The new widow left her expectations, the future she had envisioned, beneath a pine tree. Her husband had loved shade in the summer.
She saw to it that he was buried near her grandfather and great-grandfather on a hillside close to home.
She saw to it that he was laid to rest with his Rolling Stones T-shirt, his sunglasses, a portrait of their wedding, a memento from the father-daughter dance, and a sonogram of their second daughter, due in six weeks.
Melinda Darby would see to most everything now.
In the months before Matthew Darby died, he bought a silver spoon and a silver cup. He wrapped the gifts, and on each wrote, To: Baby. He placed them for safekeeping on top of his display case of model cars.
In the weeks before Matt died, he put spare clothes in his work van so he could be clean at the hospital when the baby came.
The day before he died, he assembled the SnugRide stroller.
On the day he died, he kissed Melinda's stomach and said, "God I wish she'd come today."
Melinda, 32, and Matt, who was 36, had not planned for another child, but they felt blessed. They chose the name Sarah Michelle Darby. Their daughter Jessica, 10, had always wished for a sibling.
On Feb. 21, on the morning after the fourth-largest nightclub fire in the nation's history, after Matt's name appeared on the list of missing from The Station in West Warwick, Jessica drew a picture of her family: herself, with Mommy, Daddy, and baby Sarah. Melinda's parents hung the picture under a magnet on their refrigerator, next to the recipe for root beer floats.
This is where Melinda and Jessica found quiet in the first weeks after the fire, at her parents' house in Coventry, a white ranch, protected, everyone said, by a big oak tree that had taken five strikes of lightning and refused to die.
From her father, Ed Keenan, Melinda learned to dim her visions of Matt trapped in a roadside bar, choking from his asthma and from the smoke. He told her to hang one good picture of Matt in every room. "I don't want to see a shrine," he said.
From her mother, Judy Keenan, Melinda learned to dry roses by hanging them upside down. Melinda would save Jessica's special bouquet that way -- flowers that Jessica had collected from the funeral of her father.
The day after Matt's funeral, Jessica plucked the best roses from all the sympathy arrangements and placed the flowers next to her mother, who was sleeping, at last, on her parents' sofa.
Melinda woke up to see Jessica's flowers, a row of stuffed animals and a note: "I love you so much, We will be OK. Remember we got each other. Love Jessica Darby. xoxoxoxo"
On a Saturday morning, 16 days after Matt died, Melinda was in her parents' eat-in kitchen, which is pea green with ruffled curtains, talking about the ordinary things she would do again in her own kitchen, where she had her own ruffled curtains.
She longed for routine. She and Jessica had barely been home since the fire, because Matt's absence was everywhere. Mornings were hard, Melinda said, because "that was our time; we'd have coffee together."
Dinner was hard on Jessica, because dinnertime was when Matt got home from work.
"Monday, I'm going to try to cook dinner," Melinda said. "It hurts, but we have no choice. We need to have a normal dinner."
Melinda glanced over at Jessica, who was curled up on the sofa, warmed by the sun from the bay window.
"I'm going to take her to her next father-daughter dance," Melinda said. "That's the first thing she said after . . . that her daddy was going to miss it."
Jessica looked up and asked Melinda if the baby could come to the dance, too.
As Melinda talked, she stood to get comfortable, and gently rocked side to side, stroking her stomach. She felt a knot that she guessed was the baby's fist. She could feel the baby's little feet under her rib cage. She had lost 6 pounds since Matt died. It felt good to feel the baby move.
Melinda wore a new diamond on her wedding ring. She already had a ring, but Matt put a new diamond on it at Christmas, a bigger one.
Now, things would be a lot tighter, she said of "the money situation." She would need to keep Matt's painting business going, keep up the house and car payments and college fund. . . .
"I have no choice but to go on," she said, "I can't let my family fall apart."
"I MYSELF must mix with action," Tennyson wrote of grief, "lest I wither by despair." But the truth was, withering has never been Melinda Darby's way.
