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Standing across from him over Dad’s grave, she looked so very beautiful. Even though tears flowed down her cheeks, her nose was red, her eyes puffy, and her expression crumpled in misery, she was beautiful. Mom looked at least twenty years younger than she actually was. The woman standing by the grave was the mother of Sed’s past. The one who’d made him do his homework, taught him how to iron a shirt and how to argue. The mother who never dreamed she’d be a widow at fifty. Now her three kids were grown and her husband was gone. She had no one.
“Mom,” Sed called to her, but she didn’t hear him. “Mom, I’m here. He’s gone, but I’m here.”
She continued to weep, collapsing on her knees beside the grave. She clawed up handfuls of freshly turned dirt and threw them into the dark hole. Sed heard the clumps strike the lid of his father’s coffin.
His dad appeared beside him. Dad was twenty years younger too, the father of Sed’s childhood memories. This was the man who’d taught Sed how to grill and shave and sail and how to be there for his family no matter what. He was much too young, too strong, to ever die.
“How could you leave her, Dad? Can’t you see that she needs you?” Sed tried to punch him, but his hand went through Dad’s transparent shoulder without resistance.
“Looks like rain,” Dad said. He tipped his face up to the dark thunderheads above and then turned to walk away. He was gone before Sed could take a single step after him, but Sed called to him anyway.
“Dad! You can’t leave her like that.” Couldn’t he see that she was in agony? Couldn’t he see that she was Jessica? “Jess?” Her name escaped Sed as a pained sigh.
“How could you leave me, Sed?” Jessica said, tossing more dirt into the grave. “Can’t you see that I need you?”
He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain in her expression. When he opened them again, he was staring at the satin lining of the coffin lid above him. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, but he could hear her crying above him, beside him, all around him. He could also hear the sound of the dirt striking the lid of his coffin with thick and heavy thuds.
Sed sucked in a deep breath and sat up in bed. His heart was thundering, and his stomach churning. He wasn’t dead. Dad still was, but he wasn’t. Moonlight streamed through the patio doors of the honeymoon rental house and bathed his wife’s face. She wasn’t crying over him, but she was blinking and staring at him quizzically.
“Another nightmare?” she asked, her voice muddied with sleep. She reached out to take his hand and offer comfort.
He’d been having that dream for weeks now. He supposed it wasn’t so strange that his father’s passing had given him a sudden fear of death. What he did find odd was that he wasn’t afraid of dying. He was afraid of leaving Jessica to face the world alone. Afraid of her agonizing over his loss, of grieving as if her soul had been wrenched from her body.
Did it make him self-absorbed to think she’d be devastated by his loss? Maybe. But he’d seen his mother’s grief, and if Jess’s feelings were as strong for him as his were for her, Sed’s passing would destroy her. And he couldn’t do that to her. He never wanted to cause Jessica anything but joy. But he couldn’t share that fear with her. It sounded completely self-centered and stupid. What kind of lame asshole feared causing someone grief?
“Go back to sleep,” he said, reaching over to stroke her hair behind her ear.
“Why won’t you tell me about it?” she asked. “Sharing will make you feel better.”
“It’s just about my dad dying, sweetheart. Don’t worry about it.”
“I can’t help but worry.”
He really needed to get his shit together. Worrying about him wasn’t good for her or the baby.
Jessica sat up and fluffed the pillows behind her. She leaned back into the comfortable nest and patted her lap. Sed smiled gratefully—this was becoming a nightly ritual between them—and curled up on his side beside her, using her thigh as his pillow. She massaged his scalp, his temples, his forehead, face and neck until all the tension drained from him. She then stroked his hair and hummed softly until his heart rate slowed and his breathing steadied and his eyes drifted shut.
“You can tell me anything, you know,” she said.
He meant to say that he knew that, but he fell asleep instead.