Page 13 of Dearly Departed

The plane bumps over a pocket of turbulence. Catherine pinches her bag of snack mix shut, then tries again.

“Do you⁠—”

She doesn’t get to finish, because the pitch of the air speeding over the plane’s skin changes along with the hum of the engines. The bed tilts on an angle. My ears pop.

We’re descending. And we’re going down fast.

5

CATHERINE

Disappointment flashes over Jacob’s face, making him look surprisingly young. I feel that from my heart down to my toes, because for some amount of time, when he was inside me and over me and kissing me like his wife, I let myself detach from the situation.

Or maybe my brain did that for me. Maybe my mind simply couldn’t handle the idea of dying in a plane crash or being murdered mid-plane crash, and my hot emotional wreck of a husband was something I could fathom.

Although now, as the plane jolts again, it’s a lot easier to fathom the plane crash part of this revenge plot.

Jacob rearranges his expression. It’s not quite calm. Not quite the self-confident amusement he wore to the ball a million years ago. It’s not fear, either. I can’t tell if he’s resigned to our fate or determined to change it.

We both get off the bed at the same time. My linen traveling pants are within reach. I catch myself lingering on Jacob’s body as he bends to pull on his trousers. The scratched skin at his sides hasn’t had time to heal. Oh, God, is this the last time I’m going to see him before the crash tears him apart?

No. Of course not. We’re going to survive. We’re going to be fine.

“Is that what you’re wearing?”

My face burns the second the words are out of my mouth. Jacob straightens, the trousers pulled up to his waist. A strange smile crosses his face like he wants to burst out laughing and our circumstances don’t allow for it.

“Is this what I’m wearing for our…arrival?”

“That’s a delicate way to put it.”

“Ah, well, Delicate is my middle name.”

The giggle that slips out of my mouth sounds nervous, bordering on terrified. Jacob’s eyes soften. A similar laugh caught me off guard a lot during the first few months we lived together. I’d been nervous bordering on terrified then, and why? Because I chose to live with a charming, handsome man who catered to my every whim? Of course I had reasons to be nervous, even afraid, because of my past experience with an evil man otherwise known as my father, but I’m offended by my past self’s fear.

“What I meant to say was—did you bring any other clothes for when we land? I don’t think you should be wearing pieces of a tuxedo.”

I’m one to talk. I’m dressed in a lingerie set.

“I was going to put the other pieces on, too.” Jacob glances down at his trousers and sighs. “Honestly, I can’t remember.”

The plane rumbles underneath us, and I grab the side of the bed for balance. I find it so—so offensive that Raymond Harris would crash us like this, without any finesse. I find it even more offensive that my evil father’s actions have reached all the way into the present, where they’re attempting to ruin my honeymoon. My righteous anger gives me the strength I need to find my balance and pull on my pants and the lovely, soft shirt that goes underneath the linen top.

Jacob leads to the front of the plane, far too close to the cockpit. The door’s closed, but I listen hard in case Raymond Harris hears us first and comes out to investigate and/or murder us. Jacob’s bag is waiting on the seat across from the one he sat in before he realized I was here.

For a few seconds, I could swear I’m looking at Honeymoon Jacob, going through the bag I bought him last summer. Well—he paid for it, but I chose it. He’d had an appointment with his tailor on Savile Row. I went to Smythson on Bond and bought myself a pretty notebook, thinking I’d get into journaling, and then I’d wandered through a few other shops, finally ending up at Swaine. The holdall—a Cambridge Weekender in burgundy—had been lovely on a pristine white shelf. An unassuming salesperson told me it was a true classic, designed the same way for, like, a century, and I thought Jacob would like that.

A century. Something people had liked just as it was for a hundred years.

So I got it, and brought it home, and now he’s pulling a pair of jeans out of it in what could, in another life, be our honeymoon.

He finds a T-shirt and crew-neck sweatshirt next, both unassumingly plain and both custom-made for him by his tailor. He finds socks. His Italian leather sneakers. Jacob shoves the tuxedo trousers into the bag, then hefts it over his shoulder. When he smiles at me, all sparkling blue eyes and perfect, handsome features, it’s like I’ve gone through a mirror to a world where we really are going to land at a secluded resort property and have the time of our lives.

Then the plane tilts to the side, and I’m back in reality.

“He is not good at this!” I whisper-shout.

“I’m going to leave a terrible review,” Jacob says. “We should find our seats.”