Life and Other Inconveniences(51)

“Could you just answer the question with one word, please? Is my wife dead?”

Dr. Dunn’s mouth wobbled. “Yes.”

There was just white now. White and quiet. He actually might pass out, he thought distantly.

Ashley was dead. It . . . they wouldn’t lie about that. It must be . . . it must be true.

“Can I see her?” he asked.

“Of course.”

He went back down the hall with Dr. Dunn, to the room he and Ashley had walked into so happily the day—really? just a day?—before.

His wife lay on the bed, covered in blankets, only her head showing. The floor was smeared with her blood, though Miller could tell someone had tried to clean it up. He was grateful for the attempt.

The nurse, Chelsea, was crying, and a tech was wiping Ashley’s face. A tube lay next to her throat. The tech took it away, then turned off the monitor, which showed only flat lines.

One by one, they left in silence, leaving him with his wife’s body.

The baby was still in his arms. He’d almost forgotten. He could’ve dropped it. They shouldn’t have left him alone with a baby. He was clearly not father material.

But Ashley was born to be a mother.

“Ash?” he whispered, because surely she would open her eyes when she heard his voice. “Ashley? Please, honey.”

There were miracles, after all. Remember the baby who had died, then they put him on his mother’s chest, and an hour later, the baby woke up? Also, that Christmas special of Call the Midwife, where the dead baby was in the leather bag with the hot-water bottle and then it wasn’t dead anymore? He and Ashley had avoided that show until she got pregnant, then spent an entire long weekend binge-watching it and eating spaghetti. So yeah. Miracles. Lazarus, come forth! He remembered that Bible story, he sure did! Best one in the whole book! Total miracle. So how about one now?

I believe, Miller prayed. Please. Please bring her back.

It seemed that his prayers went unheard, or ignored, or God just side-eyed him on the request. Ashley’s eyes remained closed. Her chest did not rise or fall. Her hair spilled out on the pillow behind her, her beautiful honey-colored hair. Her freckles stood out, because her face had no color now.

The baby stirred.

Right. The baby.

He unwrapped it—her—and placed the baby on his wife’s chest, skin to skin, and folded her arms around the baby. Ghoulish, that, but the baby didn’t seem to mind. Should he take a picture? Jesus, no! Where did that thought come from?

Was her soul close by? Was she waiting for him to say something?

“The baby’s fine,” he said, not recognizing his own voice. “You did it, Ashley. She’s fine, and I’ll . . . I’ll take good care of her.”

After a while, the baby started to fuss, then cry, then scream, furious that her mother was dead. He didn’t blame her.

Miller just sat there, looking at Ashley. Eventually, a nurse came in and gently rewrapped the baby. “Let’s get her down to the nursery,” she said, and guided Miller out of the room.

He stopped in the hall and turned around, going back in for one more look.

He realized this would be the last time he saw her face, felt her hair.

“I love you,” he said, and kissed her. Her lips were not hers anymore. They were just layers of dying cells. He rested his head against her cool forehead. His tears slipped from his face to hers, into her hair. “I love you,” he said once more, then straightened, wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands and forced himself to leave the room. He had to call her parents.

She was dead, and he was alone, and all the happiness they’d had for so long, since the second week of sophomore year of high school when she’d smiled at him in European Studies . . . all that happiness, all those moments, all those brilliant stars against the night sky were dead, too.





CHAPTER 16


    Clark


Clark London grew up with the understanding that he was supposed to have been better. A better son. A better student. A better athlete, artist, musician, conversationalist. He should’ve had a better body, a better face . . . His was nice-looking, but bland. He resembled his father, but a paler, more generic version. A weaker chin.

But you get what you get. No use trying to change nature, right? Sheppard had been the good son, the perfect child. Even before his older brother disappeared, Clark could remember that feeling of being less than. Maybe it was age; maybe if Shep hadn’t died (or “gone away” as his mother still said, which made Clark grit his teeth every time), he wouldn’t have felt so inferior. But as it was, Sheppard’s death intensified things a thousand percent.

He didn’t remember much about his childhood, to be honest. He’d loved his father, who, even though he was brokenhearted over Sheppard, still smiled at Clark, still threw him the football, still cheered him on as he did tricks in the swimming pool. When his father died, it left a huge blank space in his life. Clark, alone with his mother, her iciness, her unbreachable heart. Even years after he’d passed her in height, he felt small around her, and fearful, as if she might slap him, though she never had.

Like most boys, he filled his spare time with TV, the pool, some friends who were kind of jerks but not that bad. Sometimes he’d take the sailboat out and just float on the Sound, glad to be away from his mother, watching the clouds float across the sky, thinking about how his father was with Sheppard now instead of him. Always second. Always the B-list son.