Page 69 of I'll Be Waiting

No response. My words settle, and I squirm under them. I might have been teasing, but there’s truth there, too. He hasn’t tried to talkto me. He’s talkedatme. Maybe that’s how it works. I can hear him, but he can’t hear me.

If Anton is passing along messages, rather than trying to communicate, what is he saying? Warning me? Or reassuring me? The ones from today are exactly what I’m hoping to hear, which makes me all the happier that those are the ones Jin also overheard.

So why does another, darker, possibility keep nudging at me?

I’ll be waiting.

Kneeling in the snow beside his dying body, I’d heard nothing but reassurance in those words.I’ll be on the other side, and I’ll be waiting for you.

But today, especially when Jin said them—he said he loves you, that he’s waiting—I heard something vaguely sinister.

I love you.

I’m waiting.

A reassurance? Or a threat?

I shake it off. That’s not Anton. It was never Anton.

Remember what he confessed to? Not at the end, but before? What he’d done?

A stupid teenage mistake, for which he’d suffered so much guilt. He couldn’t have foreseen the consequences, which really did have nothing to do with him.

Am I sure?

I’m struggling to make sense of the messages, half reassurances, half warnings. What if they’re all warnings?

How can “Everything’s okay” be a warning?

Even as I think that, I know the answer. They could be false reassurances.

Relax. Everything is okay. Stop worrying. Stop questioning. Stop protesting. Stop fighting.

Words parents use to control children who are refusing to do something. But they’re also words that can be used by anyone in a position of control.

Words from a man to a woman.

Words from a husband to a wife.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Stop this. I’m rewriting history. I have known controlling guys, and I ran the other way even if I suspected they didn’trealizethey were being controlling.

Anton never tried to control any part of my life. If I wanted advice, he was there, but otherwise, it was my business, my finances, my inheritance. Before we married, I told him about my parents’ trust fund, how anything left at my death reverted to Keith.

“As it should.”That’s what he said.

When I pressed, he’d only smiled, that crooked smile, a little self-conscious as he said, “I’m not exactly hard up for money, Nic. I might be a mathematician, but I have a sweet side gig.”

Stock-market analysis. He’d made a lot in the technology boom, taken his money out at exactly the right time, and invested it wisely.

“I’ll sign a prenup,” he says. “Just so it’s clear.”

“No, no.”

He pulls me to him in a kiss. “I’m making the call tomorrow.”

He’d insisted on a prenup, which said he would make no claim on the trust fund or any of my premarital assets. After the marriage, I quietly changed my will, giving half of my personal assets to him, the remainder to be split between my niece and nephew.

Insisting on a prenup in my favor wasnotthe behavior of a controlling man. It was not the behavior of a charming con artist who married a financially comfortable and chronically ill woman. Of course, I’d had to worry about that. But when Anton died, his entire estate went to me, because he’d written a new will, too, and I discovered how right he’d been about his personal finances. He absolutely had not needed my trust fund.

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