Chapter 8
Grief sat heavily on my chest, weighing me down so it felt nearly impossible to climb from Nate’s bed. As soon as I set foot outside the apartment, it would mean that it was all real. Shadow monsters and Mrs. Byrne’s death would be more than a nightmare. The supernatural would be real.
So I stayed in bed. Even as Nate left to go and make arrangements for the funeral, I stayed in bed. He brought me food that I ignored, and water, which he watched me drink, standing over me and muttering about staying hydrated.
He was gone now, and I had to pee. Grabbing my stomach, I shuffle-rolled from beneath the blankets. I grumbled at the babies for sitting right on my bladder even as I stroked my belly soothingly. It was odd how quickly I’d no longer felt alone.
I was still scared. Petrified, actually. Dusk was starting to settle, and I hoped that Nate returned soon, even though it made me feel like a complete chicken shit. Apparently, I was going to develop a phobia of the dark at the grand old age of twenty-two. Every shadow now seemed more ominous, and I only felt slightly guilty as I flicked on every single light switch between the bedroom and the bathroom.
Much like my apartment, there was only an open-plan living room and kitchen, then a bathroom and bedroom side by side. I stepped out into the living room, and my eyes snagged immediately on the giant ax hanging on the wall, looking like a normal ax that you might use at a renaissance festival, or LARPing. It wasn’t a beacon of glowing light, though if I concentrated, I could almost imagine a hum of power emitting from the etched blade.
Averting my eyes, I hurried to the bathroom. After relieving myself, I stared in the mirror. I looked like crap. My eyes were red-rimmed and sunken. My hair was lank around my face, a rat’s nest forming on the back of my head from tossing and turning.
I looked like absolute shit, but I didn’t care, because Mrs. B was dead, and it was kind of my fault. I quickly splashed water on my face before I started crying again.
Hearing the front door open, I froze. I didn’t breathe, my hands hovering over the sink as I waited, my heart pounding in my chest. What if it was back?
“Wren?” Nate called, and I didn’t miss the panic in his voice. Apparently, last night’s attack had shaken us both.
“In here.” I moved back toward the living room in time to catch the relief on Nate’s face.
“Are you doing okay?” he asked softly, moving toward me as his eyes ran over my body repeatedly, looking for injuries or illness, or something that only he could see.
Shrugging, I sat down on his couch. “Okay is relative.”
He gave a tight nod and walked into the kitchen, pulling out a plate of sandwiches from the fridge, covered by plastic wrap. “You need to eat now.”
It wasn’t a request anymore. Apparently, now that I was out of the fetal position, he was going to shuck at least one of the kid gloves.
He dropped the plate in front of me on the coffee table, and I felt my stomach rumble. I was hungry, even if the thought of eating made my stomach turn. But I sucked it up, taking a nibble of the first perfect triangle. It was chicken salad, and tasted like ash.
Swallowing hard, I gave him a grateful smile. “Thank you.” I chewed another mouthful, and then another, until that triangle was gone. Okay. I can do this. “How did… arrangements go?”
I couldn’t say the word funeral. Because that would mean she was gone and never coming back.
I watched his jaw flex. “Fine. It’s set for Friday.”
The ball of grief grew in my chest. “So soon.”
He nodded, sitting down beside me. “She was old, and it was clearly a heart attack.” A heart attack caused by coming face to maw with a monster. “I went and saw the lawyer. I was the only beneficiary of her will, but I told him to sign half the house over to you too.”
“What?” My eyes went wide as my brain tried to grapple with what he was saying.
“Zelda and I had been talking about it anyway before she died. It’s what she wanted. What we both wanted. She wanted you and the babies to always have a roof over your head. If you decide you want to leave Boston, I’ll buy out your half so you have something to start with. A nest egg.”
“Nate…” I didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have to do this, even if it was Mrs. B’s last wish. No one would have ever known. “I…” Fuck, I didn’t know what to say, but tears threatened to run down over my cheeks, no matter how vigorously I blinked them back. “Thank you.” I threw my arms around his waist and felt him stiffen slightly, before relaxing into the hug.
“It’s what she wanted,” he said dismissively, like he just hadn’t given me more security than I’d had since my parents died. But he didn’t let me go, just stroked my back as I cried silently against his chest.
