Page 55 of The Night We Lost Him

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m just a little jumpy.”

“I can see that.”

He kisses my shoulder, moves closer to me. And I turn and take him in—his T-shirt wrinkled, his eyes glassy, pillow marks lining his face. My favorite face. I reach over and touch it.

“You fell asleep on the couch?” I ask.

“I think maybe.”

“Just maybe?”

He leans into my fingers, giving me a smile. So happy, it seems, just to share that smile, for an honest moment of connection.

“How did it go?” he says. “At Windbreak?”

“Well. I’m starting to think that maybe Sam is right.”

“Really?” he says.

I nod, something solidifying, now that I’m saying it out loud to him.

“I know you think that it’s just my grief talking.”

“I wouldn’t say that…”

“What would you say?”

“I think that you’re doing what you need to do. Figuring out what you need to figure out.” He pauses, lowers his already low voice. “What are you figuring out?”

I’m figuring out that my father may have been hiding something. And I’m trying to understand how that coalesces with strange phone calls, on a phone that is now missing, and a mysterious jogger who could be in possession of it. And, you know, the rest of the story.

I’m figuring out that there is a reason I keep picturing the moment before my father went over the edge. In none of the scenarios do I think he was there alone.

I look at Jack and don’t say any of that. I offer only the part I don’t need to figure out. The part I know for sure.

“I was a pretty lousy daughter at the end,” I say.

“Nora…” he says. Soft. Kind. He holds on to my gaze, as if promising me the opposite is true, and I fight the tears loading up in my eyes.

But he doesn’t argue. He doesn’t try to convince me that I’m wrong. Instead, he moves closer to me—his leg against my leg, his shoulder against mine, his hand reaching behind my back to hold my head, his fingers strong and steadying.

I can feel it. I can feel it beneath his fingers, pulsating, like a heartbeat. The soft little bug of a thing. This soft little bug that lives between us. A living, breathing reminder that we belong to each other.

I flinch against it, against the intensity of his touch, before I even know that I’m doing it. It’s primal, something in me needing to shut that kind of closeness all the way down. Something in me shutting down.

Jack feels it and reacts, pulls his hand back, almost in an apology. This is when my phone buzzes again, ELLIOT coming up again on the caller ID.

I toss it in my bag, push it away from us. “I thought I shut that off,” I say.

Jack offers a small laugh.

“No,” he says. “Sure.”

He moves back, away from me. But he holds my gaze for another moment, a short and terrible standoff. It’s worse than if he just called me out. Aren’t I begging him to call me out for the phone call, for the distancing, for what I’m giving away?

“Tell Elliot I say hello,” he says.

Then he stands up and heads back inside.

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