She had been working since she was 15, not that she had to, but because she wanted to. Her father had owned New England Salt; Melinda could back a tractor-trailer into a loading dock before she could drive a car.
When Melinda's family moved from Coventry to Florida in 1986, Melinda worked the weekend breakfast shift at her parents' diner, the Oceanside Grill. That's where she met Matt Darby.
Matt was part Irish, part Italian, a house painter, and a surfer.
Melinda had long curly hair, deep dimples, and her father's stubborn streak. When Ed and Judy decided to return to Coventry in 1989, Melinda refused to leave Matt.
She moved in with him, waitressed and went to night school.
When Jessica was six months old, in 1993, Melinda and Matt and the baby moved back to Coventry, just a few miles from her parents' house. When her mother, Judy, was diagnosed with breast cancer, Melinda took her to all of her doctor's appointments and did her crying in private. Matt called Melinda the glue that held the family together.
Melinda called Matt a good father, like her own.
Melinda's father called her Till. He had called her Silly Tilly when she was a baby and she grinned and pulled the ears of anyone who held her. Silly Tilly, Tilly, then just Till, until it stuck, and everyone close to her, even Matt, called her that.
Matt called Jessica his marshmallow.
Melinda's father taught her to pick potatoes from a field right after the machines swept through, to drive a '76 Ford and how to dance.
Matt let Jessica drive a mile or two on a country road in Melinda's brand new Mitsubishi, and showed her that simple things are the best: sledding, the monkeys at the zoo, a secret candy stash.
He brought zaniness to their lives. He had big plans.
If he became a millionaire, no one he loved would have to work. Once when a neighbor remarked that a fortune would befall the person who invented a way to keep water from collecting on the cover of an above-ground pool during winter, Matt set out to Home Depot. He had the whole family, including Melinda's father, in the backyard, rigging blow-up rafts with Velcro to puff up their own above-ground pool cover, like Jiffy Pop.
Matt figured that a pool cover shaped like a dome would allow water to trickle off. One of the rafts came loose and flew down Fairview Avenue.
Matt started Cousins Painting four years ago. He worked the field, getting contracts such as the grand Carey Mansion at Salve Regina University. Melinda reviewed blueprints and answered phones in their office, in the family room, surrounded by all of Matt's knickknacks: his array of fire department buckles, all kinds of commemorative cigarette lighters and his guitar, won at a raffle at Family Night at Roller Magic skating rink.
Matt had made Melinda do his dirty work, firing painters whose work didn't cut it. Matt was always taking painters back. Everyone he and Melinda had ever fired went to Matt's funeral.
ON A MONDAY morning, 18 days after Matt died, Melinda Darby decided she would go back to life "full force."
She had her morning coffee and put her long hair up in a barrette. She dressed in her maternity stretch pants, a loose shirt and her fleece jacket. She had mild contractions, but she had work to do.
She set out from home with Edward Jason Pesiri, Matt's longtime friend. "E.J." and his girlfriend were staying with Melinda, helping her run the house, and Cousins Painting.
Matt had asked E.J., another commercial painter, to be the baby's godfather.
E.J. drove the Cousins Painting van, a white Chevy Astro with a roof rack. The van's logo offered power washing, spraying and free estimates.
Melinda and E.J.'s girlfriend followed in Melinda's car, in case Melinda needed to go to the hospital. Melinda had her appointment book and Matt's two-way radio. She still couldn't bring herself to open Matt's briefcase, which was where he left it -- at home, on his swivel chair.
The tiny caravan went down a narrow street of triple deckers, stopping at a row of new, faux Victorians. Melinda parked and followed E.J. through construction fences, through the hum of compressors and generators, and into a red house with white trim.
Inside, the walls were a yellow that Melinda recognized as Toffee Crunch. She walked upstairs with her right hand on the bannister. At each stair, she stepped up, leaned back and pulled.
