but I'm honoured that you did."
"So..." he looked down at his shoes. "Feel-good story?" Rani gave him a cynical smile.
"There's not much to tell," she said, rubbing the bare ring finger on her left hand. "It's not like I lived a lifetime in three years the way you did. I'd been trying to salvage my marriage even before you moved away.
"There were a lot of issues at home, but the main theme to all of them was that I considered them problems and my ex-husband didn't." Rani looked up from her hands to see that Hayden was intently gazing at her. Feeling a bit self-conscious, she hurried on.
"For a while, the trouble was just between him and me," she was careful to steer clear of all the sexual snags she'd faced with Dhanush, but almost felt like Hayden could read her mind with his piercing stare.
"But then when I brought up to him that we needed to get Payal diagnosed, he glossed over it and made it seem like there wasn't a problem at all. I couldn't hold it together after that and I filed for divorce the next day." Hayden was quiet for a full minute.
