Afterwards, Michael sat beside me, his voice gentle now. “Tess.” Michael took my hand. “We need to make some arrangements. For getting you home.”
Home. The word felt foreign.
“The hotel has been very accommodating,” he continued. “They’ve offered to help with... with everything. Transport arrangements. Paperwork. Whatever we need.”
I nodded, not really processing.
“There’s a private jet we can charter tomorrow. I thought—I thought you might like to rest today, and we’ll fly home tomorrow morning. Is that okay?”
Tomorrow. That meant another night in this room. In this bed where we’d made love, where he’d promised me, we’d have more nights like that.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“There’s one more thing.” His voice softened. “We need to call Mom and Dad.”
I closed my eyes. Our parents—divorced but still bound by their shared refusal to live in the conventional world. Marco had charmed them both from the first time I brought him home at seventeen. My father had spent summers trying to teach Marco to "commune with the river spirits" rather than just catch fish. And my mother would call him to ask if the router signals were blocking her third eye.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “Michael, I can’t do it.”
“I know. I’ll do it.” He squeezed my hand. “But I thought you should know first.”
He stepped into the bedroom, closing the door partway. I could still hear him though, his voice an inaudible murmur that occasionally broke on certain words.
I could hear the exact moment he told our mother. The sudden silence.
I pressed my hands over my ears, unable to bear it.
When Michael came back, his eyes were wet. “They’re going to meet us at your house tomorrow. Dad’s driving down from Napa tonight.”
I nodded. Numb again.
Michael moved around the suite with purpose. He called the front desk about dinner I wouldn’t eat. He spoke with Jennifer Mills about checkout procedures. He found Marco’s suitcase and began packing the clothes Marcus would never wear again, the toiletries he’d never use.
On the dresser, he found Marco’s wallet. When he opened it, a small, folded piece of paper fell out, fluttering to the carpet.
I reached for it automatically. The paper was worn, creased from years of folding and unfolding. I recognized it immediately—a note I’d written to Marco during our sophomore year of college. The paper yellowed with age, the blue ink faded. I’d drawn a silly cartoon of us as stick figures holding hands.
Above it, in my rounded handwriting:You and me against the world.
All these years—through dorm rooms and apartments and our house and family and building a company—he’d carried it with him every single day.
The tears came again, different now. Quieter. Deeper. This wasn’t just about losing my husband or my kids losing their father. This was about losing a piece of my history, a shared past that stretched back to when we were barely more than kids ourselves.
“He kept it,” I said, holding the paper out to Michael, my voice breaking.
Michael took it, his expression softening. “Of course he did,” he said simply, handing it back. “It was you.”
The private jet dipped toward San Jose, white clouds masking everything below. I pressed my face to the window, seeing nothing through vacant eyes.
Michael slumped opposite me; exhaustion etched into every line of his face. The morning had been nothing but brutal practicalities—hotel checkout, police statements, arranging separate transport for Marco’s body.
“Landing in ten,” Michael said, reaching for my arm. “Tess, we need a plan for telling them.”
The kids. My children.
What words could possibly suffice?
I turned to my brother, the brutal reality of what waited at home crushing me completely.
