I could feel his heart beating beneath my cheek.
“I was at a business dinner,” he said quietly. “I told myself I would call back in ten minutes.”
I ached for him.
“It was early June, and that night we had a bad thunderstorm. There was a car accident,” he continued. “On the way to the hospital. A truck hydroplaned through a red light.”
His hand tightened in my hair. “They died instantly.”
It was as if all the air had left the room. His grief hung heavily in the room.
“I wasn’t there,” he said.
The guilt in those three words was heavier than anything else he’s said.
“I should have been there,” he added. “I should not have left. I should have come home when the fever started. I should have?—”
His voice fractured slightly for the first time.
“I was not there.”
I lifted my head and looked at him. His eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling, jaw tight.
“I live with the knowledge that if I had stayed home, they might still be alive.”
My throat burned. “You don’t know that,” I whisper.
“I know I was not there.”
The conviction in that sentence was absolute.
He exhaled slowly. “I sealed the rooms,” he said. “I preserved them exactly as they were. I told myself I would process it later.”
He gave a faint, humorless breath.
“It has been fifteen years.”
Fifteen years of locked doors, of silence.
“That’s why you snapped at me about the song?” I ask softly.
He nodded as he stroked my head. “Elise liked it. She would hum it to Madeline as she rocked her.”
The music box and haunted melody were all making more sense and breaking my heart in the process.
“I did not know how to tell you,” he admitted. “I did not know how to let you see that part of me.”
He finally looked at me then.
“I was not angry at you,” he said. “I was angry that it was no longer contained.”
I slid my hand up to his jaw, forcing him to look fully at me.
“You are not responsible for that accident,” I said quietly.
His eyes flickered. “I left,” he said again.
“You went to work.”
