Page 76 of Plain Sight

Jameson also makes me show him videos of aerial hoop dances and insists that he could learn how to do it. He chats continuously to Snowball, who revels in the attention, and spends as much time as he can with Robin in his lap, telling him elaborate stories about what pools are and how he’s pretty sure one of the guys at the house is a pirate and maybe, just maybe, he will teach Robin how to swim so he can one day sail the high seas.

We’re still at Zeus’s house when the anniversary arrives.

Gabriel explains it to me the night before with tears in his eyes but incredible relief in his voice. How they’ve gone every year to leave flowers and talk to their parents. How he’s not sure he’d have gone if anything had happened to Jameson. How he’s sorry, because it’s not the kind of thing people usually like to do on their honeymoon.

“Please,” I tell him, Snowball echoing me with his tweets. “Don’t be sorry. I’m—it means a lot to get to be there with you.”

“It’s good,” he answers finally. “That we’ll all be there.”

We leave early the next day, the sun just starting to rise and the heat still gentle.

“I’m going in the pool today,” Jameson announces from his spot next to me in the SUV. He has a bouquet of lilies on his lap. I have Snowball’s cage on mine. We’re riding with Gabriel, Elise, and Remy. Mason, Charlotte, Robin, Nate, and Lydia are in the other car. “Be grateful.”

“We’re so grateful,” Gabriel sings.

“Are you allowed in the pool?” Remy asks. “Or do you have to stay on a floatie the entire time? I’ll stay on a floatie next to you if you do.”

“It’s a floatie or nothing for me,” Jameson answers with a sigh. “Try not to feel bad. I’ll get through it.”

The closer we get to the cemetery, the quieter they get.

And then we’re all walking across the dewy lawn together, Robin cooing in his baby carrier, and my chest does that aching, grateful, near-miss thing again. I tighten my grip on the handle of Snowball’s cage.

Remy goes first.

When she straightens up, wiping her eyes, Jameson takes my hand and pulls me up to the gravestone with him.

He and Remy do a long and elaborate handshake. He hugs her tight. Then she walks away to stand by a tree, and Jameson lays the bouquet we bought.

“Hey, Mom,” he says softly, his hand tight on mine. “Dad. I have to tell you—this is getting old.”

I was getting ready to cry, so my laughter catches me off guard and turns into a snort.

“This is Lily, my wife,” he continues. “I’m so annoyed that I have to introduce her to you when you’re, like, dead. It’s bullshit. You should have been at the wedding. But maybe you were, unless I hallucinated that whole thing.”

“What whole thing?” I whisper.

“I visited them,” Jameson whispers back. “With Hades’s daughter. Well—not, like, with her, but she was there in my dream. Might not have been a dream. I don’t know. My mom said I showed them the path, whatever that means.”

“Like…a psychopomp?”

“Offensive.”

“Not a psychopath. A psychopomp.” I cannot believe I didn’t think of this before. “They’re, like, spirit guides. To guide spirits to the afterlife. I saw a photo of a painting at Pompeii and looked it up.”

Jameson squeezes my hand. “Maybe.”

“Jesus is considered one of those.”

He laughs. “Dad said I’m not Jesus. That’s some other guy.”

“Like…some other guy on earth? Like the second coming?”

Jameson shrugs again, more exaggeratedly this time. “Anyway, parents, this is Lily, my wife, who definitely thinks I’m Jesus. Also, she’s pregnant, which totally happened once we were already wedlocked.”

I snort again. I can’t help it.

“Lily. Be cool,” Jameson murmurs. “You’re meeting the parents.”