Page 5

Put it down.

Slowly, my fingers loosened.

I set the bottle on the counter.

It remained between my hands, close enough to reach again, until I forced myself to push it toward the wall. The scrape of plastic against stone sounded impossibly loud. I stared at it for several seconds, terrified by how ordinary it looked, and then I closed the medicine cabinet.

The woman in the mirror remained a ghost.

Nothing miraculous happened. The pain didn’t loosen its grip. The room didn’t fill with light, and the dead man I loved didn’t step into the reflection behind me. My heart remained broken. My husband remained buried. The future remained a vast and merciless country I had no desire to enter.

But the bottle was no longer in my hand.

I turned away from the mirror and walked out of the bathroom.

Ten steps back to the bedroom.

Each one felt longer than the last. Without the promise of escape waiting behind the medicine cabinet, the apartment seemed colder, its silence more complete. I passed the untouched coffee pot and the chair where Salvatore’s jacket had been left. I passed the framed photograph of Henry and all the evidence of the life Salvatore had lived there. And grieved the years we would never again share.

His shirt lay across the foot of the bed.

I picked it up and pressed it to my face. His scent had already begun to fade, but enough remained to make my knees give way. I sank onto the mattress, clutching the fabric against my mouth while another wave of grief broke over me.

“I don’t know what to do now.”

Lie down.

I crawled across the cold sheets toward the pillow that still held the shallow indentation of his head, desperate to lie as close as I could to the place where he had once been.

I pulled his shirt over my body and curled around his pillow, drawing my knees toward my chest as if I could make myself small enough for the pain to overlook.

Outside, New York continued without him.

Horns sounded far below. Pipes groaned in the walls. Somewhere in the building, a door opened and closed. Ordinary life persisted with a cruelty I had never understood until the man I loved was no longer living it beside me.

“What happens tomorrow?” I asked.

No answer came.

I closed my eyes and listened for him, but the apartment had gone silent again. Whatever fragile mercy had given Salvatore back to me in the bathroom had withdrawn, leaving me alone with the bed, the shirt, and the knowledge that morning would come whether I wanted it or not.

Panic tightened around my chest.

“Salvatore?”

For one terrible second, there was nothing.

Then his voice moved through the darkness, faint enough that it might have been memory, grief, madness, or something love had taught death it couldn’t silence.

Then don’t live forever, baby. Live until morning.

I buried my face in his pillow and held on.

I didn’t promise him tomorrow. I didn’t promise to heal, to become stronger, or to build a life around the hole his death had left behind. I didn’t promise that I would never stand in that bathroom again or wonder whether surrender might be kinder than surviving him.

I promised only morning.

For the first time since Salvatore died, I allowed myself to sleep without hoping I would never wake.