Chapter 19
Pauline
The morning of my grandmother’s funeral, I woke up and forgot she was dead.
Just for a second. That brief, cruel moment between sleep and consciousness where your brain hasn’t caught up to reality yet. I reached for my phone thinking I should call her and know how her physical therapy was going.
Then I remembered.
The grief hit physically—sudden, devastating, stealing the air from my lungs. I curled into myself, pressing my face into the pillow, and the sound that came out of me didn’t feel human. It felt animal. Primitive. The kind of pain that existed before language.
Jack’s arms came around me before I’d even registered he was awake. He didn’t say anything. He just held me while I broke, his hand cradling the back of my head, his breathing steady against my ear like an anchor.
I don’t know how long I cried. Long enough that my throat went raw. Until the pillow was soaked, my face swollen, my body aching from the force of it.
When I finally went quiet, Jack’s hand moved to my face, his thumb tracing my cheekbone.
“You’ll be fine,” he said quietly. “It’s going to be fine,”
“She’s going under, Jack.” My voice broke in a sob, “It’s real. She died. It’s real, she’s truly gone,” My eyes burned with more tears while he pulled me into his arms, cradling me as the grief hit in harder waves.
The funeral was exactly what my grandmother would have approved of.
Small. Simple. Just the people from her church—the ones who’d known her for decades, who’d sat beside her in those wooden pews every Sunday, who’d brought casseroles when my parents died and had watched me grow up in the space between hymns.
I stood at the front of the church in a black dress I’d bought the day before because I didn’t own funeral clothes, and I looked at the casket with its single spray of white roses—her favorite, nothing excessive—and thought about how much I already missed her.
Pastor Williams spoke about faith and service and a woman who’d lived her values instead of just talking about them.
He told the story about how she’d organized the church food drive for fifteen years running, how she’d never missed a bake sale, how she’d quietly paid for three different families’ groceries when times were hard and never wanted credit for it.
The church ladies sang “Amazing Grace”— off-key in places, but earnest. Real. The kind of music my grandmother had loved—nothing polished or perfect, just honest voices raised together.
Jack stood beside me. His hand found mine and held on, and I gripped back hard enough that I probably hurt him. He didn’t let go.
Claudette was in the second row with Michael. Her eyes were gentle when they met mine, and when the service ended and people started filing out, she was at my side immediately.
“Come here,” she said, and pulled me into a hug that somehow felt like the first real thing that had happened all day.
I held onto her—my best friend, my sister in everything but blood—and let myself take comfort in her warmth.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered against my hair. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“I know.”
“She loved you so much.”
“I know that too.”
We stood there holding each other while people moved around us, and when we finally pulled apart, Claudette’s eyes were red but her voice was steady.
“If you want company, I can always come over,” she said. I smiled faintly at that,
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,”
Her eyes flicked briefly to Jack when I said that, then she squeezed my hand once before Michael guided her toward the exit.
Jack’s hand found the small of my back, warm and steady, and I leaned into him without thinking about it.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
“No. But I will be.”
He kissed my temple. “Yeah. You will be.”
The weeks after were a blur of paperwork, phone calls, and the horrible logistics of death. Closing accounts. Canceling subscriptions. Sorting through a lifetime of accumulated things and deciding what mattered enough to keep.
Jack helped with all of it. Sat with me while I went through boxes of photos.
Held my hand while I signed documents that made everything feel terrifyingly final.
Made me eat when grief made food taste like nothing, made me sleep when exhaustion finally won over the anxiety that kept me waking at 3 AM convinced I’d forgotten something important.
There were good days. Days when I could think about her without crying, when memories made me smile instead of breaking me open. Days when I could focus on something other than the gaping absence in my life.
And there were bad days. Days when grief ambushed me in the grocery store because I saw her favorite cereal.
Days when I called her number just to hear her voicemail, just to remember what her voice sounded like.
Days when the unfairness of it—that she’d survived poverty and loss and raising a child alone only to die from something as cruel as a stroke—made me so angry I couldn’t breathe.
The grief would never be forgotten—perhaps it would never fully heal. I would always need my grandma. Some nights I fell asleep with the small comfort that her pain was finally over, and she would be at peace forever.