Melinda rarely went out to the projects. She had never needed to; Matt did all that. She said it was good to "see what my guys are doing."
As they walked through the house, E.J. pointed out Matt's handiwork, such as flawless lines where the wall met the ceiling. Cutting the straight line, painters called it. Matt had high standards, E.J. told her; he knew in a half-hour whether a guy was a painter, or just someone who painted.
Melinda smiled. When hiring a worker, she said, Matt "never talked price until he had seen him paint."
MELINDA drove back to Coventry to prepare for the baby.
Her friends had been dropping off gifts from a baby shower canceled because she just couldn't do it. She wanted to wash all the new baby clothes so they were soft enough for a newborn's skin.
Melinda's split-level is up the hill from a white church with a huge white steeple. Matt's pickup was still at the bottom of the driveway, still loaded with things he had meant to haul to the town dump.
Inside, an after-school special was on. Melinda's family put together the baby things, and watched 10-year-old Jessica, curiously, because she seemed so strong.
Melinda's father said it scared him. Melinda said it broke her heart.
As Melinda leaned against the kitchen counter, Jessica walked up, and looked up at Melinda with hazel eyes that looked like Matt's.
"What's our new motto?," Melinda asked her.
Without a word, Melinda and Jessica tapped fists.
"We're a team," Melinda said, and her eyes filled with tears.
She's my strength to hold on, she thought. She's been through too much to see her mother fall apart.
In her black clunky combat boots, the ones she had insisted on wearing to her father's funeral, Jessica reached Melinda's chin. She would grow taller than Melinda someday, everyone said. She had long, wheat-colored, wavy hair that she hid in a bun, and fastened back with sparkly purple barrettes. She would love that hair some day, everyone said. Jessica still fell asleep to Nickelodeon.
Jessica didn't want to go to a "grief counselor" and Melinda understood; she didn't want to go to one either. They don't know me, Melinda said, and they didn't know Matt.
What worried Melinda, though, was that Jessica would not be able to talk to a higher power, as she did, when she didn't feel like talking to the world. Melinda grew up Roman Catholic, and her faith lifted her. Sometimes Melinda would stop in front of SS. John & Paul Church in Coventry and pray in her car, amid the traffic from the nearby Wal-Mart. Matt had carried a medal of St. Jude, the patron saint of desperate situations.
Jessica, though, was refusing to finish her catechism classes at SS. John & Paul. She had six classes left and was supposed to make her First Communion in May.
God had taken her father, she told Melinda, and she did not want to know a God who would do that.
Melinda told Jessica that God doesn't cause bad things, but that He walks through them with believers. She told Jessica how she felt Matt on her shoulder sometimes, like a guardian angel. Jessica left her illustrated children's Bible in the back of Melinda's minivan, and she created her own rituals.
She wrote "I love Daddy" notes and left them all over the house. When she woke up one morning to see Matt's face flashing across the TV screen on the 6 a.m. news with the other victims, she took it as a sign that Matt was sending her off to school. She had a good day.
At home, Jessica led the way to her bedroom, bright yellow with a 10-year-old's decor -- Beanie Babies to Eminem. The corner was cluttered with Huggies, and the stroller Matt had assembled the day before he died.
Jessica had four rows of bears on her single bed, one of them off to the side in a wicker basket, covered with a yellow baby's blanket. The bear was sick, Jessica explained, and she was tending to him. After the fire, the Red Cross gave Jessica that bear.
In the living room, Melinda's cousin Timmy and her father, Ed, were kneeling on the carpet assembling baby furniture and muttering that even though they both had built office furniture for a living, they could never understand those do-it-yourself directions. Ed hooked a strap on the Baby Snoopy bassinet.
Ed had worked third shift the night before, driving 54 miles to Worcester to his job at W.B. Mason. He jumped every time the phone rang in the shop.
