“I hope you aren’t mad at me,” I find myself mumbling, my voice more pleading than I had intended, my face buried into his chest.
“Kat, I believe you,” he says into my hair. “I don’t understand it, I haven’t experienced it and I don’t love it, but certain things cannot be denied.”
“You believe Juniper is clairvoyant?” I say, leaning back and peeking up at him. His full lips are set in response to the question.
“It’s oh so complicated,” he sighs, pulling away and sliding out a chair at the small kitchen table for me. “She was understandably hysterical for nearly six months after what happened, she sounded insane with the things she was saying, and she’d scratched out her own eyes, Kat. What were we supposed to think?”
I accept the seat, realizing as I settle that they are the same sturdy chairs from a decade before, and find the familiar feeling soothing. I watch him intently as he sits across from me and runs his rough hands through his thick hair, biceps straining against his baseball tee.
“You feel guilty too,” I say with a nod. His eyes swim with it, and I recognize it keenly as one who also possesses it like a trauma badge.
“Yes, of course,” he admits. “It’s the common affliction stemming from that night, isn’t it?”
“It does seem to be,” I agree, tracing my fingers on the smooth edge of the time-worn table, remembering sitting at it eating pizza at various sleepovers.
“Add her fantastical claims to our tragedies that she blamed on this fucking ghost, my complicated guilt and you have a recipe for...for…”
“For shit stew,” I say with a chuckle.
“Yes,” he laughs. “You still say that and I love it. It says it all.”
“It’s a soup we’ve all had and hate, isn’t it?” I say, reveling in the authentic smile shining on his face. It’s there because I am.
“It’s been on the menu for me every day for the last 11 years,” he groans. “How I’ve missed you. You always make everything better; your humor, your light.”
“How about my ass?” I joke, wiggling my bottom against the chair.
“That too. I’ve wanted to see you—and your ass for years.” He drums his hands on the table and looks at me, his cheeks warm, probably from talking about my butt. “Would you like some wine?”
“Oh, no, that’s ok,” I say, feeling awkward.
“Please don’t let my sobriety interfere. It doesn’t bother me at all and I’d like you to feel comfortable,” he tempts.
He watches my impassive face and laughs again. “And Juniper said we should recreate as much as possible from that night.”
He’d meant it to evoke memories of alcohol, but all I can think of is recreating a night where we’d planned to sleep together. I can see from his face that he’s picked up on it, and his face flushes. I smile and finally nod and he quickly retrieves a glass of red for me.
“You never answered whether or not you believe Juniper is clairvoyant,” I sip my wine, staring at him expectantly.
“It cannot be denied that she knows things,” he answers seriously. “Things she shouldn’t know and she predicts things.”
“Like us showing up,” I say.
“Yes, she knew and she was sure. But it happens all the time, almost daily. But she also talks about the dead, and I...I have a hard time with it,” his voice breaks, and he looks down at his hands that are twisting on the table top. “I was engaged once.”
“I heard,” my voice is soft, and I resist the urge to jump across to comfort him. “I didn’t hear details, but we don’t need to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
“No, I want to tell you. I need to tell you, Kat,” he swallows and meets my eyes. His are shining with intense grief. “Her name was Monica, and I loved her.”
I nod encouragingly, my heart is breaking at how his voice is crackling with overwhelming emotion and how he’s nearly shaking, just recalling her in his mind’s eye.
“After my parents made you a pariah and you left I couldn’t find anyone to compare. I held that torch high and strong, and I began to think I would never find someone to be with. Then Monica came into my life. She called me for her parent’s kitchen remodel and I gave her an estimate and she gave me her number.”
I laugh softly, and he smiles sadly at the memory as he leans over and tops off my wine on autopilot. He’s always been a natural caretaker.
“We hit it off right away and I was hooked. She was fiery, hilarious and such a nerd. She was wonderful to Juniper, who had scared away plenty of dates before. She was just completely accepting of all the crazy, and all the grief that came with me at that time. My mom had just died, and dad died while we were together and she was my rock through it all,” his voice was hollow, as though he couldn’t spare any more emotion and could only recite it as though it had happened to someone else in order to even put it into words.
“You popped the question?” I prompt when his voice trails off.
“Yes, and she agreed. We’d set a summer date and we wanted a longer engagement to plan a large wedding, but she was...she was pregnant,” He stops, catches his breath and squeezes his eyes shut.
I stifle my gasp and switch seats and move closer to him, putting my arm around his shoulders, recalling he’d done the same for me at the bar in The Bishop Inn. “Oh Erik, I had no idea.”
“It was a happy accident, and we’d been planning to try right after the wedding anyhow, so we embraced it. We were to get married before she started showing, but the baby wouldn’t listen and at four months she had ‘popped’ as she put it. Like one of those poultry thermometers, she’d said,” he paused to let out a
