Page 16 of Dearly Departed

“Yes, you are. I’m going to take you. Where do you want to go?”

I can’t think of a single location on the planet.

Then one comes to me.

“The villa by Mougins.” I want to be in the house with its cheery blue shutters and sparkling pool and hundred-year-old olive trees in a grove that people have taken care of for longer than Jacob and I have been alive put together. I want to go with Jacob to the hilltop city with its curving cobblestone streets and sit at a table with him while the sun goes down. My favorite place to eat in Mougins is also the place where I learned Jacob speaks French when he launched into a conversation with the waiter like it was no big deal. “That’s where I want to go. For a month.”

“Two months,” Jacob counters. His tone is easy, but his hold on me feels solid enough to survive a plane crash.

I hope it is.

“The whole summer!” Is this how I die? Planning a honeymoon we’ll never have? Believing in it like I should believe in God? I have more faith that this honeymoon plan will save us.

“Kitten, you don’t have to beg.”

“Next summer, then.”

“Consider it done.”

I take a huge breath and choke on it. Then I can’t stop coughing. The plane shakes. Is it air we’re speeding over or trees? Is this my last heartbeat on earth? This one? This one?

“I’ll protect you,” Jacob says. “No matter what.”

I know it’s not true. There’s not much a man can do to knock a bullet out of the air or stop a fireball from consuming the entire plane. I throw all of my faith and hope and belief at Jacob, silently, desperately, bracing myself against the seat like he told me.

The front of the plane bounces up, then jerks down. I open my mouth to scream but I can’t get the sound to come out. All I can see is my custom Charlotte Hill travel pants. I don’t know if the screech in my head is the wind or the metal of the plane coming apart or me.

Jacob’s talking to me. His voice hums through his body. I can’t understand most of the words. Kitten and breathe and I have you.

It’s so loud—the plane, my complete bewildered terror, the wind—that it seems like it’ll go on forever.

Until it stops.

For a heartbeat, all I hear is the wind.

“Catherine,” Jacob says.

Then the plane slams into the ground.

6

JACOB

Catherine tries to scream, but instead she makes a pained begging sound that tears into my mind and buries itself there. I’ll hear it for the rest of my life.

The rest of my life might be the sum total of a minute.

Maybe less.

My wife jerks upright, forgetting to brace herself. I try to push her back down, but she won’t go. Catherine curls sideways into my arms.

The plane hasn’t become a fireball. It’s still moving, with more hits toward the nose. Trees, maybe. Outside Catherine’s window, there’s nothing but varying shades of dark. I can’t remember what the first impact felt like with the plane vibrating, high-pitched noises coming from one side⁠—

Both sides.

The engines?

A shadow flies through the pale, barely there emergency lights. I jerk my head out of the way at the last second.