Page 39 of Dearly Departed

Sunrise comes.

I didn’t think it would, but I’m so tired I don’t feel surprised. Jacob’s heavy, curled up on me like this, but that’s what being married is, right? Staying together.

My parents stayed together, though, and that was a mistake.

“Either way.”

Jacob swallows. “What’s either way?”

I look down into his face, and for the first time in days, in forever, he’s not flushed with fever. He has bruises under his eyes, but he’s focusing on my face and wearing a worried frown.

“Kitten? Are you okay?”

“I thought you were going to die,” I tell him, matter-of-factly as I can, and then I burst into tears.

12

JACOB

Catherine cries for what I would consider to be an unusually long time.

I can feel her tears, and her fingers digging into my back, and the sheets, so I’m not dead. I just feel exceptionally weird. All my limbs feel heavy and oddly light simultaneously. I’m not hungry at all, though I have the sense that a long time has gone by.

Well. I’m alive, and Catherine is upset, so once I’m sure I won’t pass out or throw up again, I maneuver myself out of her lap and take her in my arms.

This makes her cry harder.

I shush her and rub her back and try to figure out what the hell happened.

My memories are a mess. Bettencourt died in front of me at least once but probably closer to a hundred times. I spent an eternity watching the burned body of James Hill attempt to play a card game with bloodied cards. You’ve always known what it means to remain above reproach. The hallway at school. Gabriel, looking at me like he’d seen a ghost.

“Was there a dog here?”

More hot tears spill onto my shoulder, but then Catherine jerks her head up and wipes her eyes with the back of her arm. “There was no dog. I mean—I don’t know, Jacob, there might have been a dog, but I don’t think people have dogs here. I don’t think there are other people here. There was something at the door, scratching. Probably it was, like, a forest creature. But I don’t know what it was. I never looked out the window.”

More things come back to me. Carol of the Bells, echoing and echoing in my car, making itself loud and endless and haunted. Catherine saying I know. Catherine saying we’ll go home soon. Catherine saying⁠—

“You love me?”

She pulls back so she can stare at me with the full force of her honey eyes and her auburn hair and the unbelievable gorgeousness of every inch of her. “What?”

“You said you loved me.”

Catherine blinks, and big, silent tears run down her cheeks and drip off her jaw. “Of—of course I said I love you.”

“It isn’t, though. Is it? We never say that. We’ve never said it. I’m willing to accept responsibility for the oversight, kitten. I’m willing to admit it was my fault.”

She blinks again. It’s the slowest, most disbelieving blink I have ever witnessed. “What?”

“I didn’t tell you first. I didn’t even tell you on our wedding day. I didn’t want to say it at the time, but I thought we’d probably die when the plane hit the ground, and I completely neglected the opportunity.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you didn’t. You said you loved me enough to want to save me.”

“That’s not the same thing, and you know it.” I wrap my fingers around Catherine’s nape and let my thumb rest on her cheeks. She leans into my touch, lips parted, eyes fluttering shut, and it’s miraculous. My wife is miraculous. The sight of her, the feel of her, is an honest-to-fucking-God miracle. “I love you.”