Chapter 6

HELEN

I know now that grief doesn't arrive the way that it's described in books and shown in movies. There's no dramatic collapse, no scream that tears itself from my chest. What comes instead is a narrowing, a sensation like the world has tilted slightly off its axis and everything is now sliding – quietly, relentlessly – toward an edge that I can't see yet. I stand in the hospital corridor and feel as though I've been misfiled, placed in the wrong life, the wrong hour, the wrong body.

Edward is dead.

The doctor's official words move through me without resistance, settling somewhere low and heavy. My son – my beautiful, careful boy, who did everything correctly, who followed the rules as though obedience itself might guarantee survival – has died on stone church stairs in borrowed sunlight. The unfairness of it is almost abstract, I can't touch the pain without dissolving into it.

I don't allow myself to crumble; I watch instead.

It turns out that hospitals are excellent places for watching. Everyone is exposed here, stripped of pretense by exhaustion and fear. I see the way that the nurses glance at Iris – too beautiful, too stricken, too tragic in her ruined dress. I see how the room subtly rearranges itself around her presence, how pity and suspicion coexist too easily in the same look.

And most of all, I watch Thomas. I watch how he's already taken control of Iris.

It's unmistakable: the way he positions himself next to her, the way his body blocks hers from view, the way his hand remains on her back, as though it belongs there. He speaks for her, he decides for her. And she lets him.

The sight of her slight, trembling body being supported by his strength and muscle strikes me harder than the doctor’s words.

I tell myself that this is shock, that grief distorts perception. But the longer I watch them, the more certain I become that this is not something forming in the aftermath of disaster. There is no awkwardness, no hesitation, no negotiation of space. Thomas speaks quietly to her, and she listens – not merely hearing him, but receiving him, her shoulders easing under his hand, her breathing slowing in response to his voice.

This is not the beginning of something. This is the continuation.

I know Thomas well enough to recognize the shape of his attention. I've seen it before, felt it settle on me once, long ago, with the same quiet certainty. He doesn't rush, he doesn't reach. He just positions himself and waits for the world to adjust. It always does.

Iris looks up at him now, her eyes wide and searching, and something in her expression catches painfully at my chest. She looks like a child who's lost the rules mid-game, who's waiting for someone older to explain what happens next, and Thomas doesn't hesitate. He gives her instruction – not in words alone, but in posture, in tone, in the simple fact of remaining solid when everything else around her has fractured. He stands, holds out his hand, tells her to get up.

She obeys, of course. They leave the room together.

The intimacy of it feels invasive, almost obscene, given the circumstances. My son’s body is still warm somewhere behind a closed door, and already this dynamic has asserted itself, sliding into place with terrifying ease.

I look away from their departing backs, my throat tight.

This is not jealousy. This is not rivalry. This is something colder. Deeper. Darker.

Edward trusted his father implicitly. He believed, as I once did, that Thomas’s restraint was synonymous with virtue, that his control meant safety. Watching him now, watching the speed with which he has claimed responsibility for his dead son's wife – claimed her – I feel a sharp edge of doubt.

When did this begin? How long has this been happening between them? Did Edward know?

The questions loop without answers, irritating and persistent. I think of the way Thomas looked at her in the church, the intensity I dismissed as inappropriate timing, and feel something ugly twist inside me. I understand now that whatever is unfolding between them doesn't include me, so I'm alone in my devastation and loss. They have each other, and I have nothing and no one.

I press my lips together, swallowing the ache that threatens to rise. This isn't the moment for confrontation, nor is it the moment for accusations. But it is the moment that I begin to watch them both very carefully.

Because grief, I am learning, is not only sorrow.

Sometimes it's suspicion finding its first foothold.