Chapter 37 | He is Gone
The news did not come with trumpets or shouting. It came with a knock—quick taps at the door while the sun was still low.
I had flour on my hands. The dough sat covered beside the hearth, swelling slowly beneath the cloth. Lavi was outside. The rows had become more his than mine these days, and he carried them like it.
When I opened the door, it was not one of our neighbors.
It was John.
Dust clung to his robe. His hair hung loose, unbound, as though he had ridden without stopping. He looked taller than I remembered. Or perhaps it was sorrow that stretched him.
He did not smile. He did not say peace.
“Talia,” he said.
My name broke in his mouth.
The small bowl slipped from my hands and struck the floor. I did not hear it shatter. I only saw the white bloom of flour rise like smoke between us.
My body knew before my mind would allow it.
“No,” I said.
John swallowed. His eyes were red, but no tears fell. “It was done quickly. By order of Herod.”
The world did not tilt. The sky did not tear.
The sun still warmed the stones. A bird called from the fig tree. The smell of baking bread clung stubbornly to the air.
“James,” I whispered.
John nodded once. “With the sword.”
The word landed clean.
Too clean.
I gripped the doorframe. The wood bit into my palm. Outside, the workers were shouting about the weather, about the sky, about whether rain would hold off.
Life continued its small betrayals.
“They wanted to make an example,” John said. His voice had gone hoarse. “Peter has been taken as well. He is in prison.”
Of course he is.
Thunder does not strike only once.
I forced my mouth to move. “Did he—” My voice failed. I tried again. “Was he alone?”
John shook his head. “No. He was not afraid.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “He is so strong. So brave.” Then I corrected myself with a gasp of tears. “Was.”
I felt myself slipping into grief, but then something sharper rose instead.
“Where is his body?” I asked.
The question startled him. For a moment he simply stared, the thought still without shape or voice.
“They released his body before sunset,” John said quietly. “We saw to it.”
That word—body—pierced as deep as the sword.
“Where?” I demanded, though I did not know what I meant by it. A tomb. A stone. A place to fall.
“In Jerusalem,” he said. “With honor. As is right.”
Honor.
I pressed my hand to my mouth to keep the sound from escaping.
John stepped forward then, perhaps to steady me, but stopped himself. We were two people standing on the edge of something too large to touch.
“He spoke His Name,” John said. “Until the end.”
Of course he did. And even with my heart in pieces, love rose up—truer, fiercer than before. James had been thunder and flame, all holy grit and unshaken devotion. He had been what a man, a husband, a servant of God ought to be.
And he had died for what he believed.
I drew in a breath and stood a little taller. “I could not be more proud to call him my husband.”
“Aye,” John said, voice rough. “And I—brother.”
A quiet fell between us. Not only brother and sister bound by James, but brother and sister in Christ—both of us soaked through with anguish and something that felt like reverence. Pride, too. The strange, aching gratitude of knowing he was with our Lord once again.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
John bowed his head. When he lifted it, he looked older than the morning.
It wasn’t age, it was grief.
I felt it too. It was there. Not fully, not yet, but I could feel it pressing in—like water against a door not meant to hold it, like the first pull of a current around my ankles, gentle enough to ignore and yet strong enough to notice.
He is gone.
The thought came unbidden, and I pushed it away at once.
No. I wouldn’t let it in. Not here. Not now. If I did, it would swallow everything with it.
My grip tightened on the doorframe, the wood biting into my palm, grounding me in something solid, something present.
I fixed my attention on it—the grain beneath my fingers, the dust clinging to John’s robe, the faint sounds from the yard beyond the wall.
Small things. Unchanged things. Things that had not yet been touched by this.
Because if I looked directly at it—if I allowed myself to see the empty space where James should be—
I would not survive it.
My breath came shallow, uneven. I forced it deeper.
In. Out. Again.
I could do this. I had always done this. Hold steady. Keep moving. Do what must be done.
That was strength. That was survival.