It feltlike Mother Nature was taunting us on the day of Mrs. Byrne’s funeral. It was the most perfect, beautiful sunny day we’d had all month. It felt wrong. It should’ve been as gray and miserable as I felt. As the whole crowd behind me felt.
Dressed in black, I sat in the front row of the graveside service. Beside me, looking stoic, was Nate, the black button-up shirt he wore clinging tightly to his shoulders and setting off the tattoos that peeked above his collar. His beard was trimmed close to his jaw, and his eyes were covered with dark sunglasses.
It felt like everyone I knew in our tight-knit community had turned out for the funeral. The ladies from the church were all there. Rossi’s was closed for the day so the entire Rossi family could attend. Even Mr. Lunetta had come. There were former students from when Mrs. Byrne had been a teacher, her knitting circle, even the President of the Eire Society of Boston. It felt like everyone who’d ever crossed paths with her had come out to pay their respects.
The Catholic priest at the front of the crowd droned on about piousness and goodness, and the amount of people whose lives had been bettered by a true stalwart of the faith. He went on and on, and I could feel myself starting to burn under the heat of the midday sun.
Nate lifted one of his huge hands and held it above my head, sheltering me from a little of the heat. I looked over and smiled at him gratefully, even if it was a little soggy around the edges.
People stood up and spoke about their experiences with Mrs. Byrne, and I couldn’t help but smile through the tears. She’d helped Hal Wallers when he broke his hip falling down icy steps out the front of his house; she’d taken him food every single day for weeks. He described how she’d sat with him and watched Jeopardy! for hours, just to keep him company while he was bedbound.
Zia Maria talked about how Zelda—Mrs. Byrne, it really was weird for me to think of her as Zelda—had come over to drink wine with her when her youngest son enlisted and was sent off on his first tour of duty, then lit a candle for him every day until he returned.
Finally, it was my turn, and I waddled to the podium set up in front of all the folding chairs. There was a murmur in the crowd as they took in my pregnant belly, and I steeled my spine. I guess those people who hadn’t known about my pregnancy did now.
Clearing my throat, I looked out over the crowd. “Mrs. Byrne saved my life. A few times, actually. I remembered her from my childhood, a friendly face I’d sometimes see at my grandmother’s house when I went to visit, who’d always sneak me candy with a grin and a wink.” There was a low chuckle through the crowd.
“When my grandmother died, and my parents soon after, I was adrift and alone in the world, yet she didn’t hesitate to step up and throw me a lifeline. She stepped in to be my surrogate grandmother, without caring that taking on a teenager might be hard work. She gave me a space in her home, three meals a day when the idea of cooking for myself—of going on at all—seemed too hard. She was my lighthouse for so long, and I’m adrift once more without her.”
My voice broke, and I watched Nate shift in his chair, like he wanted to come and rescue me from this too. I held a hand up in his direction, keeping him in his seat.
“But even in death, she made sure I had a safe harbor, and that was just the kind of woman Zelda Byrne was. She was good down to her very core. She was giving, even to the detriment of herself. She was tough—so fucking tough—but she never let it make her bitter. She is a woman I admire, and still someone I’d like to make proud.” I looked down at the grave, her shiny wooden coffin glinting under the sun. “I’ll miss you, Mrs. B. I love you.”
I’m sorry.
With that, sobs shook my body, even as I tried to swallow them back. Nate stood, coming over to usher me back to my chair. The rest of the funeral slowly wrapped up, and as the priest committed her body to the earth, I began to build myself back up again, brick by brick.
The wake was going to be held at the church hall, catered by Mrs. Byrne’s bible group, but I had to wait until they lowered her into the ground and started covering her over before I could move. I was almost waiting for her to pop up from her casket and say, “Sweet Wren, you spoke beautifully, child.” Nate stayed by my side the whole time.
Finally, swallowing hard, I stood. I needed to move. To leave and go and pay my respects at the wake. People would expect me to be there.
“I’m okay,” I murmured as Nate gripped my elbow, though my shaky knees flew directly in the face of that statement. Merely grunting his disagreement, he wrapped an arm around my ever-expanding waist and ushered me up the small aisle between the chairs. The funeral directors stood at the end like gargoyles.
