Page 26 of I'll Be Waiting

Jin slants a look my way. “Typical, right?”

“It is,” I say.

“Anyway, I’m freaked out, and I get to the restaurant, back into a spot, throw open my door… and smack into the door of a guy climbing out of his car. My fault—his door was already open. Now there’s a nice crease in the door of his little Beemer, and I look like the pickup-driving asshole who throws open his door without looking. I apologize, say I’m late to meet my partner’s sister, can we exchange info and I’ll cover the damage. I’m babbling, flustered and very aware I’m getting later by the second. Then he says ‘Oh, you must be Jin. I’m Anton. Nic’s boyfriend.’ Great. First time meeting Keith’s sister, and I make a bad impression on her boyfriend—aliteralimpression in his car door. But he just laughs about us both being late and in such a hurry that our doors collided, and what’s the chance, right? Starts joking that we should make it a bigger story like someone sideswiped him on the highway and—” He stops short. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“Go on,” I say with a reassuring smile. “I knew about the doors, but I’d like to hear the whole story.”

I’d like to hear it because it’s an angle Anton would never have given, where he’s the decent guy who tried to make a stranger feel better about an accident. It’s not that Anton didn’t want to be seen as a decent guy. Just that he’d never have taken credit. To him, it would sound like boasting.

I prompt, “Anton joked about pretending he’d been sideswiped on the highway.”

“And that I’d stopped to help him, which is why we were late.”

Even in his joking suggestion, Anton made someone else the hero. As much as I loved his humility, I love this even more—seeing him through the eyes of others.

Jin continues, “Of course, he just said our doors collided and joked about us both running late and being flustered. Then I met Nic, andshe was everything Libby said, and I decided I wanted to be part of this family, and if I had to marry Keith, then that seemed a relatively small price to pay for it.”

Jin glances at me with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his misted eyes. “That was my first glimpse of Anton, and it showed me who he was. I never got to know him as well as I did Nic, but I always expected there’d be time for that.”

He turns away, fingers drumming the table. When he looks back, he says, “Is that okay, as a memory? It’s a good one, but being a good one means it brings up…”

“The pain that he’s gone,” I murmur. “I still like hearing them and—”

Jin’s head swings left, and I stop short. He stares toward the living room before looking back at us.

“You didn’t hear that?” he says.

We all shake our heads.

“What was it, Jin?” Dr. Cirillo asks.

“I…” Jin’s gaze goes to me. “I thought I heard Anton. His laugh. But distant. Maybe just someone walking past outside?”

“That’s easy to check,” Dr. Cirillo says. “Let’s do that.”

We walk all the way to the lane, which ends at the house.

“No one’s out here,” Shania says. “And I doubt we’d have heard them anyway, with all the front windows shut. You said it was a laugh, Jin?”

“Anton’s laugh. It came from…”

Jin heads back inside to the breakfast nook, stands behind his chair, and shuts his eyes. Then he opens them and walks as if following an invisible trail. He ends up in the living room, near the sofa across from the fireplace.

“Over here,” he says. “Or this direction, at least. As if Anton were on the sofa, laughing at something.”

“Nicola?” Dr. Cirillo says. “Can you tell us where you think the earlier voice came from?”

This is exactly where it seemed to come from. This side of the room, on the sofa where Anton and I had curled up together every night, talking and… laughing.

“Could we be hearing echoes?” I say. Then I make a face. “Okay, that sounds even more far-fetched than ghosts. I was just thinking that Anton and I sat here a lot when we’d visit. Especially at night, with the fire going. Sharing a drink and talking and laughing.”

Dr. Cirillo rubs his short beard. “People talk about echoes. Sounds permeating a place. I’d call them memories, because they’re usually experienced by those who knew the deceased.”

“Like me.” I touch the back of the sofa. “Remembering that we used to sit here and talk, and then hearing him talking from here.”

“Only that doesn’t explain Jin’s experience,” Dr. Cirillo says. “Did you ever mention sitting here with Anton?”

Jin shakes his head. “She didn’t.”

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