Page 57 of Embers

I’m shaking, jerking, wracked with the shocked grief of it. I’m on my knees, holding on to my stomach, leaning forward toward the dirt. I want to answer Faith. I don’t want her to be so upset. But I can’t do anything but this.

“Jackson!” Faith calls out, her voice clear, urgent, and echoing across the farm. “Jackson!”

I wish I could cry, but I can’t. There are no tears. No relief at all. Nothing but these horrifying jerks of my body.

I’m vaguely aware of loud footsteps approaching fast. Jackson must have raced over here at the sound of Faith’s call.

Cal would race to me if I cried for help.

At least, I always believed he would.

“Something’s wrong.” Faith must be talking to Jackson. “She’s sick or something. Rachel, please. You’re scaring me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Rachel, what’s going on?” It’s a male voice. Familiar. But not the one I need to hear.

Not his low, throaty mutter.

I may never hear it again.

My stomach heaves for real. I start to vomit. But I have hardly anything in my stomach, so it takes several grating dry heaves for me to get out a little bile. It burns my throat. My mouth. I spit it out and start to sob helplessly.

“Oh my God, this is terrible!” I’ve never heard Faith sound so helpless. “Jackson, go find Cal. Quick.”

This is the thing that finally opens my throat. “No!” I’m still on my hands and knees on the ground.

“We have to, Rachel. You need him. Jackson, go!”

“You can’t!” It comes out as a broken wail. I finally manage to straighten up although I’m still sitting on my knees. I hug my stomach since it feels like I might throw up again at any moment. Finally tears and snot are running down my face, but I don’t have it in me to wipe them away.

This is reality now. It’s not a nightmare. I know exactly what happened and even why it happened. I also know there’s not going to be a miracle return this time.

A few months ago, Cal walked back in the middle of the night for hours, desperate to get home to me, but he’s not planning to come home again.

He told me he loved me last night, and I assumed that was the biggest thing. The most powerful one. The only one that truly matters.

But it’s not.

He said a lot of other stuff too, and those are the feelings that will always drive him.

His love for me isn’t strong enough to overcome them.

So I finish the thought. I get the words said even though they nearly break me in half. “You can’t get him. You can’t. He’s gone.”

11

I don’t getout of bed for three days.

Through all the trauma and grief I’ve dealt with in my life, I’ve never fallen apart like this. I’ve always managed to push through. To get going in the mornings and trudge through the basic steps of living.

This is different.

I try. I really do. But I can’t find the will to even roll my body out of bed.

Faith is incredibly generous, bringing me food and checking on me regularly. I know I can’t stay here doing nothing to contribute for long, but she never expresses any sort of impatience or expectations. Nothing but sympathy.

On the evening of the third day, the shock is finally wearing off, and the bleak, heavy despair has set in full force. I keep trying to imagine what my life will look like now—without Cal, without the shape of him at the center of everything for me—but I can’t form even a picture of what living that sort of life would look like.

The truth is simply this. I don’t know who I am without Cal.

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