You’re going to be a father.
Goodbye.
But I didn’t get to say any of it. The funeral was supposed to be an ending. Credits rolling on a movie. Humphrey Bogart’s final line and fog rolling over the screen before it all went to black.
Instead, I feel worse than when I arrived. I have unfinished business with a dead man who took all the answers with him.
Yasmin catches up to me on the sidewalk, slightly out of breath. “Well,” she says after a moment, “that was…”
“Bullshit,” I finish.
“I was going to say ‘impersonal,’ but yeah. Bullshit works, too.”
A cranky cab driver honks and yells something rude out of his window. The cathedral doors open and close behind us,releasing another batch of early-departing mourners into the afternoon. I shift my weight from foot to foot and re-grip Excalibur in my hand, suddenly desperate to be anywhere else.
“Did you get what you needed?” Yasmin asks.
That right there is the million-dollar question. Did I?
“No,” I admit. “Not even close.”
Yasmin’s hand grazes my elbow in sympathy. “Then what do you want to do now?”
I don’t know. Go home. Crawl into bed. Press the rewind button of my life until I’m back at the beginning and I can make a very different set of choices.
But none of those options will change anything. Even if such a remote existed, I know deep in my bones that I’m powerless to do anything but what I did. Which means all of this was always going to happen, every bit of it, and I’d still end up pregnant and alone in front of a church crammed with people who don’t know half the things I know.
So what’s the point in protesting? Closure is a myth and happy endings are a lie. There’s just the same thing there’s always been for me:enduring. Everything else is just a distraction from that grim and ugly truth.
“Let’s just go,” I say finally. “Please. I can’t be here anymore.”
Neither of us says much for the whole two-hour drive out of Chicago. We don’t even turn on the radio. I just rest my headagainst the window and pretend I can see what’s passing by in the outside world.
Yasmin sighs every few minutes, the way she always does when she wants to say something but doesn’t know what to say. Usually, I’d throw her a bone and ask what’s on her mind, but I don’t have the energy for that right now. It’s been a long day and I’m tired.
When we arrive, Yasmin stops the car in front of our apartment building. “I’ve got to go to work for a few hours. You going to be okay by yourself?”
“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Call me if you need anything. I mean it. Anything at all.”
“I will.”
I get out of the car, shuffle up the stairs, unlock the apartment door, and step inside. I’m already unbuttoning the charcoal shirt that feels like it’s strangling me. The fabric scratches against my skin, like funeral clothes always do, because if the dead are uncomfortable, you better be uncomfortable, too. All I want is to peel them off and forget this entire godforsaken day ever happened.
The door clicks shut behind me. I drop Excalibur against the wall and reach for the hem of my shirt and?—
“Hello, Eliana.”
My entire body goes rigid.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
I’m hallucinating again. I have to be. The stress, the pregnancy hormones, the emotional exhaustion of the funeral, all of theabove—my brain is playing tricks on me like it’s been doing for weeks. Phantom cologne. Imagined footsteps. And now, it seems, his voice in my empty apartment.
Except…
Except I can hear him breathing…
