Emmy immediately grabs me and hides just behind my left side. She doesn’t take her eyes from the woman though. Shrouded in a black cloak, it’s harder to see her among the shrubbery, but as she unveils her hood and walks toward the fire, the light shows her to be nothing more than human.
“Jake…” Emmy protests.
“For me,” I remind her, squeezing her hand after prying it from my hip and following the woman under the various tanned hides that protect her potions and remedies.
“I know what ails you, but tell me what you think, my dear?” The healer doesn’t look at me; she doesn’t speak to me at all. Emmy’s quiet, assessing at first, but quickly she speaks up.
I only watch the two of them taking a place in the corner, quietly praying to whatever gods may be listening, to help Emmy. I can’t lose her.
“When I’m with him, I’m invincible.”
The healer’s smile wanes as she places her hand just above Emmy’s but quickly takes it away, snatching a bag of something dried… flowers maybe? “Take these,” she says as she hands the bag to Emmy. “You like soup, don’t you?” The chill of the night spreads under the tent, the wind rustling everything inside. “It’ll take the pain away.”
“When I’m with him, I’m invincible.”
I keep dragging my eyes back to that underlined line. She’s changed. Emmy’s changed. When did she need Jake to be invincible? And more importantly, why did he let that happen?
I have to remind myself that it’s fiction. With that thought, I put down the book and force myself to face my own reality. I’m sure as hell not invincible. Not with Jase Cross and not without him either.
Laura’s never going to believe me.
It’s funny how I keep thinking about telling her what happened as if it’s the worst hurdle to overcome at this point.
Telling your friend you lost hundreds of thousands of dollars they loaned to you… or gave to you, whichever… the thought of telling her that makes me feel sick to my stomach.
I have to rub my eyes as I get up off the sofa, The Coverless Book sitting right in front of me, opened and waiting on the coffee table. I couldn’t close my eyes last night without seeing Officer Walsh, the blood on the floor, or Jase’s intense gaze and the demons beneath that darkness.
Rest didn’t come for me last night, no matter how badly I prayed for it.
Beep, beep, beep. Gathering my mug of hot-for-the-third-time coffee, I promise myself I’ll remember to drink it this time as I test the temperature and find it acceptable to drink.
The last time I burned the tip of my tongue.
My cell phone stares back at me. The book stares back at me. The door calls to me to go back to Jase.
And yet all I can do is sit back on my sofa, stretching in the worn groove and staring across the room at a photo of my sister in her high school graduation cap with her arm wrapped around a younger, happier version of me.
Life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.
She was never supposed to go down that path and leave me here all alone.
“I still hate you for leaving me,” I speak into the empty room even though I don’t believe my own words. “But damn do I miss you.” Those words are different. Those I believe with everything in me.
I wish I could tell her about Jase and the shit I’ve gotten myself into.
If only I had my sister back.
There are multiple stages of grief. I had at least three courses that told me all the stages in detail. I had to take all three to work at the center. If you’re going to work with patients who are struggling with loss, and a lot of our patients are, you have to know the stages inside and out.
Acceptance comes after depression. It’s the final stage and I’ve heard people tell me that they can feel it when it happens.
I used to think it was like a weight off their shoulders, but a woman told me once it was more like the weight just shifted somewhere else. Somewhere deeper inside of you, in that place where the void will always be.
Denial.
Anger.
Bargaining.
Depression.
Acceptance.
The five stages in all their glory. I’ve read plenty about them and at the time I associated each one with how I felt when my mother died, but maybe every death is different. Because this feels nothing like what I felt with her.
There are so many reasons to explain the differences. But one thing I can’t make sense of is how I feel, with complete certainty, that I’ve accepted Jenny’s death too soon. A month since she’s been missing, weeks since her death.
I’m not ready to accept I’ll never see her again, but I have. How fair is that?