This day had dragged on, and all I wanted to do was go home and curl up in bed—well, Nate’s bed, because I was still too chicken to go back to my own—but I needed to show the proper respect first. Mrs. B deserved that from me. I’d drink a cup of tea or two, have a finger sandwich, then use pregnancy exhaustion as an excuse to leave early. Hell, it wouldn’t even be an excuse; I was exhausted.
But as we headed into the shade of the trees bordering the cemetery, I audibly groaned. Because there, standing beneath the trees, was my panicked ex-boyfriend.
“Fuck,” I swore beneath my breath, and Nate went tense beside me, his eyes darting around, looking for threats. However, there were no shadow monsters or anything else that oozed. There was just Thomas, who was a douche canoe, but not a monster.
“Is it mine?” he gasped out.
Had I mentioned he was really stupid too?
“Thomas, we broke up twelve months ago. Unless you’re the Messiah and can impregnate me with a thought, it seems unlikely, don’t you think?” I had the patience of a saint, really. How I’d managed to stay with this guy for three years was actually a real miracle. Call me Saint Wren, Patron Saint of Dumbasses.
Nate actually growled in Thomas’s direction, and Thomas gave him the side-eye. Obviously, he had no self-preservation skills either.
“Nate.”
“Thom-ass,” he replied. I was pretty sure he’d done it on purpose, though you couldn’t really tell with the slight lilt of his accent. I had a suspicion he played it up at times.
I let out a heavy sigh. “Why are you here, Thomas?”
He shrugged. “My mom told me about Mrs. B, and I wanted to pay my respects.”
Mrs. Byrne had never thought Thomas was right for me, mostly because she believed he was as stupid as a box of rocks and not half as useful. “Simple men want simple things, and you, my sweet Wren, deserve more than simple. You deserve someone who’ll give you the whole world.” That was what she’d told me when we broke up, and I had to admit, it had lessened the burn of the fact I’d caught him cheating on me.
Still, I reached out and squeezed his arm, ignoring the fact that Nate pressed me tighter to his side. “She would have appreciated that.” I dropped my voice. “How’s Ivan?”
I knew cheating was cheating, but there was something reassuring about the fact that he’d cheated on me with someone who could give him something I couldn’t. A hairy chest. And an equally hairy back.
Thomas looked around as if his mother might appear, like the vengeful old hag she was. He was still firmly in the closet. “He’s good. He sends his condolences.”
The silence stretched between the three of us. “We should go,” Nate muttered, and Thomas narrowed his eyes.
“Yeah, sure. Is it”—his eyes dropped to my stomach, then flicked back up to Nate disapprovingly—“yours?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
My denial and Nate’s affirmation melded together, and I whipped my head up to stare at him. The fuck?
My cheeks flushed pink as my eyes darted back to Thomas. “They aren’t yours, and I think that’s all that should matter to you, right?” I asked lightly. “I’ll be seeing you, Thomas.”
I strode off, forcing Nate to follow along, ignoring Thomas’s shouted, “They?!” as I made it to Nate’s truck. He held the door as I climbed in like an ungainly beluga whale, shutting the door softly behind me. Then he climbed in the driver’s side, buckled me in, and put the keys in the ignition, all the while not looking in my direction, which was kind of impressive.
And because he wasn’t stupid, he didn’t start the truck.
I turned to stare at him, my eyes trying to bore holes in his face. “And what the hell was that?”
He grunted and started the truck. Okay, maybe he was stupid. “You need a father for the babies so people will stop looking at you like a jezebel.”
I slow-blinked. Like, I could feel my eyelids flutter at the patriarchal bullshit of that statement. “Let them look, Nate. I don’t care.”
“I care. Makes me want to wring all their necks. Do it for their health, if not for your own reputation.”
I shook my head, like that would improve the crap spilling from his mouth. “You are unbelievable, you know that?”
I thought I might’ve seen his lips curl before he schooled his features back into his normal grumpy mask. “Thanks.”
“It wasn’t a compliment,” I huffed, crossing my arms over my chest. As we drove, I stared out the window, trying to squash the tiny bit of my heart that fluttered at the thought that Nate cared enough about me—about us—to claim my babies in public.