Page 137 of Not Quite Dead Yet

They walked and they laughed.

This. Just this.

Jet lay in bed, too awake, staring up at the ceiling. There were no stars here, but they weren’t far away.

She was smiling.

Her cheek hurt, just the one side she could feel, because she couldn’t stop smiling.

Couldn’t fight it, didn’t really want to try.

‘Good night, Billy,’ she called first this time, through the half-open door.

‘Good night, Jet.’

Friday

November 7

28

‘Mom?’ Jet called through the empty house.

Not empty.

Reggie scuttled around the corner, launched himself at her.

‘Hello, hi, is that the Regmatron?’ Jet tickled his ears, one-handed, fingers down his spine to the base of his helicopter tail. ‘Who’s a good boy?’ she asked, because she always did. ‘Who’s a good boy?’

Reggie yawned, pattering over to Billy, wagging for him too.

‘Of course Mom’s out when I need to speak to her.’ Jet straightened up. ‘All this talk aboutPlease come home, Jet,but she’s not even here. And she callsmeuseless.’

‘She’s got to be back sometime.’ Billy closed the front door. ‘We can wait.’

‘We have time,’ Jet said.

Ms were hard to say now, one side of her mouth too weak to press her lips together, speaking out the other way, smiles cut in half. She only knew because she’d tried to smile at Billy this morning, when he made her pancakes for breakfast. Got up early to do it. Better than fries.

Jet followed the dog, through the doorway into the living room. Here again. No pools of blood or spatter anymore, but Jet knew where they’d been, scrubbed away, painted over.

Billy held his breath, walking through behind her.

He’d seen it that way too.

Held Jet’s lifeless body, seen the insides of her undone head. His voice breaking as he screamed her name, breakingsomething inside Jet too as she’d watched and rewatched the doorbell footage.

Billy shouldn’t have ever seen something like that; he was too good for it.

He breathed again when they reached the kitchen.

Reggie pounced on a balled-up sock, discarded beneath the bar stools, grunting as he showed it off to them. His wagging tail disturbed the two dish towels hanging by the stove, made them sway. Marching avocados and lemons, an incomplete set.

Jet kept going, through the laundry room to the side door.

She pulled down on the handle.

It was locked now, lesson learned. Just too late to make a difference.

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