"What's killing me is that I can't keep that pain from them," he said, in his kind, gravely, smoker's voice.
It made Ed feel purposeful to get his hands on something, to do things for Melinda, Jessica, and the new baby. Already he had looked at Melinda's dryer and got that going. He had picked up Matt's '86 Mercedes from the auto-body shop, where it was in for repairs. Ed hauled the car to his house in Coventry, to store it until it was time to teach Jessica to drive.
Ed sold his last business, the salt company, a few years earlier, when the doctor told him he was headed for his fourth heart attack. Having more free time had made him feel that, day to day, nobody needed him for much. His two sons were grown. Melinda had Matt. His wife, Judy, a farmer's daughter, was strong on her own.
"Like I told the guys at work, ain't nothing going to stop me now. I've got a goal," Ed said. "My life was kind of down. Now I know more or less they need me -- it keeps the drive going.".
As the cuckoo clock sounded again, Ed finished the highchair and the Neat Seat, which had 15 songs to serenade a baby.
Jessica put a teddy bear in the high chair.
Melinda leaned against the storm window at the front door and stared outside, thinking about how she and Matt had loved their yard.
The glow of the moon showed that the snowman was finally gone, just a mound of snow with its blue scarf and mittens on the ground.
Matt and Jessica built the snowman in the last big storm, just before Matt died, and Jessica was trying to save it by putting it in the freezer.
Melinda told her daughter that the melting snow meant spring was on the way.
SHE STILL had to get through winter.
In the third week after Matt died, bitterness came upon Melinda, suddenly, on a beautiful day.
"I woke up angry today," she said. She was at her dining-room table; a fragrant breeze shifted the curtains and the stacks of bills.
The noon news broadcast a round of nightclub inspections. Resolutions on fire codes, the news said, were floating through the General Assembly and Congress. There was talk of new laws.
Melinda thought of Matt leaving their home, as excited as a teenager, when another painter invited him to see the '80s metal band Great White. Matt hardly went to clubs. Just a few songs and he'd be home. He'd called her five minutes before the place went up in flames, the band's indoor fireworks catching the cheap soundproofing foam. Melinda thought the 99 victims in The Station fire were heroes. Martyrs.
"I don't know who I blame, but I blame somebody," Melinda said. "They cheated my daughter out of her father. It's bad enough how I feel, but she's never going to have her father. That really upsets me."
Jessica was at least starting to talk to Melinda about how she was hurting. She also said she was open to having Melinda teach her her catechism at home; Melinda was determined that her daughter make her First Communion in May. Their priest said he would help, by going to Melinda's house to meet with Jessica one-on-one. But Jessica was still refusing to go to church. When Melinda went on Sundays, Jessica asked to stay home.
"I think she is going to hold this grudge for a long time," Melinda said. "She's lost faith. Everyone needs faith."
On her way to pick up Jessica from elementary school, Melinda stopped at her church in Coventry. At SS. John & Paul, a purple sash for sorrowful Lent draped the wooden cross outside.
Melinda and Matt had married at this church.
Matt had painted the chapel.
Melinda stepped inside where the air smelled of incense, the light seemed yellow, filtered through the stained glass. She kneeled in the first pew, bent her head, clutched her cross and cried.
Afterward, outside, where the wind made her curly hair dance around her face, Melinda said she had prayed for Matt's soul, and she had prayed for strength.
She had prayed for help in understanding why, though she didn't think she ever would.
"But I can try to get some peace."
MATT HAD predicted that Sarah Michelle would come on March 14. He had closed his eyes, twirled his finger and pointed to a date on the calendar. He knew the doctors said March 28, but he had predicted March 14 would be the day. On Friday, March 14, Jessica stayed home from school.
She and Melinda made brownies, hoped for contractions and weighed strategies -- Jessica thought maybe Melinda could run up and down the stairs.
Melinda tried to will the baby on, for Jessica: "Please, for her sake."
