Excerpt from Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"There was no note, Aspen." She is about to contest, but I add, "I didn't get one either. He left nothing."

Her face closes. She turns from me and looks forward. "I will never forgive you, Eve. You have cost me my son."

She rolls up the window until I am staring back at my reflection. A moment later, her driver slips away from the curb and the car rolls off into the night.

For a long time afterward, I cannot get warm.

* * *

Quentin's best friend, Jackson, is the sole person aside from Aspen with whom Q maintained a relationship when he fled his former life of ballrooms and blue blood. Jack is a kindhearted adrenaline junkie who sends us a Fortnum & Mason hamper every Christmas, and travels the world looking for new and weird ways he could possibly die. His Instagram page features him (usually shirtless) after he's hurled himself from the precipice of some mountain or some such foolishness, with a caption that reads something like Sao Paulo: #FeelTheRush #Grateful #RiskTaker.

It is because of Jackson's healthy disregard for life and death that I have given him the Aspen treatment and ignored all his calls since Q died. Irrational, I know, but by rights, he should be the one on a slab somewhere.

What a terrible thing to think. But grief torches your capacity for both sympathy and empathy. I am nothing but a selfish collection of exposed nerve endings.

A memory of "that night" flares. Jackson roaring up in a fucking Bugatti of all things. Already delirious with panic and pain, all of it cutting through his New Year's drunkenness. He looked like a lost little boy.

I vow to answer his next call. And I do, knowing it is not a completely selfless act.

"Eve. Shit, I didn't think you were going to—I've been calling."

"Hi, Jack. I'm sorry. I just haven't been—It's been really hard. I'm sure you know."

"Listen, I want to come over. If you're up to it. I... I can't stay here. I keep thinking about him and that night and I—"

"Jack," I cut him off. "Did he leave you a note? He didn't leave me anything." It is hard to push words past the lump in my throat. Jackson is already crying.

"I'm so sorry, Eve. No, I didn't get anything. I looked everywhere, but there was nothing. I keep expecting something to turn up in the post or something. I promise you I didn't know he was... I should have seen it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Another memory. Jackson stumbling from the car and falling to his knees even as I sat, numb and blood-soaked, with my legs hanging out the back of the police car.

I choke out an apology and hang up the phone, too weak to carry Jackson's guilt along with my own.

* * *

A week. My husband dies and seven days is all it takes for things to begin to shift. It manifests in the moods of the people around me. For outsiders, the atrocity is limited to knowing I am hurting. For them it ends there. And I can't blame them. They have their own lives and for them the nightmare is already over. They are able to return to normality. There is a door they can close. The sound of the doorbell no longer fills the house, the Tupperware containers are washed and returned to their owners. The calls from well-wishers dwindle and then stop, but my phone still rings endlessly. Aspen. I ignore it. Gloria's lamentations about my refusal to speak to Aspen become more pointed. So I ignore her, too.

I pinch my skin to distract from the sting of Aspen's incessant antipathy. I piece together a thousand rejoinders, arguments designed to beat her into submission. Q loved me. He married me. We were happy. These arguments crackle to life within me and fizzle out just as quickly. Q left me. I was happy. I was also blind. A marriage now characterized by my ignorance. She has something nuclear to add to her arsenal. I will never be allowed to put distance between Q's death and my guilt.

Excerpted from Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli. Copyright © 2022 by Onyi Nwabineli. Excerpted by permission of Graydon House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.