In Time With You

Chapter 1

Grandee always told me time was a fickle thing—a story assembled like a simple fairy tale to make people feel better about their world. To help them understand the unimaginable.

My cousin Linden and I would make a mistake or suffer a disappointment, and Grandee would tell us there were a hundred ways to change it. Nothing was permanent, not even the clock.

Every birthday or new year, when time was being marked and measured, she would say, “You’re not older or younger. You just are.”

I hated those sayings. Silly platitudes spoken over cups of tea that grew colder with each second or fires with their embers dying. Things that clearly marked time passing.

Grandee would sit in her chair, next to the large windows overlooking the green trees she’d planted to shade the house in the summer, and she’d knit or crochet.

I had seen her working on her blanket for as long as I could remember, each of her stitches placed with care as her weathered hands pulled against soft yarn, gently folding it into loops and knots.

She was odd.

It was what the neighbors whispered about her when they thought she couldn’t hear them. They said it with affection. But when you’re young, everything different feels embarrassing.

And there was already so much considered peculiar about us. Two girls, cousins, being raised by their grandmother, who kept pet sheep and spoke in riddles. With mothers gone on adventures while the two of them waited for their turn.

In that way, the town thought about us like we thought about time. Transient. Temporary.

But even though the town didn’t know what to do with us, Grandee always did.

On particularly hard days, she would send us out with the sheep to treat and dye wool.

“Time is like these colors. It changes and bleeds and blends. Don’t let today’s color seep into tomorrow.”

When I would try to grab the black, she would pull it from my hands and shake her head. Black stole all the energy from a room.

It was a shade that hid things.

I would roll my eyes as I poured blues and purples over clean fleece. The dyes I felt most like in my heart.

“A fixed color,” Grandee would cluck as she watched.

She always said things like this. Mutable. Cardinal. Fixed. As if the hues of my dye were a tarot that could tell her a truth that even I didn’t know.

She would hand me the yellow with the explanation that a little sunshine would help. It was cardinal, after all. A young and fiery thing that burned through anything it didn’t like.

I would tell her that yellow was just a color, and colors didn’t have feelings.

And she would just shrug and say one day everything in my world would turn to colors, and I would finally understand.

But I don’t think Grandee meant like this. Not like today.

A bright blue sky hangs so low you could run your hands across it. The soft morning sun makes everything seem a little dreamy and golden. There isn’t a cloud above the lush green grass.

And a black shiny casket sits a few dozen yards away.

These are the colors of the day a person buries their boyfriend.

“Are you ready?” Linden asks me from the driver’s seat of the car she borrowed from our grandmother.

It smells like the lilac perfume Grandee wears and worn-in leather.

There’s a layer of dust on the console, and I remember a time when Linny and I would draw our initials in it.

Instead of answering, I look down at the skirt I’m wearing.

It’s black.

What a stupid fucking color.

As an artist, I shouldn’t hate any color; they all serve a purpose. But I do. I hate this one. And not for the reasons Grandee always vowed—that it hides things—but because it’s a color that takes.

It took my heart.

It took my happiness.

It took Carter.

Black is the color of his coffin. Of the suit he’s wearing to be buried in. Of the future I had imagined for the two of us.

Linden sighs in the seat next to me as two guys from our university walk past with a massive bouquet of white flowers.

I add white to the list of colors that can absolutely get fucked.

“You don’t have to get out,” Linden says. But she sounds disappointed, like she really wants me to. “If you wanna stay in the car, you can. No one will…”

She trails off because she’s wrong, and she knows it. Everyone will. Everyone will wonder why I’m not there. They’ll add it to the list of things they whisper behind my back. The accusations they think I can’t hear. The question. The only one that really matters.

What happened?

They don’t realize I’ve been asking myself a question, too.

Was it my fault?

Carter’s hand slipping from mine.

“Open your eyes, Nieve.”

It doesn’t matter how many nightmares I have or how many times I try to remember those last moments with him—I can’t seem to recall what happened. My mind is a void, nothing but …

Black.

So, no. I don’t want to get out of the car, but I will.

I deserve whatever happens next.

I hate that today, of all days, is beautiful like this. As if the universe is mocking the ache in my soul and the guilt in my veins.

Outside, more people are dressed in black. They move down the manicured lawn with light steps, as if they know they’re walking on top of the dead. They dodge gray headstones rising from the earth, like with one wrong step, they’ll end up buried themselves.

Buried under the dirt to rot. Just like all the other loved ones, with hands that they once held, eyes that they used to look into, lips that they kissed—

“Nieve.”

I wonder if Carter will get a giant headstone. Maybe a gaudy one with a picture of him frozen in time, etched into the marble next to a Bible verse.

“Nieve.”

God, he would hate that.

“I need a minute,” I tell Linden, not willing to leave my thoughts yet.

For the past two weeks, I’ve tried to remember the last words Carter said to me. What were my last words to him? Were they I love you? Were they something with bite, something cruel?

Why can’t I remember?

That’s the kind of thing people talk about when someone dies. Their last words. Last moments. But all I have are text messages in the group chat with our friends.

I go back and read them sometimes. Just a series of benign messages where the five of us made jokes and gave silly updates about nothing. Sometimes they were meltdowns about school or dates or life. Things that felt so big at the time, and now … now they feel like they happened in another life.

Nieve’s exhibit at three. Don’t be late. That means you too Max.

We never made it to the exhibit. Carter was on his way to the hospital by two.

“Nieve. If we don’t go now, we might miss it.”

The people in black are huddled in a circle on the grass, but instead of opening the door, I stare down at my shoes. Red. Carter’s favorite color. I hated these shoes. He loves them. Loved.

Linden’s bright blond hair is tied in a tight bun at the base of her neck, and we both wear a bracelet of braided yarn in gold and white that Grandee tied around our wrists before we left the house.

