Accidental Happiness by Jean Reynolds Page

instant.” A soft-top convertible. They said it would have been the same, regardless of the top, that the logs would have crushed anything but an army tank. “It was a really freak accident.” My face was wet, my voice weak. I felt exhausted.
    “Were you with him?” A wounded quality existed inside of her question. The answer implied a lonely death for Benjamin. Ben didn’t like to be alone.
    “I was down the street,” I told her. “In my car. I wasn’t there.”
    She nodded, looked out toward the window, as if taking her eyes from me could negate what I’d said. I took in long pulls of air, pushed the images out of my mind. Away from the car. Away from the crushing sound. I’d trained myself to do this. Very Zen, my strange friend Avis told me once.
Just breathe.
I had natural Zen instincts, she told me. This from a woman named after a rental car.
    As I was forcing calm into my muscles, into my thoughts, Reese took me by surprise, switched sides, and came over to the chair closest to mine. She leaned in toward me. Her presence warm, she smelled like Coppertone.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, as if she had secured the faulty log bindings herself. “He was too fine a person to die. It should have been anybody but him. He was . . .” She couldn’t seem to finish. “It should have been someone less . . . I don’t know.” She finally let it go at that.
    Even as her tears went unchecked, she reached up, brushed my face with her fingers, smoothed my tears with her open hand. It was an odd, inappropriate gesture from someone who was, essentially, a stranger to me. Worse than a stranger, a rival, of sorts. But something made it all right.
    “I’m sorry about some of the things I said last night,” she said. “Angel and I just needed to stay someplace until I could talk to Ben. I never thought you’d be there. What happened, it was an accident. Bad luck for everybody. Just like what happened to Benjamin.”
    When she said his name, the quality of her voice changed. She
had
loved him, on some level she still did. We had that much in common. The last person to offer the same connection had been his mother. But ultimately, her extended visit after the funeral had been too hard on both of us.
    “This is so awful,” Reese mumbled, pulling wet strands of hair from her cheek.
    The waiter stood by the table holding our soup. He seemed confused, in a quandary over where to put the bowls.
    “I’m over here,” Reese said, standing up, going back to her seat.
    “Is everything okay?” he asked. He was thin, almost handsome, but not quite. His face offered genuine concern.
    “We’re fine,” I told him. As Reese reached across the table to lay a hand on mine, I reminded myself that she was Benjamin’s ex-wife. That finding comfort in her lingering love for my husband was nuts. The waiter glanced down at our connected hands, offered a slight smile as if he finally understood our display. I wanted to laugh, but the effort seemed too great.
    “This really blows.” Reese’s rough tone, the exclamation itself, took me off guard. It sounded cathartic, and I laughed, without warning. The sound of my own laughter embarrassed me.
    She looked at me, straight at my eyes. So few people made eye contact with me when I told them about Benjamin. But she did. The acknowledgment made me bold.
    “You’re right. It sucks,” I said, giving up on propriety. Giving in, somehow. “All of it. It’s goddamn awful.” Through the distorted vision of tears, I saw the edges of a smile at her mouth too, though her eyes spoke only of grief. It seemed a profound kindness, somehow—that effort on her part, as if she might show me the way back, away from the edge.
    “Fucking logs,” she said, voice breaking in pain. The extreme inflection landed like a punch line. She squeezed my hand and I gave in to the terrible humor, rich and relentless. One thing I’d learned in my short stint of widowhood—comfort was a quirky animal, offered