It would have been better to have been the one who was gone. Now he had to face the old specters of their life, not her. There was the sofa that Meghan had made her throne on more than one occasion. Now it looked normal, all so normal. Here was the lounge chair he and Nova had shared. On the floor they had sprawled out when Nova needed to study and there was spare time. They had never talked here, though. They had never tried to figure out why they had drifted apart. Here in the living room was a lot of absence.
The kitchen held more of the same, less of the familiar. More studying had happened here with fewer offers to help and even less ‘us’ time. They ate here. They ate a lot still it never seemed to be enough for their hungers. Meghan’s eating habits had been more of a curiosity, the person more of a case study than a person he let in his life. He missed her humor now. He missed so much about her, but most of all he missed that piece she had taken with her most of all.
The grounds were less painful. They were more his. More the place that had sold him on the location and the plants and small wildlife were constantly changing so less likely to remind him of any one colossal screw-up, or missed chance. It was renewing and refreshing. Neil walked around the house getting his bearings and strength back.
‘How am I going to get along without her now,’ he thought. Nothing appealed to him. He dreaded his next call to action because what he really wanted to say was ‘Why should I bother.’
It was selfish, but the core of how he felt right now. He didn’t want to fix anyone until he fixed himself.
‘That’s not what doctors do,’ he told himself as well, and he knew hit was true. He also knew he couldn’t be a doctor, or healer half way. If he went, he went with everything he had, so no relief there … no escape and no excuses.

He sat back a moment, against a retaining wall.
‘The truth of the matter is that I don’t want to be the man that I am,’ Neil told himself, ‘yet I don’t want to give up what I need to give up to become the kind of man I want to be. How did my life get so crazy?’

This is the time were having enraged gunmen, servants of the old drug lord who once ruled this house, came busting in and began shooting up the place; nothing like a little mindless violence to ease to pain. No gunmen came. Neil felt that pain and the responding little tingle were his quantum self tried to do something about it. It was charming. It was filled with child-like innocence. It was pathetic.

‘I told myself I couldn’t live without her,’ Neil began his inner monologue, ‘but here I am still alive. Why is that?’
Life wasn’t coming up with cheap answers for Neil Preston today. If he wanted to die, he would have to do it himself – and that wasn’t really in his play book. Neil thought about it a bit. No answer came to mind.
‘Since I lived without her before, I can live without her again,’ was his bleak commentary.
What he really meant was ‘I don’t want to give her up - I don’t want her to go away – I don’t want to do this!’
Another, stronger voice gave him a better answer, ‘You will find a way to live today. You will find something to help you through tomorrow, and so it will go.’
“I’m not going to die over this,” he affirmed to the birds and insects.
Neil stood up and walked back into the house. Each step was a little stronger than the last. Neil was going to get over his love affair with Nova, though it was going to take a long time, and much more pain. He was going to make it.