The Widower (18+) | [Complete]

One

I stared down at the piece of paper in my hands, and still, all I could think was, holy shit, I really got fired.

Me, Aubrey Nielson, the girl who left Portland, Maine—the Portland that needs a state as a descriptor—for New York, top of her class at Dartmouth and NYU, devoted to all her students, had been fired two months into the semester by a piece of mail.

When I called, they told me the school system was downsizing. A kind way of saying budget cuts. They were considerate enough to give me my pension, but having only worked in the school district for three years, my pension totaled a whopping 2,800 dollars.

My morning had been spent crying in the apartment I could no longer afford to rent before I decided to drive out to upstate for some time away. I loved my life in New York, loved living in Brooklyn, and teaching in Harlem. Weekends in Manhattan felt like I was living in a Sex and The City episode every time I walked the crowded sidewalks beneath the towering buildings above. There, I could be who I wanted to be. My past wasn't painted on my forehead, my lifestyle not a source of gossip. I was one of many. A small fish in an ocean of people just as fucked up as I was. 

It was a fantasy, and like all fantasies, it faded away to reality.

Moving back home was something I had promised myself I would never do. I was offered a teaching position at the school my mother worked at—a position that paid half of what I had been making before, but with my choices being that or the zero dollars I would make otherwise, it wasn't much of a choice at all.

I had just two weeks left until I would get to move back in with my high school best friend, Crystal, her current boyfriend, and three kids. As wonderful as she was, I wasn't looking forward to running into the rest of our high school class, or answering hard-hitting questions like, "Why'd you get fired?" "Why aren't you married yet?" and "Don't you want a family? You should start soon, the clock's-a-tickin'."

But two weeks left meant two weeks of trying to change it.

"It didn't sell?" I asked the dock attendant.

"Nah, I'm sorry," he said in his weathered voice. "No one's really been lookin' for an old boat like that." I looked over my shoulder and my dad's Jon Boat. I hadn't kept it up and had barely used it since I moved, but it was one of the last pieces of my father I had left. "I'm still willing to take it off your hands."

"Thanks. I'll think about it," I smiled at him. "I'm going to take it out for a bit, okay?" He nodded a goodbye and left me to it.

I jumped inside. The little engine barely started nowadays, but the current of the St. Lawrence river was slow enough to shore if needed. With a practiced smack, it kicked to life and I smiled with accomplishment.

I drove the little boat, feeling the chilly, spring air blow in the citrusy scent of the fir trees from the Canadian shore. The smell always brought back happy memories.

My dad started bringing me out here when I was thirteen, a few months after Mom passed away. We lived by the water in Maine, but this was an escape from our lives. A much-needed one at that.

We would take the little boat as far down the river as the gas would take us, marvel at the yacht houses the size of hotels, and mansions that looked like castles towering over the old trees.

Dad told me how they were built by the old railroad tycoons and hoteliers at the start of the 1900s, but to see them still standing and occupied over 100 years later seemed even more unbelievable. 

We would tell stories of what our lives would be like if we were as filthy rich as the people living in those mansions. He'd always tell me that we were the rich ones. Because time with each other was far more valuable than money.