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I wake up because she isn’t there.
Not all at once, just the slow awareness of space beside me where there shouldn’t be any. The mattress is cool on her side, her pillow empty.
For a second, I just listen.
The house is quiet in that deep middle-of-the-night way. Wind against the bedroom window, soft enough that I only hear it because nothing else is happening.
No shower. No cabinet opening in the kitchen.
I turn my head and look at the clock.
Too early for morning. Too late for staying up.
“Jen?”
I say it quietly, but there’s no answer.
I sit up slowly. My shoulder pulls, and I wait for it to settle before I swing my legs over the side of the bed. Her robe is gone from the chair.
The bedroom door is open. There’s light coming from the living room.
I stop in the hallway.
There was a time I would’ve filled the whole house by now. Called her name too loud. Demanded an answer because I was scared. Made my fear the biggest thing in the room.
I don’t do that. I stand there and listen again.
I hear her crying. Just one broken breath, cut off too fast, like she tried to swallow it before it got away from her.
She’s on the couch, curled into the corner with the blanket around her shoulders. Her knees are drawn up, one hand pressed over her mouth, the other wrapped tight in the edge of the blanket.
She looks small in the lamplight, like she’s trying to contain the hurt.
“Jen?”
Her eyes move to me. She looks startled, then guilty, like I’ve found her somewhere she thinks she isn’t supposed to be.
I cross the room and sit beside her, leaving room for her to choose what to do with it. She wipes her eyes with her sleeve.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.”
I put my hand over hers where it’s gripping the blanket. Her fingers are cold.
“Bad dream?”
Her mouth tightens. I know that answer.
I move closer and put my arm around her shoulders. She leans into me like she’s tired of holding herself upright.
For a while, neither of us says anything.
I don’t push. I just hold on.
After a minute, she sits back. Her eyes are red, her face pale and tired.
“I was dreaming about you,” she says.
“About the other night?”
She looks at me, confused. Then she understands.
“No, Anthony.”
“If what I did scared you more than you said -- ”
“No.” Her fingers close around mine. “It wasn’t that.”
I let her take it, but the fear lingers.
“It was about you,” she says. “But not in the way you think.”
I close my hand around hers.
“You want to tell me?”
At first, I think she’s going to say no. Then she makes herself start.
“I was in my office,” she says.
I can see it before she says anything else. The chairs. The tissue box. Her desk. The space between us that used to feel like a whole country.
She keeps looking at our hands.
“You’re there,” she says. “You need help. But I tell you I can’t treat you anymore.”
I have to look away for a second. I can remember it too clearly. Her face closed off. Mine angry, hurt, trying not to show either one.
“I know I’m making the wrong choice even as I say it. I should tell you to sit down, I should say, ‘Wait, Anthony, don’t go.’”
Her voice breaks a little.
“But I can’t make myself do that.”
I rub my thumb over the back of her hand.
“You leave. The door closes,” she says.
A tear slips down her face. She doesn’t wipe it away.
“That’s the part that makes me feel sick. I’m calm. Professional. Telling myself it’s the responsible choice.”
I don’t know what to say. That door closed years ago -- and then another one opened.
But I know how dreams take things apart and put them back wrong.
“The dream jumps ahead. I’m still in the office. The lights are on, but everything outside the windows is black.”
She stops, catches her breath. I wait.
“Harris is at the door,” she says. “I know before he says anything.”
My hand tightens around hers before I think about it.
“He tells me you were shot, just like he actually did. But this time, you don’t survive.”
She keeps hold of my hand.
“He says by the time they got you to the hospital, there was nothing they could do. I realize I’m never going to see you again.”
She’s looking at me now, but not fully. Like she needs to see me and can’t stand to.
“I have to live with the fact that the last thing I did was turn you away.”
“Jen...”
“No.” She shakes her head, just enough to stop me from taking it away from her too fast. “I know it was a dream. I know you’re here.”
I stay quiet. She needs to say this.
“There’s no second chance. No way to tell you I was wrong.”
She takes in a shaking breath.
“No way to help you.”
I feel that one in my gut. I can’t look away.
Her voice gets smaller.
“All the chances are gone.”
I want to tell her she’s wrong, but she knows that. That’s not what this is.
I can imagine her alone in her office, Harris at the door, a version of me who never woke up.
“You didn’t put me in that restaurant,” I tell her. “You didn’t pull the trigger.”
“In the dream, none of that matters,” she says. “I threw you out, you died, and there’s nowhere for the love to go.”
Her fingers stay tight around mine.
“Forgive me, Anthony.”
She looks down before I can answer.
“I never really apologized.”
“You did.”
She shakes her head.
“Not the way I should have. I said I was sorry, but I never asked if you forgave me.”
For a second, I think she might stop there.
“I chose this life with you. I love you. I wanted you to love me. But I never asked whether that hurt was still somewhere between us.”
Her mouth trembles.
“I sent you away when you needed help. I almost lost you before I could make it right. I’m asking you now.”
The answer is too big and too simple at the same time.
Part of me wants to tell her there’s nothing to forgive, to take it from her so she doesn’t have to worry about it anymore.
But I can’t lie to her. There was something to forgive.
The way she ended our therapy. Walking out of there with nowhere to put what it did to me.
I touch her cheek.
“What you did hurt me,” I say. “I tried to tell myself I didn’t care.”
Her face falls a little, but she stays with me.
“But you came back. You walked into that hospital knowing exactly who I was, what I’d done. You kept coming back, even when I was half out of my mind.”
“Anthony...” Her eyes fill.
“You helped me, Jen.”
“After.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Everything we have now is after.”
“That’s what the dream takes away,” she says.
Her free hand goes against my chest, flat over the scar like she needs the proof of it.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I should have found another way.”
“Maybe.”
She looks at me. I don’t take it back.
“Maybe a lot of things could have been different. But I know you were afraid.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t hurt you.”
“No.”
She closes her eyes. I rub my thumb across her cheek.
“I forgive you,” I say.
I look at her wet eyes, her tired face, the way she’s bracing herself like my answer might change.
“I forgave you before this,” I say. “Maybe not all at once. But I did.”
She leans back into me.
I hold her with both arms, careful of everything still tender between us.
“I never wanted that to be the last thing,” she whispers.
“It isn’t.”
She nods against me, but I can feel she’s still crying.
“Listen to me,” I say. “It isn’t. This is where we are. All of this. That’s the after.”
I hold her. No fixing it. No making it smaller than it is.
Just both of us awake in the middle of the night because the past found her in her sleep.
“Nobody’s at the door,” I say.
Her fingers tighten in my shirt. “No.”
“Just us.”
She breathes in, deep enough that I feel it against me.
“Just us,” she says.
After a while, she says, “I don’t think I can go back to sleep.”
“We’ll stay here,” I say. “As long as you want.”
I pull the blanket up around her shoulders and she relaxes against me, easier than before. Her hand stays over my heart.
Every so often, her fingers move, barely at all, checking.
“I’m here,” I say quietly. “I’m okay.”
This time, I think she lets herself accept it.