Chapter 13: Six Years of Sundays

Caleb's POV

Josie's knees gave out, and I caught her against my chest.

She was shaking so hard I felt it in my own ribs.

"That was you," she said into my shirt. "The face in the car. That was real."

"It was real."

She pulled back and took my face in both hands, checking that I was solid.

"You kept saying stay awake," she said.

"You didn't."

I had not meant to say that.

She went very still, and I put my forehead against hers so she would not have to look at me.

In the last life I drove forty minutes with her head in my lap and a towel going dark under my hand.

She said my name wrong, and then right.

She said the four words, and her eyes closed, and the rest of the drive was only me talking.

I sat in the hospital lot until a nurse opened my car door and lifted her out of my arms.

Her family arrived after that.

Her mother stood in the corridor in a coat over her nightgown and asked a security guard who I was.

Her father told the police I was a sick man who had taken his daughter.

Bianca cried in a chair and said she couldn't help it, and nobody asked me anything.

The police kept me until morning.

My mother's lawyer got me out, and I stood at the back of the church two days later, because her mother had said I could not sit.

I do not remember dying, or sleeping, or anything after the grave.

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