I close my eyes and my hands shake, and I exhale, counting to five.
“Jude? You’re scaring me.”
Her voice is thin, and I have to just do it.
“Michel is gone.”
She blinks, not comprehending.
“Where did he go?” Her words are slow, and her eyes are guarded.
“He’s...dead, Co. He’s dead. Zoe killed him.”
Corinne blinks again, and she’s frozen, and my heart is broken. “What do you mean? That’s impossible.”
I shake my head and it’s hard to speak, and my eyes burn. “She surprised him. It looks like she came up behind him and hit him in the head with a crucifix. Blunt force trauma, the paramedics said.”
“No.” Corinne’s single word is sharp, and she’s shaking her head because she doesn’t want to believe me. I wish to God I was lying. If only.
“If only she could’ve taken me instead,” I say, and I’ve never been so honest in my life. “I would rather die than have anything happen to you or my brother.”
I look away, because it’s too late to protect Michel from her, and the tears start to fall. My tears.
Finally.
I’ve been so numb until now. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t think.
But now... The dam breaks and I think of my brother, and the hot tears well in my eyes, and I can’t stop them.
My shoulders shake and my eyes close and I turn away.
I sob for several minutes before I feel cool hands on my shoulders, and Corinne draws me into her arms, her hands stroking my hair.
“Shhhh,” she soothes. “Don’t ever say that. It’s okay. It’s okay. Michel is with God now, Jude. He doesn’t feel pain. He’s with God.”
It doesn’t help, but her presence does. Her arms wrapped around me do.
I turn to her and hold on to her like I’m drowning.
Because I am.
61
Corinne
Michel’s funeral is attended by everyone in the local Catholic community.
The sanctuary is a sea of black as everyone mourns.
My husband sits next to me, and he’s careful not to touch me, careful to respect the space that I asked for. Our legs are an inch apart, his hands are in his lap, his shoulders are stiff and straight, and we are separate entities.
But God, he’s in so much pain. His face is a stone mask as he tries to hide it, but the torment is there. It’s in his eyes, in the way he holds his mouth. He and Michel were closer than anything, and the idea that Michel is just gone...
I swallow hard.
I blink back the tears, and I utter a prayer. I watch Jude’s hands, folded in his lap, and I watch them shake as the priest speaks.
Then, even though my heart is still broken because of him, I reach over and grasp my husband’s fingers within my own. His curl into mine, and he relaxes ever so slightly.
He broke my heart, but his is broken, too.
No matter what he’s done, I love this man, and I took a vow to have and to hold, for better and for worse—and he needs me now. He needs me to get through this. He doesn’t have anyone else. Not anymore.
We’ll sort our mess out afterward.
For now, we’re grieving someone we loved.
Jude is a pallbearer, and at the end of the service, when he carefully carries his brother down the long aisle and out of the church, my heart has never known such pain.
My husband’s torment guts me. His brother is dead, and he’s dead because of a mistake that Jude made. Jude knows it. I can see it on his face, in his eyes, in the way he carries his brother.
He shoulders the weight of the casket easily and handles the polished mahogany with such reverence and care. He runs his hand along the wood gently as he slides it into the hearse, and he never once falters. No matter his grief or his tears, he’d never drop his brother. He didn’t in life, and he certainly wouldn’t in death.
He stands still and watches the hearse pull away from the curb, and he’s in a trancelike state as we drive to the cemetery. He never says a word. Jude has paid a heavy heavy price for his transgressions. Even if I wanted to punish him, I’d never be able to punish him more than this.
The priest blesses the grave, sprinkling holy water on top of the casket. Jude and I both cry as they lower Michel into the ground, and it’s a sight that will haunt me forever.
The finality of it is staggering.
It’s our last act for Michel. The very last thing we can do for him.
It feels wrong to leave him here, and it feels wrong to cover him up with dirt. He was alive just the other day. He hugged me and told me everything was okay, and it’s not. Not for me, and not for him.
The priest speaks the final words of interment. “May his soul and the souls of all the faithful, departed through the mercy of God, rest in peace.”
Jude weeps openly, kneeling next to the gaping hole.
I grasp his shoulder hard, because I know if it’s killing me, it’s unbearable for him.
His shoulders quake from sobs.
Time passes, seconds, then minutes.
Funeral-goers leave, and we’re alone, and the cemetery workers respectfully wait a small distance from the grave, waiting for Jude to back away. Waiting for him to be ready.
I know he’ll never be ready.
He sits still for the longest time, staring into the grave, his eyes open, but unseeing.
He’s overcome. He doesn’t know what to do.
He’s never in his life been without Michel.
I fold into a nearby chair, my heart breaking as I watch. As I wait. I don’t rush him. I don’t prompt him. I don’t interfere. This is between him and Michel, a last private moment.
I hear Jude murmuring to his brother, but I can’t hear the words. I recognize only the sadness, the pain, the desperation. He’s barely holding it together. I can hear that.
I can see that.
It kills me. No matter what he’s done to me, I love him so much that his pain is still my pain.
Finally, finally, Jude stands up, and we walk silently to the car.
His hands shake on the steering wheel, but he doesn’t say a word.
When we get home, Jude disappears into his study, and he doesn’t come out.
I don’t know what to do.
I’m grieving our marriage, I’m grieving Michel. I’m grieving everything.
And so is Jude.
I curl up on the couch and sleep.
I wake in the night, and Jude is beside me, watching me sleep. His eyes are red.
“Can I get you anything?” he asks quietly. I shake my head.
“Are you all right?” I ask him. He shakes his head.
“No.”
“Me, either.”
He sits with me on the couch until morning.
62
Jude
How can I fix my life, when all I can feel is pain?
It’s unending.
Today, I sit on the floor of my study, sorting through boxes of pictures.
Michel and me...from the time we were infants to the last photo we’d taken together. A cookout this past summer. We were as alike on the outside as we were on the inside.
Only now, my heart beats and his doesn’t.
It’s hard to think of him in the past tense. I constantly find myself thinking...Michel is, and it is such a jolt when I have to remind myself that Michel was.
The bitch of it is...he was the better brother. He was the better person. He would never hurt anyone. He was trying to help me straighten up my life and fix things with my wife, and he got sucked into a fucked-up situation of my making. It should’ve been me who died. Not him.
It isn’t fair.
Life isn’t fair.
And this is a guilt that I’ll always carry.
There’s a knock on the door, then Corinne’s voice.
“Jude? Are you okay?”
“Yes!” I call out, lying yet again. She knows I’m not. But it’s the only thing anyone knows to do when someone is hurting. To ask if you’re okay. It’s human decency.
I’ve hurt my wife beyond comprehension, and I know she still cares about me.
It still kills her that I’m hurting.
My wife is a better person than me, too. I don’t deserve her.
With a sigh, I shuffle the pictures together and put them on my desk. Right now, they’re too painful to look at.
I haven’t looked at my email in days and days. I haven’t been able to focus. So in an effort to distract myself, I open it up.
I scan and delete, scan and delete.
Until the name Michel Cabot shows up in the list.
Sucking in my breath, I open his message.