Page 85 of Dead to Rites

I thought of how used I’d become to having Hazel there when I got home, of telling her what had happened during the day and waiting for her to give me advice or sometimes just the simple comfort of her presence. What would the big Victorian house feel like when she was no longer there?

So I gave Jude the only true answer to his question. “Not yet.”

The corners of his mouth lifted slightly. “That’s okay,” he replied. “It doesn’t sound like she’s ready, either.”

Both of us went silent then. It was a good kind of quiet, the kind I hadn’t known very often, when two people were simply content to be present without cluttering it up with words.

And yet, sometimes, you needed to talk.

“Jude,” I ventured, “what happens next?”

“I don’t know,” he said simply. “I think we’ll just have to figure it out as we go.”

“‘We’?” I repeated, and he nodded.

“If you want.”

I had to pause and think about what that might mean. There was so much about Jude I didn’t know, so much he hadn’t revealed to me yet. Adam was kind and uncomplicated and probably would have made my life a lot easier.

And yet….

Jude had seen a ghost, once upon a time. He knew they were real, that I wasn’t imagining things. And he’d run into Meg’s house without hesitation, not knowing what he would find, only that he had to keep me safe no matter what.

Sometimes what you wanted wasn’t the easy thing, and that was all right.

“Yes,” I said.

His hand crept into mine, his fingers warm and strong despite the chill of the air outside. We stood there for a moment, hand in hand, not speaking.

But it was getting steadily colder, and warmth and light and friends were waiting for us inside the bar. A few blocks away in the big house she’d loved, my great-aunt’s ghost was also waiting, but in a different way.

“Let’s go in,” I said.