“That’s not how grief works, Niko.”
“No?” His laugh is short and ugly. “Looks exactly like how it works from where I’m sitting.”
He finally looks at me then, and the exhaustion in his face is bad enough that for that second, he looks ten yearsolder than he is. “I’m dragging both of you into this,” he says. “Cassie is dead, the baby needs something every ten minutes, I can barely remember whether I ate, and now people are gossiping because Caiden keeps turning up to stop the whole place falling apart around me.” He squeezes his eyes closed and takes a deep breath. “I don’t want him taking hits because I can’t get my shit together,” he says, eyes locked on mine.
“You’re not failing some test,” I say. “Your fiancée died.” His mouth twitches hard at that, and even saying that out loud hurts.
“I know what happened,” he says quietly.
“Then stop talking like you’re inconveniencing everyone.” He drops his eyes again and the room goes quiet except for the faint sounds from the base outside.
“Do you know what happened?” he asks, his gaze meeting mine again.
“I saw the report, but I didn’t read it. I couldn’t.”
He nods, like he expected that. His thumb rubs back and forth over the mug handle. “I’d left Vladimir with the sitter. Just for a few hours, to give Cassie a break.” He stops there, but I don’t push.
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After a moment I ask, “Do you want to tell me?”
His laugh is short. “Not particularly. But I think I need to get it out.” He glances down again and keeps talking.
“I came back, and the flat was quiet,” he says. “That’s the bit I keep thinking about. It was too quiet. No radio, no TV, nothing in the kitchen. Just... silent.” His fingerstighten on the mug. “I remember thinking she must have gone to lie down.” He swallows hard. “She was at the table. Right where you’re sitting. Still sitting, kind of... more... slumped over it.” He drags a hand over his mouth. “At first I thought she was just asleep.”
I say nothing; there’s no useful thing to say to that.
“There were pills,” he goes on after a second, his voice roughening further. “I knew before I even— I knew it straight away. I don’t know if she meant to sleep,” he says. “Or if she meant—” He stops hard enough that the rest doesn’t need saying.
“Overdosed,” I say, because he looks like he needs the word said by somebody else.
He nods. “I should have known,” he says after a moment. “She’d been off all week. Worse than off. Not sleeping again, snapping at nothing, saying she could hear things in the walls again, then laughing it off like she was joking. I should have—” He breaks off again. “I should have stayed home.”
“You’re not psychic. You didn’t make this happen by failing to notice one perfect, magical sign,” I say. “And if you start telling yourself that, it will eat you alive.”
“Too late,” he mumbles and looks away. “I had to call the sitter before I called anyone else. It keeps turning over in my head. I saw her, and the first thing I thought was, thank God Vladimir wasn’t here. Then I hated myself for thinking that before anything else.”
“You don’t need to hate yourself for that.”
His head lifts sharply. “Don’t I?”
“You were relieved your son didn’t see his mother dead at the kitchen table,” I say. “That’s not a crime.”
His eyes shut briefly. When he opens them again, they’re red. “I still see it,” he says. “Every time it goes quiet. I’m sorry, I hate causing problems.”
“Listen to me. You’re not causing problems. You’re not creating some burden you need to apologise for. You’re surviving something awful, and that’s not the same thing.”
His hands tighten on the edge of the table. “I hate needing help.”
“I know.”
“I wake up everyday and for a second I forget why I’m already tired, and then I remember.” His mouth twists. “I hate that people keep looking at me like they’re waiting to see if I’ll collapse. It makes me angry that Caiden knows where everything is in this flat now.” He scrubs a hand over his face again and lets out a breath through his teeth. “And I feel guilty that part of me is relieved every time one of you walks through that door, because it means I don’t have to be the only one in here who knows what’s missing.”
“That doesn’t make you weak.”
A small, humourless laugh escapes his lips. “No? What does it make me?”
