Page 62 of It's Holy Matrimony, Baby

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Love is finding a man who shoulders your fears

Doesn’t discount your worries

And makes you want to be a better person

BECK

“Two calls in a month. This must be some kind of record,” Dash mutters down the phone. In the background I can hear a woman’s voice asking if he knows where her underwear went. “Sorry, half pint, give me a sec.” He covers the phone and his voice is muffled as he says, “No fucking clue.”

“Who is that?” I ask when the sound clears.

“No one,” he tells me. Bedsprings squeak. “What do you need help with this time? Got some more furniture you need to put together?”

“N-no.” I’m not sure how to broach what I need to ask him. Jessie is such a sore spot for him. Talking about her... well, he hasn’t, not since she passed. If anything it’s almost as though she never existed. So asking him whether there was any sign of the curse in the days and weeks leading up to her death isn’t a conversation either of us want to have. But I need to know that the trees aren’t a warning that my world is about to crumble.

“Coffee?” the woman asks.

“There’s a café on the corner. You can get a great quality cup there.”

“Should I get bagels too?” she asks.

“No. Actually. This is kind of an important conversation. How about I give you a call later in the week?”

“You don’t have coffee?” I ask. He always has coffee. Always. He never doesn’t have coffee in his kitchen. He might as well attach a drip, he consumes that much caffeine.

A door shuts. “Of course I have coffee. Now what did you say you needed?”

“I... Were there any signs before...”

“Out with it, half pint,” he grumbles, mucking around in his kitchen. I can hear cupboard doors shutting, cutlery rattling, the beeping from the fridge because he’s left the door open.

“The curse. Are there signs that everything is about to go to hell?” I cross my fingers behind my back. Please tell me there aren’t. I don’t want to leave. But I can’t stay if it’s going to make things worse. “In the weeks before, was there anything to suggest that the curse was real?”

“You want to know if I knew Jessie was dying?” His voice drops dangerously low and hollow. “Is that what you’re asking me?”

“I’m asking you whether anything weird happened?” Like trees falling down. “Anything that made you wonder.”

“The curse isn’t real,” he snarls. “It’s our family’s fucking horror story to keep from getting hurt. How can you be so hung up on statistics and the science of love and not get that?”

“I don’t want to believe in it,” I whisper. “I don’t, but I’m scared anyway.”

“You’re scared?” he asks, softening. “How come? What’s going on?”

I fill him in. Tell him about how I married a stranger in Vegas. How I’m now living with this guy as man and wife. That all the knowledge in the world didn’t keep me from developing feelings for Nox. “I think I might l—”

“Don’t say it,” he interrupts. “Don’t you dare say the L.O.V.E. word.”

“Why? Is that something to do with the curse?”

“No,” he says. “It’d just be weird. You never use that word except with Liv. I’m not sure I’d be able to handle it.”

“Okay, but still, I think I might. And I can’t remember there being any warning that something was about to go wrong before the accident. You know my memory has been patchy ever since—”

“There weren’t any warnings or signs or whatever you want to call them. With you or with Jessie. There was nothing to warn us at all. The accident happened so quickly. And with Jessie it crept up on us. But it wasn’t because we’re cursed, Beck. It was just life.”

“All these trees fell over,” I tell him. “Nox has an orange grove. So many trees. And a storm came through a couple nights ago. The wind flattened half the trees. Lightning struck at least one other. It was so destructive.”

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