Ariadne's life changed forever with one phone call.
One moment, she was in the kitchen preparing a meal, hoping to finish before her husband Stewart from out-of-state. The next, she was on her knees weeping after the woman on the phone informed her that Stewart had died in a plane crash. After the initial shock, the only thing she felt was rage—she told the woman that she was wrong, that she needed to check the flight registry again. The woman repeated the same news, and Ari threw the phone into the wall. It was a lie. There was no way her Stewie was dead. He wouldn't leave her to raise a son alone. He wouldn't be that cruel. God wouldn't be that cruel.
The second thing she felt was denial. She held out hope for weeks, hoping that some rescue squad would discover survivors. She Googled "Airplane crash survivors" to see the odds of such a miracle. It was unlikely, but hope was there. She didn't care how infinitesimal—it was there. Even if the odds were a trillion to one, she just knew that her baby would be that one.
But then the weeks passed and no survivors were found. Stewie never came home. Reality began to sink in.
She was alone, and Barry was all that she had to remember her husband by.
The media came around, hounding for questions, but she never gave them anything. She threatened to sue if they kept harassing. Eventually, they stopped and the world quickly brushed aside the death of the kindest, sweetest man that had ever walked upon it. The river of time flowed around such an insignificant tragedy like a pebble, unfettered. The crash became old news. Family and friends stopped calling to give condolences. Within months there was hardly anything left to even suggest Stewart Garrett had ever existed.
Nothing except his son, Barry.
Barry, was only seven, but he understood what death meant. When Ariadne told him the truth, he knew that meant he'd never see his father again. There wasn't even a body to bury; Ariadne found herself scrounging through the house for anything that belonged to her late husband, picking his hairbrush clean for every strand she could find. She had it placed inside a glass at the side of her bed, so that she could always keep a piece of her dead love at her side.
Some of the other victims' families pooled together to sue the airline for wrongful death, and they asked for Ariadne's support. She at first refused, but all it took was for someone to say "Don't you want to see Barry receive justice?" for her to eventually agree. Eventually, the airline agreed to settle, and Ariadne received a 2.3 million dollar check. Ironically, the money had the opposite affect than she had had intended. Without Barry around to spend it with her, it seemed devoid of any meaning.
And as always, life moved on.
The first year was difficult, but each one after became less of a challenge. Ariadne never used the money; between Barry's life insurance and her home décor business, she had more than enough to support herself and one child with plenty of breathing room, especially since she wasn't one for extravagant purchases. She decided that one day, when he was older, Barry would be the one to decide what to do with the lawsuit money. As it was, it only reminded her of what she had lost.
Over time, Barry grew into a fine young man. Rebellious to a fault, but kind-hearted. He was stubborn and rarely listened when his mother told him to do something, but he was wise enough to avoid anything unsavory. She never had to worry about him running with the wrong crowd or becoming wrapped up in something abhorrent; when he was fifteen, he stunned her when he voluntarily confessed that he'd tried some pot at school, but that he didn't like it. She had always told him not to use drugs, but she was at least happy that he was smart enough to realize a bad decision after he had made it. She didn't want to lose the only thing she had left to drugs or crime, and she made him swear never to use them again. He assured her that he had already made up his mind on that.
For the most part, things were good. Ariadne's next tragedy was the day she saw her son off to college. Despite her protests, he took a plane—the mechanical butcher she had never forgiven for taking her Stewart away from her, but Barry insisted that it was statistically safer than driving and that taking a bus meant he'd have to wait nearly an entire day before he got to Fresno. She pestered him about it for five weeks straight, but when he insisted that he was going to fly, she relented on the condition that he call her the second he stepped off the plane safely.
She consumed almost a bottle of vodka and smoked an entire pack-and-a-half of cigarettes before she finally got that call.
