Ellis nestled her head under my chin, and I said, “It’s almost been a year.”

We both brooded about it lately, a somberness lodged in our bones, weighing heavier the closer we got to the anniversary. Less than a week to go now.

“I wonder what Ryan would’ve done with this year,” I said. “It’s not right, that I’m here and he’s not.”

“Don’t say that.”

I traced a finger over the low ceiling, raw pine. The same thing they’d made his coffin from. Inside lay the urn holding his ashes. There was something perturbing about the cremation, as if Max couldn’t bear for the body to exist a moment longer than necessary. “I wonder what he really wanted to be. Marine. Musician. Photographer.”

“Maybe he just wanted to be himself.”

“That’s sad. Not even having that before you die.”

I felt her tense against me, and kissed the top of her head. If I could shield her from every homophobic asshole out there—the kind who beat up gay kids at school dances, the kind who told their child to pray the gay away—I would.

Maybe it was enough to hold her hand in public.

Maybe if Ryan had had someone like that, he’d still be here.

“It could’ve gone the other way,” I said. “It could’ve been us in the water and Ryan lying awake right now, wondering who we were. All of this is so ephemeral.” I stretched out my right hand and candlelight cast witchy shadows from my fingers. I brushed Ellis’s hair out of her eyes. “You don’t even realize all the things you can lose.”

“You won’t lose me. I promise.”

In my head I wrote the dialogue we didn’t speak.

No matter what I tell you?

No matter what.

“Ellis.”

“Vada.”

Could she feel the craziness happening in my heart right now? Fuck.

“I don’t ever want to lose you again. I don’t ever want to wake up without you at my side.”

It took a second for her to process it. She twisted around to look up at me.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I want to look at your stupid freckles forever, okay?”

I was light-headed, blood pressure dropping from the words I’d just let loose into the universe. Her face was a mix of shock and wonder. Then she threw her arms around my neck so vehemently I actually did start to black out a bit.

“Baby, you’re choking me. Not in a good way.”

She pulled back, covered my mouth and face with kisses, and I gave up trying to breathe and let it happen. In my head I sketched her: hair in wild thistles around that elfin face, eyes lit up like I’d never seen before. Like the kid in her must have looked right after her first kiss, or when she aced a test and got the highest grade in the class. Like she’d just been given the whole world.

All that remained was the bed. Ellis was carrying the last box to the boat as I paced through the empty cabin, remembering. Paint still splattered all over the wood, a furious rainbow. We’d dragged the couch back to the beach house. An empty rectangle outlined where it had sat, and I knelt there, tracing the hollow.

My weight tilted a floorboard. Something white flashed beneath it.

Weird.

I leaned harder and the board corner rose. Below was a letter.

Mail that must have fallen, gotten trapped. I pulled it up with a nail. Torn envelope.

From the Office of the Medical Examiner. To Ellis Carraway.

Wait, what?

I’d let her complete the request form because she was better at that stuff—my lefty handwriting was shit, and I’d just end up doodling on it anyway. But we’d listed me as the recipient.

I pulled out the sheets inside.

Autopsy report: Ryan Francis Vandermeer.

What the actual fuck?

Footsteps on the log stairs.

On instinct I slid the report back into the envelope and dropped it beneath the floorboard. Ellis walked in as I stood.

“Hey,” I said, too brightly.

“Hey yourself. Brandt’s on the next ferry.”

Her cousin had a legit boating license. We figured it’d be good to bring him along. Plus I needed some bonding time with him, since we’d all be living together soon.

I said nothing, staring at her face, my mind turning over and over.

Ellis moved closer. “You okay?”

“Just spacey. Having sex in the middle of moving day was probably not our best idea.”

She blushed and lowered her eyes. Which gave me the chance to move from the hot spot.

I tried to process this, to phrase a conversation starter. Ellis, why? Even if it had fallen there, been mislaid, it was open. She’d read it. Never mentioned it to me.

Before I could begin, my phone buzzed. A text, from the last person I expected.

I need you.

I stood there staring at the screen.

“Who is it?” Ellis said.

“Max.”

She frowned. “What does he want?”

“To see me.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know.” I pocketed it before she could look. “Didn’t sound serious, but who knows with him. Can you and Brandt handle the yacht?”

“Sure.” Ellis touched my arm. “I should go with you, though.”

“It’s fine.”

“Vada.” She cupped my face and peered into it. So observant, so sensitive. Sometimes she seemed to know what I felt before I did. “What’s wrong?”

I realized what she must be thinking: All that talk about forever. Cold feet, second thoughts.

“Nothing, promise,” I said, and kissed her before she could ask more, and though my mind was going a million miles an hour a part of me surrendered to her, lost itself, my heart giving a flutter like a startled bird. I kissed her till the jittery energy in my body became focused and intense, then made myself stop. “I’ll take the ferry. See you tonight at my place?”

Ellis nodded, flushed and breathless and so winsome I could almost forget, for a moment, that she’d hidden something from me. Something she knew I wanted, desperately.

Because why would she do that? To spare me? But she was the one who’d been reluctant to look, not me.

What had she seen?

“Love you,” I said, smiling, as I walked out the door.

Snow fell on the ferry ride, the sky growing cottony and thick. By the time we docked I could barely see my hand before my face. I knew the path by memory, up the hills into the knotted heart of the island where tree roots reached centuries deep, clutching at rock that had been thrown here by glaciers. In Maine, like in Kahlo, the world was stripped close to the nerve.

It was dark when I reached the house. Snow-dark, light reflecting off the dull pearl underbellies of clouds. I scrambled up the porch and banged on the door, shaking powder from my coat.

“Max?”

No answer. But it was unlocked.

I went in cautiously, still calling for him.

The house smelled of leaves and dust, the peppery tang of ice. Lights off. Far cry from the last time I was here.

I walked past the bathroom twice before I came back, slower, peering into the shadows.

“Max?”

He sat in the tub, boots braced on the wall. Glass glinted, moved in an arc. He was drinking.

I found a candle and lit it on the stove, brought it to him.

This time I saw the gun.

It sat on the rim of the tub, dark blue steel shining softly. All the light seemed drawn to it as if it were hungry.

“What are you doing?” I said, sitting on the toilet lid.

I smelled him from here. Whiskey and a musk of sweat and sandalwood, like he’d been working in the woods. His hair was tangled. Fine stubble covered his jaw.

An empty bottle of Jim Beam lay in the tub with him, a half-filled one on the floor.

“Max, how long have you been drinking?”

He finally looked at me. Glazed eyes. “How long have you been lying?”

My spine went cold. “What?”

He drained the glass, reached for the bottle.

I snatched it away. “What the hell’s going on? Why’d you text me?”

“I’m lonely.”

His voice creaked like old wood. His head tipped forward, hair falling in his face. Even with how drunk and surly he was, I felt a wild urge to touch him.