Page 53

Jack looked over at Eli, searching his face for the hint of a prank or a joke, even though neither would have made any more sense coming from Eli than the words he’d just uttered.

The absurdity of it tickled Jack deep in his belly, spreading like the brush of a feather up his chest until it burst out of his throat in a bellowing laugh. He couldn’t stop it. The laughter overtook him, ripping through him, and soon he was doubled over in hysterics, tears ripping loose from his eyes and tracing a chaotic path down his cheeks. Eli stiffened beside him, shifting himself away from the cackling lunatic on the bed.

“You don’t get it, dumbass, she’s leaving.” Eli’s words cut through the laughter just enough to reach Jack’s ears. It took effort, but he sobered up and wiped his face with the sleeve of his T-shirt.

“Huh?”

“She’s just back to introduce us to the guy and then they’re moving out of state.”

Whatever bewildered laughter was left in Jack’s stomach escaped through a gasp as the thought of Greer leaving punched into his gut.

“No,” was all Jack had left in him to say.

“Just thought you should know,” said Eli, sliding to his feet.

“Who?” Jack was still stuck on single syllables, the rest of his vocabulary locked in a box somewhere in the back of his mind, which was now too cluttered to dig through.

“I dunno,” said Eli. “Some guy she met last year. One of her TAs, apparently. He just got a job in New Hampshire, so that’s where they’re going.”

A few more words wrestled themselves out of the clutter. “I didn’t think she was seeing anyone.”

“Yeah. She said it wasn’t serious. And then I guess it was.”

Eli’s hand grazed the bedroom door handle.

“Why?” It was what Jack had really wanted to ask all along, but that little question felt as though it was a root from which an ancient oak grew, and he was afraid he wouldn’t be brave enough to climb it.

Eli shrugged. “Love, I guess. Greer wouldn’t leave her studies for anything less. Except. Well…”

“Everything,” Jack finished for him. “She’s leaving because of everything. She’s leaving everything.” She was leaving him.

“Maybe.” Another shrug. “She says it’s time to move on.”

Eli gave one more look at Jack over his shoulder before disappearing into the hall. And then Jack was alone.

Greer did move on. For ten long years, she lived away from the You Agains, building a life of domesticity that the Greer Jack knew would have scoffed at. When she and her family moved back to town, Jack learned that news from Eli too, and he promised himself that until he learned it from her, he would continue to live as if she’d never come back. For her sake, he told himself, if that’s what she’d wanted. But in truth, it was mostly for him. Because knowing she was so close and yet, in many ways, so far away from him was worse than her not being there at all.

Greer never told Jack about the shadows cast over her world, and she never told him she’d eloped, and to Jack, that pattern meant something about this new life she chose, something he could never shake.

33

Margaret’s front door was unlocked again when they got back, but Jack didn’t have it in him to take Eli to task for picking it. It didn’t feel like he had much in him at all right then. It felt as though someone had scooped out his innards like a jack-o’-lantern, leaving him hollow.

Greer hadn’t said a word since they’d left Ian’s, leaving Carter to do the heavy conversational lifting on the drive home. As they entered the foyer, Dale wafted in from the living room to greet them like a dog who’d been left to its own devices all day. By the look on his face, Jack wouldn’t have been surprised to find a shredded roll of toilet paper on the rug.

“How’d it go, Jackie?” he all but barked.

“No dice,” said Jack without breaking stride. All he wanted was to throw himself on Margaret’s bed and let his weathered bones melt into the mattress. Everything hurt. Everything that was Margaret’s and everything that was left of him. And for the first time in his afterlife, he found himself wondering what the point of it all was. He was in this shell to stay alive, because life held everyone he cared about, everyone worth dying for. But in the course of an afternoon, of seconds, really, life stopped feeling worth the fight.

“Can we talk?” Greer’s voice was an echo ricocheting off the foyer’s high ceilings, bouncing back at Jack like a choir of strangers.

“Sure,” he said, though he didn’t know why. There was nothing to say, and no energy left with which to say it.

Greer gave a tight smile and led the way up to the second floor and into Margaret’s bedroom, easing the door shut behind them. How many times had Jack dreamed of a moment like this? In another time. In another body. In another life.

“Jack,” she started, then stopped, then tried again. “When you came downstairs at Ian’s…”

“It’s your husband,” Jack said so she didn’t have to. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to hear it from her lips again. “That’s who the money’s for. Right?”