But the current pressed harder now—not rushing, but strong. Patient. Waiting. I could feel it gathering beneath the surface, rising inch by inch, testing the edges of me.
He is gone.
This time it did not pass so quickly.
My chest tightened, something inside it giving way. I swallowed hard and straightened, forcing my shoulders back, forcing breath into my lungs as though I could command my body into obedience.
Not yet.
I would stand. I would speak. I would keep the world from noticing the fracture running through it.
If only a little longer.
From the yard came Lavi’s voice, carrying across the rows as he called to one of the workers. It struck something in me then, sharp and disorienting. Normalcy. Routine. A world that did not yet know what it had lost.
I turned toward the courtyard, my legs unsteady beneath me. John followed without a word.
Lavi stood near the lower rows, sleeves rolled, a basket at his feet. He was speaking—something about the vines—but his voice faltered when he saw us. He straightened slowly, his gaze moving from my face to John’s and back again, measuring something he did not yet understand.
But he felt it.
“What is it?” he asked.
No one answered.
His whole body stilled, something in him bracing.
“Is it Abba?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came. The silence stretched too long, too thin, until at last John stepped forward.
“Herod has executed him,” he said quietly.
The words fell between us, heavy and immovable.
Lavi did not react at once. He stood there, motionless, the truth settling only in the stillness. Then John added, softer still, “With the sword.”
That was when it reached him.
Lavi’s breath left him slowly, like something pushed outward from his chest. His eyes dropped, then lifted again, searching my face for something—anything—that might undo what had been said.
There was nothing to give him.
“He was not afraid,” John said. “He spoke His Name until the end.”
Lavi swallowed, his throat working hard. A small nod followed, accepting terms he had no power to refuse.
Silence fell again. Not empty. Shared.
“He is with the Lord,” I said, though my voice felt far away from me, thinner than it should have been.
Lavi closed his eyes.
For a moment, I thought he might remain that way—held together by will alone.
Then his hands moved.
Slowly at first, as though the motion required thought, he reached for the edge of his garment and tore it. The sound split the quiet—a sharp, final thing that seemed to echo farther than it should have.
When he opened his eyes again, they were no longer steady.
He stepped toward me.
I did not remember crossing the space between us, only that suddenly he was there, and we were holding onto each other—fiercely, hoping the act itself might keep us from being swept away by our sorrow.
That was when the dam broke inside me.
The grief I had held at bay—the tide I had refused to name—rose without warning, without mercy. It pressed in from every side, filling the space I had tried so desperately to keep intact.
He is gone.
The thought did not come gently this time, it crashed.
My breath caught, then shattered into something uneven, uncontrollable. I clung to Lavi, the ground beneath me no longer something I could trust to hold.
Somewhere close, I heard John speak, but the words did not reach me.
All I could feel was the weight of it.
The absence.
The questions, rising fast now, sharp and relentless.
Why him?
Why now?
They came without order, without answer, circling and pressing, pulling at me from the inside out.
I tried to right myself, to gather the pieces before they scattered too far—but the current had already turned. What had once pressed gently now pulled, insistent and deep, dragging at my chest, my breath, my thoughts.
I could not seem to find my footing.
Lavi’s grip tightened around me, and I felt his shoulders shake—not violently, but in that restrained, breaking way of a man who has run out of strength to hold it all inside.
And something in me gave way with him.
The tears came freely then—hot, relentless, unstoppable—and once they started, they did not slow. I pressed my face into his shoulder, the sound leaving me without permission, without dignity, without control.
I had thought I could hold it, but I had been wrong.
The tide did not ask.
It only took.
Strong hands steadied me—John’s, I thought—guiding, supporting, though my legs no longer seemed to remember their purpose. The world blurred at the edges, narrowing to breath and weight and the ache that would not loosen its hold.
I tried to stand and gather myself.
But every thought returned to the same place.
He is gone.
And this time, there was no pushing it away.
Only the slow, sinking certainty of it… and the deep and unshakable feeling that I was being pulled somewhere I did not know how to escape.