Chapter 28
Then—Ellery
Thank goodness for Dante.
He stayed, silent and calm and anticipating anything she might need.
After a week, Ellery emerged from her bedroom, fed for the last several days on nibbles of sandwiches and macaroni and cheese and steaming bowls of soup he brought her on trays. Her appetite wasn’t the best, but at least she was vertical and not wrapped in a mountain of bedsheets.
They held the memorial for her family at sunset in Malibu. When she couldn’t finish her eulogy, Dante held her while Selene and Lorraine read through her notes.
Movement hurt. Breathing hurt. Her nerves tingled constantly with reminders of the people she would never see again. She lay in bed, curled under the covers, and couldn’t sleep.
Jasper sat in the corner of her bedroom like a velveteen rabbit, a discarded reminder of painful times.
She wanted to burn him and see whether it would bring her family back to her.
It will get easier, said the counselor Logan sent to the house. Day by day.
Whereas Dante was all calm strength, Logan was a walking checklist. Arrange funeral, call counselor, send flowers to house.
Not that she would admit it to Dante, because she saw the way his eyes narrowed when the Logan-sent flower delivery or Instacart driver appeared, but she was grateful.
There was an adult in charge. There was someone she could call with a problem.
It was a relief not to have to make all the decisions on her own.
Because she was on her own. All on her own.
She couldn’t write. She couldn’t sing. At night she heard Dante and Selene and Lorraine in the living room, keeping their voices low. They were a unit now. They had families.
She wondered whether Dante understood. He never told her she had to get up.
He never told her to move on. He sat with her, sitting on the floor beside her bed, playing music until she couldn’t stand it any longer.
She would find him sleeping there, covered by his sweatshirt, ear buds clutched in his hand.
He didn’t show her, likely because she could barely bring herself to talk, but she could see the faint outlines of new tattoos peeking from underneath his sleeve.
Sometimes when she couldn’t sleep, she imagined what he would have painted on his body.
She imagined the tattoo needle puncturing her own skin, tracing the lines of her family’s name along white-capped, cerulean waves.
Then, late one moonless night when she awoke with Dante holding her, not even aware he had come to bed because she was crying so hard, a song whispered in her ear.