The Dead Romantics (76)

“Alice . . .”

“He just forgot about himself. And I couldn’t do anything.” She sniffed, and I stared at her with my mouth open because her eyes were wet, and Alice never cried. She didn’t cry when she skinned the side of her leg in third grade while trying to skateboard. She didn’t cry when she broke her first finger when Carver accidentally slammed the car door on it. She hadn’t cried at weddings or funerals or graduations—so I didn’t know what to do.

I dropped the towel, torn between hugging her and calling for help. My voice wobbled. “Alice . . .”

Because she was about to make me cry, too.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Maybe if you were here instead—”

“Don’t,” I cut her off. “Don’t finish that.”

“But it’s—”

“Not true,” I stressed, mortified that she’d ever think that. “Dad not going to the doctor was Dad’s fault, not yours. It never will be yours.”

She looked at me, and her eyes were rimmed red, and her bottom lip trembled. “I couldn’t protect him,” she sobbed.

“I c-couldn’t either, Al.”

We pulled each other into a tight hug, and cried it out on each other’s shoulders. It was cathartic in a way that nothing else had been this entire week. I kept holding all of the pain in, and I couldn’t imagine how Alice felt this whole time. I should have asked her. I should have wondered if she was okay because none of us were.

But we would be.

After a moment, she squirmed out of my hug and pushed the remaining tears out of her eyes. “I can finish the dishes alone.”

“You won’t hold the dishes against me?” I asked suspiciously, wiping my own eyes.

“Obviously I will,” she replied with a laugh, telling me that she was going to be okay and needed some space, and shooed me away.

I grabbed my coat from the rack and slipped it on as I caught a glimmer of Ben sitting on the floral couch in the living room. He was relaxed out on it, his eyes closed, one leg crossed over the other, his arms softly folded over his chest, almost as if he was asleep. Over the past few days, he had slowly unwound in front of me, first his hair becoming disheveled, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his trousers cuffed, his tie lost somewhere in the netherworld between Friday night and here, and now—ever so slightly—there was the shadow of a beard crossing the strong angles of his chin. I’d never seen a ghost change before. They were immovable. Stagnant. Then again, I had never paid close attention, either.

He cracked open an eye. “Ready to go?”

My heart twisted. It felt so familiar in the weirdest way. As if in some other universe he was here, real, alive, sitting on the couch, waiting for my sister and me to finish the dishes so we could go home.

Perhaps in another life.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He stood and came over to the foyer as I put on my shoes, and we left together down the front steps to the sidewalk. “Walk you home?” he offered.

“Oh, how gentlemanly of you.”

“I am occasionally.”

It was nice, walking beside him back up the street to the inn. He asked about my sister, and if we were okay, without ever prodding, and I told him about our conversation. I didn’t know Alice had been hurting so terribly, and her hurting made me want to punch whoever made her hurt. But in this case, it was Dad. And me, to some extent. I knew that Alice didn’t like me leaving, but I didn’t think . . .

I just didn’t think.

“It’s okay, at least you talked,” he said gently.

“Yeah.”

Lee never escorted me home until we lived together, and even then sometimes I would duck out of his publishing functions early and take the train home alone. I always said to myself it was because I never wanted to bother him while he made connections, but the truth was I usually felt like an unwanted purse, standing quietly beside him as he talked to executive editors and poets laureate and god knows who else, feeling like an outsider even in an industry I was very much a part of.

Even if only secretly.

I wrapped my coat around myself tightly. Ben glanced over at me, frowning. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I muttered. “Just . . . exhausted.”

“This is exhausting,” he agreed softly. “All of it. Pretending to be okay while the world changes around you and leaves you behind to sit with whatever loss you found.”

It did feel exactly like that. “But you got through it, so I think I can, too.”

“I know you can. You’re braver than I could ever be. I couldn’t do what you do. Helping ghosts like me move on. You have to say goodbye so often.”

“It’s different with them—erm, you—because I get to say goodbye. The last thing I said to Dad was . . .” I hesitated, trying to remember my conversation with him. Friday felt like so long ago, and the conversation was already a blur. Had I told him I loved him? I knew I did, but I kept second-guessing it. What if I hadn’t that once?

I couldn’t remember.

I blinked the tears out of my eyes and cleared my throat. “Anyway, I appreciate your help during the card game.”

He snorted a laugh. “Well, you do suck at spades.”

“I do not!”

“Oh you absolutely do.” He cocked his head, and a curl of black hair fell across his forehead. “But you know, that’s kind of what I like about you.”