Chapter 2

A month later, Sloane left the hospital. Ethan never once drove to the morgue.

He bought her a house in the suburbs, furnished it for her recovery, and invited their friends to celebrate.

I couldn't leave him. The moment I drifted too far, something drew me back — through walls if I let it, but never past him.

I had died with every reason to go, and death had decided I belonged to Ethan anyway.

At the party, Sloane leaned against him with one arm around his waist.

She was still playing the fragile patient, taking the drink someone handed her, letting them bring her a chair, as though every movement cost her something. Then he would bend to hear her, and she would smile up at him.

A friend asked whether anyone had heard from me.

Sloane lowered her glass.

"Ethan, don't." She glanced around at the guests. "You're still married. What does that make me? She'll be so upset if she hears about this."

He looked at the friend who had mentioned me. "Can we leave her out of it? Nothing good ever comes of bringing her up."

Then he took Sloane's hand and spoke loudly enough for the people across the room to hear.

"Sloane is the only woman I love. Stop bringing her up. She has nothing to do with us."

The conversations nearest them stopped.

No one corrected him. No one mentioned that the woman he had just written off was the one he had married.

I had imagined him grieving when he learned I was gone. Now I wondered whether he would even need time to adjust.

He was already introducing the life he wanted, and there was no place for me in it.

Sloane rested her head on his shoulder. He bent to whisper something that made her laugh.

I had heard that laugh before. It belonged to a version of my life I still measured everything against.

Our families used to call us childhood sweethearts. At sixteen, I believed them.

Ethan had told me he liked me once, offhand, the way you'd mention the weather — and I spent years reading weight into how he'd said it.

Then he met Sloane in college. The future I had built around that conversation belonged to someone else.

I stepped back and played the friend who was happy to hear about his girlfriend.

When Sloane went abroad and broke up with him, he began drinking too much, and one night he drank in the wrong place.

A group of men cornered him. I found him hurt and barely able to fight back.

I screamed, threw a bottle, made enough noise to pull them off him.

For a while, I wasn't sure either of us would make it out.

Afterward, he was bleeding badly. He held on to my hand until he could barely keep his eyes open.

"I'll take care of you, Mara," he told me. "I won't let you down. I promise."

He passed out before I could answer.

When he recovered, he didn't pretend he had forgotten. He made time for me. He listened. He noticed when I was unhappy. I let myself trust him.

By the time we married, I believed he had chosen me freely, and for a while we were happy.

That was the man I kept waiting for. Not some version I had invented — the one who had once come home glad to see me.

Sloane returned and said illness had been the reason she left.

Ethan stopped resenting her for going. Soon he was staying out late to see her. Then there were nights when he didn't come back at all.

Even when he sat across from me, we talked about her.

She had managed a meal. She was tired. She had another appointment. I learned more about Sloane's days than I did about my husband's.

I told myself she was sick and he was worried. If I could be patient, if I didn't make him choose, we might get through it.

At her party, I watched him brush his lips against her ear.

I remembered lying awake for hours, waiting for him to touch me like that.

I had died still waiting.