It’s empty and I’m empty in it.
The monitors in my head beep phantom rhythms. The sand still burns in my lungs. The chapel glass still crunches underfoot. My body relives every place he almost didn’t come back from and this time, he hasn’t.
My nails split. My breath tears. My voice breaks and I stay on the floor, pressed flat into the ruin, until the night swallows me whole.
Chapter Thirty Four
Cassandra
The house is too quiet.
Not the kind of quiet you slip into after a long day, not the soft hush of peace. This is a hollow quiet, the kind that presses against your ears until you swear it’s screaming.
Every clock tick is a hammer.
Every creak of the pipes is a gunshot.
Every time the fridge hums, I flinch like it’s the knock again.
I haven’t eaten. I can’t. There’s food in the fridge, untouched. A casserole someone dropped off sits on the counter, sweating through its foil. The smell curdles in my stomach. I sip water and it tastes like sand, like blood.
Sleep doesn’t come. When it does, it tricks me—I hear his boots on the porch, his voice calling me Butterfly, the scrape of his hand on the back of his neck when he’s pretending not to be nervous. And then I wake up and the house is still empty, my chest splitting open all over again.
His letters are everywhere. Some tucked into drawers, some still under my pillow, one folded small enough I keep it in mypocket even when I don’t leave the house. I read them until the paper starts to wear thin, until the ink smudges with tears. I whisper the words out loud, trying to make them sound like his voice.
Two days after the knock, Lola shows up. She doesn’t knock—she just comes in, arms full of bags, her perfume clinging to the air like she’s trying to smother the stench of grief.
She hugs me too tight. I don’t hug back at first. My arms hang loose at my sides because if I let myself hold her, I’ll fall apart. She whispers, It’s going to be okay, but her voice breaks halfway through, and I know she doesn’t believe it either.
She moves through the kitchen like she can fix this by cleaning, by reheating, by pretending. I sit at the table, staring at the wood grain until it blurs, while she places a plate in front of me. Mashed potatoes, chicken, peas. Ordinary food for an extraordinary kind of loss.
“Eat,” she says softly. “Please, Cass.”
I shake my head. My throat is too tight. The smell makes bile burn at the back of my mouth.
She pushes the fork closer. “Just a bite.”
My voice cracks when I whisper, “I can’t.”
Her hand covers mine, warm, trembling. “Then I’ll sit here with you until you can.”
At night, she curls up on the couch, refusing to leave me alone in this house that doesn’t feel like mine anymore. I hear her cry when she thinks I’m asleep. I want to tell her to stop, that I can’t carry her grief on top of my own—but the words won’t come.
So I just lie there in the dark, listening to the silence, waiting for a sound that will never come.
Waiting for him.
The house is a coffin.
Every breath echoes like it doesn’t belong. Every tick of the clock drills into me like it’s counting down, not forward.
I’m stuck on the floor, back against the wall, knees pulled to my chest. My body hasn’t figured out how to move since the soldiers left. My chest still aches from screaming, throat raw, head pounding like it’s trying to split open.
Lola’s here. She came as soon as she heard. I didn’t call her—couldn’t—but somehow she knew. Maybe sisters always know.
She kneels in front of me, her hands on my shoulders, her face blotched with tears, mascara carved down her cheeks. “Cass…” Her voice cracks, splintered. “You’ve got to eat something. Please. Just—just sip water.”
I shake my head. I can’t. My stomach is glass, my throat is ash, my body is already breaking without him.