But Sarah didn't come, and Melinda told Jessica that maybe Sarah would be a spring baby.
Melinda and Jessica and the rest of the family spent the next few days doing what they needed to do to be ready for the baby, and for spring. Melinda's cousin put together the last piece of baby furniture, the crib. Ed looked into finishing the fish pond that Matt had started in the backyard.
Melinda had decided that Matt would be there in the delivery room, in spirit. Maybe he would touch Sarah's newborn skin.
If only Sarah, Melinda, and Jessica could see him.
"That's when I'll break," she said, as her due date approached, "when the baby comes."
AS THE one-month day of the fire at The Station approached, Melinda forced herself to look at the charred ruins. Now there was a chain-link fence around it, and it was thick with cards and teddy bears. She had not been to the nightclub since the night of the fire, when she searched for Matt until 4 a.m. As she looked at what was left of the building, and the memorial, all she could think was, "He's not here." She left after 10 minutes.
Melinda's family had advised her not to go; they wanted to protect her, and the baby, from things that might hurt. But Melinda said she knew what was best for herself. She told them that when the grass grew green again, she would take Jessica and Sarah and go to talk to Matt, on the hilltop in Coventry. "I need to do these things," she told them.
The night one month after the fire, when churches held memorial services and the bells tolled near 11 p.m., Melinda stayed home. Amid her resilience, she had a moment of hopelessness. She told Matt's father, who called her every night, that she was scared.
"At 32, I'm a widow," she said. "I'm going to live a lonely life. It's going to be a long, long, lonely life in front of me."
She told him how Matt had always filled the house with roses. Matt's father told her that he hoped she would still buy flowers. Melinda said it wouldn't be the same, but that she would.
TWO DAYS later, Melinda felt the surge of life in her.
It was the first Saturday of spring.
Judy coached Melinda all night, in the birthing center at Kent County Memorial Hospital. Next to the blood-pressure machine, Melinda had placed a framed picture of Matt, tanned, hazel eyes bright, in his wedding tuxedo.
During the night outside her hospital room, Ed could hear his daughter breathing hard and crying out when the labor pains grew fast and sharp.
He went back to the waiting room where Jessica and the rest of the family were. He tried to sleep sitting up, and he glanced at the door when people came and went. He almost expected to see Matt.
But as the delivery grew closer, Ed said the next morning, all he could think about was Melinda, Jessica, and Sarah.
That morning, Sunday, March 23, Ed, unshaven, in his baseball cap, plaid shirt, and jeans, was standing in the hall waiting for word of the baby. He was laughing, giddy almost, as he talked about what he might get the baby. He had given Jessica a pedal-car. Everyone said he was crazy, giving a baby a little car. Ed couldn't wait to teach Jessica to drive.
At 9:55 a.m., Judy walked out the double doors of the nursery, beaming: "She's here!"
She looked at Jessica: "Jess, c'mon, you can come in."
Jessica smiled shyly, put her hands over her mouth, and went to see her baby sister and her mother. Melinda was sitting up with a weary smile, her new daughter resting in the crook of her arm. The baby weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces and was swaddled in a white blanket and infant cap. She had a dusting of brown hair, a sweet nose, and rosy skin. She was perfectly healthy, and, Melinda said, she had a nice chin.
"She has Matt's chin."
Then Ed put on his "Grandpa" sticker, and Judy put on her "Grandma" one. E.J., the baby's godfather, went to make phone calls, to spread the news. Melinda's cousin, who had built the baby's crib, took pictures.
When the nurse asked Melinda how she wanted to spell the baby's name, Melinda consulted Jessica, and together they decided she would be Sarah with an "h."
Melinda signed the birth certificate, and she told Jessica to check her special goody bag, which was in the hospital room. Some of Jessica's favorite things were inside. Melinda saw to that.
Jennifer Levitz is interested in hearing from families affected by The Station fire. She can be reached at JLevitz@projo.com or at 277-7931.
