Page 34 of Dearly Departed

Jacob doesn’t fall asleep. He passes out on the pillow, his body going completely limp.

“Jacob?”

He will not be okay after a nap. He’s been sleeping for hours. According to the clock on my phone, it’s past noon, and Jacob’s not a late sleeper.

I should have known something would go horribly wrong the second I closed my eyes.

Maybe we should get a throw pillow for that, too. Better than nothing and I should have known make a great pair.

“Jacob, wake up.” I shake his shoulder, but he doesn’t stir.

Okay. So he’s asleep again. Deeply asleep.

As it was on the plane, now is the time to remain calm.

I do not feel calm at all, so I get up and run the washcloth under more water, then lay it on Jacob’s forehead.

“In retrospect, I should have gone into nursing. Or taken more than one first aid class. I can remember how to do CPR on a toddler, but pretty much nothing else.”

Jacob doesn’t answer.

I take a deep breath and let it out. “The plan for right now is to see what’s here. We already have the cottage, which is good, and a bed, which is also good. But you need antibiotics for an infection, so maybe there are some hidden ones here. I’m going to look for them.”

No answer. I lean down and kiss his cheek. It’s like kissing a furnace.

“If you remember this once you wake up, just know that I didn’t want to leave you out of the decision-making process.” My throat starts to close up. From fear, I think. Fear based on love. I do not want Jacob to die because of infected scratches. I don’t want to watch him slip away while I sit by with a washcloth and fading hope. I do not want to be helpless. “Anyway, it’s not a very big room, so I won’t be far.”

The cabinets in the kitchen area are the main sources of storage in the cottage. There are three—two narrow ones, and a slightly wider one in the center. I looked at them in a fast, panicky fashion not long after sunrise, when I couldn’t wake Jacob.

I wasn’t, like, entirely truthful with him before. He did wake me up. Obviously, he didn’t do it on purpose. I woke up because I thought the cottage had caught on fire, or we’d left a mirror out and the sun was beaming onto our bed, or we were on an exploding plane.

Then I realized it was Jacob, burning up.

The fever didn’t break as the sun rose. It got worse.

I tried the cool washcloth thing over and over, rummaged through the cabinets without really seeing what was inside, and went back to the bed. It felt unlucky to leave him there.

Plus, he kept talking in his sleep.

I can’t think about how he sounded when he was dreaming. If I dwell on it too long, I’ll sit down on the floor and cry, and now is not the time for crying.

I start with the cabinet on the left-hand side. There are two stacks of cans inside, three—or, no, four rows deep. The label on the closest one says CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP and seems to have, like, no brand at all, only a plain white background with bold, navy blue lettering. It’s weird, but the can doesn’t have any dents. Except for the label, there’s nothing strange about it. There are other soups underneath.

Far better than nothing, Jacob says in my memory. He sounded tired on the plane, but who wouldn’t be? We’d been preparing for the wedding all day, and he’d been making secret plans to fake his death, and then we’d actually gotten married. Still, he’d had that irresistible note in his voice. The one that always makes me feel like we’re in on a private joke.

We are, a lot of the time. Aren’t we? We have jokes together. We have stories together. We have plans to visit the Villa just outside Mougins and have a real honeymoon with themed throw pillows that’ll turn this murder-honeymoon into yet another funny memory.

Someday. Someday it will be funny, or at least not horrifying.

I shut the cabinet, leaving the soup inside. Maybe this will always be horrifying. Maybe we’ll never get over it. But if I’m never going to get over this, I want to never get over it with Jacob.

The cabinet under the sink has fewer things in it. Tools hang from nails on the inside of the door. One of them is a wrench. One of them is a can opener. I don’t know what the third one is. On the back wall, there’s a handwritten sign tacked next to the switch Jacob must’ve used last night. The sign reads FLIP SWITCH FOR WATER. It has a smiley-face beneath the words. I wonder if that’s what made Jacob so sure the water was drinkable. I wonder if Jacob could even see the sign in the dark.

I want to ask him, but he hasn’t moved from his position on the bed. His cheeks are a bright, feverish red. The color goes down to his chest, where it mixes with the darker color around his scratches.

God, that looks bad. It looks like it’s eating him alive.

Is he…