**Three Months Later**
I woke up that morning to find an email from Simon Tucker sitting in my inbox.
I blinked at it. Then blinked again. Then sat up so fast I nearly dropped my phone.
Simon Tucker didn’t do interviews. I’d sent him several requests over the past months—and gotten nothing back except one very polite email from his assistant saying Mr. Tucker wasn’t available for press opportunities at this time.
The man was a fortress. Legendary for it.
And now this:
Ms. Wells,
I understand you’ve been interested in speaking with me about my family. I’m willing to do an interview—on my terms, with my wife present, and with my approval before publication.
Let me know if this works for you.
—Simon Tucker
I got out of bed so fast the world spun and headed straight to Jack’s study.
He was at his desk, laptop open, reading something that had his forehead creasing slightly.
He looked up when I entered, eyebrows rising. “Everything okay?”
“Did you do this?”
“Good morning to you too.” He smirked.
“Jack. What did you do?!”
“I’m going to need more context,” he said, though the satisfied curve of his mouth told me he knew exactly what.
I turned my phone around, showed him the email.
“Jack. He just agreed to the interview,”
His smile spread wider “Did he? I may have mentioned to Simon that you were working on a story.” He shrugged.
“You ‘may have mentioned’?”
“Jack.”
“What? I can’t have conversations with my friends?” He was definitely grinning now. Full-blown, completely unapologetic. “Simon asked how you were doing. I told him you were working on something important and that he should talk to you.”
“That’s it? You just asked?”
“I suggested. Persuasively.” He said. “But he made his own decision. I don’t control Simon Tucker.”
Before I could respond, he caught my wrist and tugged me forward, pulling me down onto his lap. I landed with an undignified sound, one hand bracing against his chest.
“What are you—”
“You know,” he said, voice dropping lower, “if you really want to thank me, I can think of several ways you could show your appreciation.”
“Oh really?” I arched a brow, all innocence.
“Really.” His hand slid up my thigh. “We could start with you taking off that shirt. My shirt, technically, which you stole again.”
“I didn’t steal it. You left it on my side of the bed.”
“Your side of the bed.” He looked extremely pleased about that phrase. “I like the sound of that.”
“Focus. You were saying—.”
“Oh. Yes. I was thinking you could thank me thoroughly. Maybe with significantly fewer clothes than you’re currently wearing.”
I swatted his shoulder, laughing despite myself. “Your thoughts are never clean, are they?”
“With you, no.”
He caught my face and kissed me—quick but thorough, stealing my breath. When he released me, he was grinning. “There. That’s my payment for practically groveling to Simon Tucker.”
“You did not grovel.”
“I absolutely groveled. Do you know how hard it is to convince Simon to do anything he doesn’t want to do? The man is infuriatingly stubborn.”
I stared at him, my eyes misting. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“Go prepare your questions.” He ran his fingers through my hair gently. “And eat breakfast. You’re going to need your energy for eviscerating Simon with your brilliant journalism.”
“I’m not going to eviscerate him.”
“You absolutely are. That’s what you do. You ask nice questions that sound harmless and then three questions later people realize they’ve told you their entire life story.” He turned me around and gave me a gentle push toward the door. “It’s your superpower.”
I walked back to the home library—my books, my chaos—and sat down at my desk with my heart hammering with an excitement I hadn’t felt in a long time.
This was it. This was the story that could change everything.
I pulled up a blank document and started typing questions, and for the first time in months, I felt like myself again.
The interview was scheduled for the following week. Tucker’s office, not his home. Hannah Pierce—now Hannah Tucker—would be there. No recording devices, just notes. One hour maximum.
I showed up fifteen minutes early, nerves fizzing under my skin. This was huge. The kind of story that could launch me from “junior reporter” to “journalist people actually knew.”
No pressure.
A receptionist led me to a conference room—glass walls, a table that could seat twelve but was set for four.
Simon Tucker walked in exactly on time. Tall. Dark-haired. The kind of presence that made people notice when he entered rooms. Beside him was Hannah—blonde, elegant, with sharp eyes that assessed me in about three seconds.
“Ms. Wells.” Simon shook my hand. Firm grip. “Thank you for being flexible with the terms.”