“I just … need another second.”

Linden doesn’t push or remind me that all she’s done is give me another. Another second, moment, day, week. She sits quietly, waiting for me to tell her what to do next. To listen, to talk, to cry, to make a joke. Since Carter died, all people do is wait to see which mask they should wear with me.

I close my eyes and see a flash of light through water—hands pulling me as I struggle. It fills my vision and my throat tightens.

Open your eyes, Nieve.

I do, and push open the car door and step outside, slamming it closed behind me, not because I’m mad but because it feels good to control at least one thing in my life.

The graveside ceremony has already started, so we walk silently toward the muffled words of the priest. We stand in the back, hoping to blend into the nothing that is a sea of people who offer us cautious smiles.

They’re all asking themselves the same question: Why is Carter’s girlfriend not with the family?

My stomach twists when I look in the direction of his mom and dad.

The black coffin is draped with a cascade of white flowers. I can smell them from here. The scent of regret and sorrow.

Honeysuckle.

There are so many people from our college here. Guys from the Inheritance Committee Carter was the president of, the whole staff at the library where he volunteered, and what appears to be every person from his church.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes. But when I do, I feel Carter’s hand slipping from mine.

Open your eyes, Nieve.

My lashes flutter apart.

There’s a green pop-up tent where Carter’s family sits on plastic folding chairs provided by the funeral home.

His sister, dressed in black and wearing no makeup, picks apart the tissue in her hands.

She has the same golden-blond hair Carter did, the same high cheekbones.

His mother and father lean into each other.

Carter’s dad has his arm around his wife.

A girl I’ve never seen before, with long dark hair, sits with the family, holding a sprig of honeysuckle.

His grandmother and great-grandmother clutch at the red handkerchiefs they had embroidered with Carter’s initials.

CHAD III

He would have thought that was hilarious.

I wonder if they’re curious where I am or if they’re relieved that I’m not there. The last time I saw Carter’s mom was at the hospital, when she held my hand and told me that this is how he would have wanted it.

But how can Carter want something if he’s dead?

Heads are bent down, eyes cast in the same direction. A few brave souls stare at the priest, who speaks about a valley and death.

Except one person.

Max Emerson stands at the back of the tent, behind the family. His hand rests on Carter’s sister’s chair, and his dark brows pull low into a deep frown, his gaze focusing on me.

Even from here, his green eyes look brighter than normal, something I’ve come to understand happens when he’s been crying. A flash of memory finds me. Of him covered in river water and tears. Green eyes electric. The list of things I wish I didn’t know about Max is now infinite.

Where Carter was light and golden, Max is dark and deep. I don’t need to be close to him to know what his voice sounds like—low and angry. It’s how he always speaks to me. Even before I was the one to blame for Carter’s death.

Linden slips her hand into mine, and I look over at her. She’s staring back at Max as if he’s the problem. But everyone knows he’s not. I am. I’m the problem.

We listen as the priest commits Carter’s body to the ground. Tells us that this isn’t the end. That Carter is still here with us. He will always be with us. The priest reads several Bible verses, and then …

It’s over.

People murmur to each other as they start to leave, like speaking louder will wake the ghosts of the dead. We move closer to the grave with slow steps even as everyone else walks away. But I stay. I’m going to stay until the moment he’s in the ground and gone.

Carter’s hand slipping from mine.

“Open your eyes, Nieve.”

The sound of the wheels turning and squeaking as they lower Carter’s casket into the ground grates across my skin, and I hold my breath until it stops.

Linden plucks a rose from one of the enormous bouquets nearby and wraps a dark indigo thread around the stem before tossing it on top of the casket.

My teeth press against each other. Even here, Grandee’s superstitions are following me.

“Why did you do that?” I ask.

But Linden shrugs and ignores my tone. “I can say goodbye however I want.”

I wonder what the indigo thread means.

I wonder if she even knows.

The sun sits in the middle of the sky now, and most of the mourners are gone.

My cousin stands at the rear of our car, waiting, and Carter’s family has long since left.

A man in a white polo with the name of the funeral home stitched over his heart stands to the side. He wants to finish up and go home.

But there is one final thing I need to do.

I take off my red shoes and toss them into the grave.

They thud onto his casket, and I frown. Why did I do that?

But for some reason, it feels right. Giving Carter back the shoes he gave me on Valentine’s Day.

I will bury the girl who wore those shoes with the boy who gave them to her.

My bare feet walk back across the soft grass, and when I look up, I expect to see Linden. But instead, it’s Carter’s sister, Aubrey. She walks over to me, her eyes puffy and red.

“Nieve.” The way she says my name sounds nervous.

In the split second before she continues, I imagine all the terrible things she could say to me.

This is your fault.

It should have been you.

You don’t deserve to live.

“Are you coming back to the house?”

I feel the question on my face and imagine my brows scrunched as I process what she’s asked. “I don’t think I—”

She doesn’t even give me a second to finish my sentence fully. “Please come.” Aubrey steps backward like she’s surprised at her own eagerness. “I—” She takes a deep breath. “I want you to be there.”

Her eyes are wide, and I can’t help but think about the Aubrey I knew before. The one who would follow Carter and me out to the pool so she could talk about boys. The one who was nervous about her dress for her first formal. An Aubrey who laughed so hard she snorted.

That girl doesn’t seem to live inside the one before me anymore.

And I hate that.

Standing by a silver BMW is Max. His hip rests against the driver’s-side door, and even though he’s wearing dark sunglasses, I can tell he’s watching us.

Me.

I bite my lip. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

Her brows come together, and I feel Linden step closer—protecting me. “It’s not your fault.”

Aubrey says it so simply. So sure.

Open your eyes, Nieve.

But she’s wrong.