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  Tovah wanted to shake, to tremble. She wanted to make the world unravel. She knew now how Edward had felt and why he’d done what he had. If she could split herself to forget she’d ever come here, she thought she might have tried. On feet steady only by long habit, she moved toward the bed.

  “Ben,” she said. “Oh, Ben.”

  The woman gave her another odd look. “Would you like some time with him alone?”

  Tovah nodded, not looking at her. “Please.”

  “I’ll just be downstairs.”

  Tovah didn’t know if that was supposed to be a comfort or a warning. She waited until the woman had left the room before reaching for Ben’s hand. His skin was cool, the fingers limp. She pressed it between her own.

  He made no reaction. She’d expected one, hoping against reason, but she couldn’t shape here. No matter how much she wanted his eyes to open at the sound of her voice, it wasn’t going to happen.

  He’d always been in the Ephemeros when she was. The way Spider had been. She should have known there was a reason like this.

  “I promised to find you, and I did. But you should have told me, Ben,” she whispered. “I’d have—”

  She’d have what, exactly? Understood? Would knowing about his condition have changed anything? Tovah bit off the rest of her words and swallowed them, not caring if they scratched her throat on the way down. She didn’t have anything to say to Ben, whether he could hear her or not.

  She had spent too many hours sitting by a silent bedside, hoping for someone she cared about to wake. She couldn’t do it again. She didn’t want to.

  Ridiculous anger, selfish and irrepressible, flared in her. “You should have told me.”

  She’d come here to see if they could make things work in the waking world. If what they’d found together in the Ephemeros could translate into something solid. Into something real.

  It was easy to promise he’d always be there for her when he knew he had no other choice.

  “Can I help you?”

  Tovah turned to face the woman moving through the doorway toward her. She wore her pale hair fixed off her face with a wide ribbon of black velvet. It matched her neat white blouse and black ankle-length skirt, but it didn’t flatter her. She looked like Alice out of Wonderland, with her porcelain skin lined from stress at the corners of her pale blue eyes.

  “Are you the new respite volunteer?” The woman came closer, holding out her hand.

  Tovah couldn’t refuse to take it, even as she shook her head. The woman’s hand was cold. “No. I’m…a friend.”

  Stupid, she realized. Ben had family who would know she was lying. She had to get out of here. “I’m sorry, I’ll just go.”

  “A friend of Ben’s?” The woman’s head tilted slightly. “From—?”

  “College.” Tovah bit her tongue to keep from wincing. “We were friends in college. I just learned about his…”

  Had it been an accident? Or illness? The woman didn’t seem to mind the trailing off of Tovah’s comment.

  She shook Tovah’s hand firmly. “I’m Lauren.”

  “Tovah Connelly. I was very sorry to learn about Ben.” This was no lie, and the shake of her voice proved it.

  Lauren eyed her and then nodded. Whatever tears she’d shed, they’d been long put away into privacy. She moved to the bed, tucking in blankets and smoothing her hand over Ben’s forehead. “Thank you.”

  Tovah watched. And then she knew. This woman was Ben’s wife.

  “I’ve got to go,” she blurted as the floor threatened to slap her in the face. “I’m sorry.”

  Lauren gave her a knowing look. “It’s shocking, isn’t it? Especially if you’re not expecting it. The doctors say it won’t be long now.” She stroked her fingers again across Ben’s cheek. “But he keeps hanging in there.”

  Tovah had taken a few steps backward, toward the door. Ben’s wife. Ben was married.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked.

  Lauren looked up. If the question surprised her, she was good at not showing it. “Do you really want to know?”

  It was a perceptive question. Tovah respected her for it. She nodded.

  “He started smelling things. Odors that had nothing to do with what was around him. And seeing things, too. He said they looked like dust bunnies in the corner of his vision. I told him to go to the doctor, but…” Lauren shrugged with the fond exasperation of a put-upon wife who’s been proven right and wished she had not. “He wouldn’t go. About ten months ago he had a seizure. The CAT scans showed what they called a shadow. By the time we got home that day, Ben was having vivid auditory and olfactory hallucinations. He kept hearing rushing water.”

  Tovah didn’t know what to say, but Lauren didn’t seem to need a reply. She smoothed the blankets one last time and came around the bed. “The plan was to operate to remove the tumor, then give him extensive chemotherapy. He didn’t wake up from the operation. Though he could breathe without assistance, they told me without further resuscitative measures he’d be gone within a few months. A few days or a week, if I didn’t feed him.”

  Lauren’s laugh was like the grinding of gears. “As if I could decide to allow him to starve to death. I arranged for hospice care. I thought it would be better to have him at home.”

  Tovah wanted very much to sit, but she stabilized herself with a hand against the doorjamb. “Is there any chance he’ll ever wake up?”

  Lauren hesitated. “I don’t think so. No. His eyes open sometimes. And once he spoke…”

  Tovah waited, but Lauren stayed silent. “What did he say?”

  Lauren’s mouth worked and at last a glint of tears showed up in her pale blue eyes. “Nobody believes me. Anyone I’ve told said I must have been dreaming.”

  “Tell me,” Tovah urged softly.

  “I’d fallen asleep by his bed. Early on I spent every night next to him. Now…” Lauren lifted her chin a bit. “Now I sleep in my own bed. But then I was sitting next to him. And he opened his eyes, the way he would’ve had something startled him. And he said something so odd I wonder if it really was a dream. It seems like it, now.”

  Tovah’s fingers gripped the doorway.

  Lauren’s soft laugh sounded forced. She looked up and then shrugged. The tears had vanished. “He said, ‘She’s a mermaid.’”

  Tovah sighed, eyes closing against the tears she didn’t dare show.

  “I left him, you know,” Lauren said matter-of-factly. “Just before it all happened. Things had been bad with us for a long time. We both made mistakes. But when he got sick, I put all that aside. I had to, didn’t I?”

  A splinter from the door gouged Tovah’s palm, but she paid no attention to the thin sting. She mumbled something, another apology, an explanation…a series of nonsensical syllables that nevertheless seemed to satisfy Lauren, who nodded.

  Ben’s wife looked at her, voice weary, resigned, but not bitter. “You didn’t go to college with my husband. Did you.”

  Tovah backed out of the door, found the stairs, managed to get down them without falling.

  In her car, bent over the wheel and hiding her face in her hands, she gave in to breathy hysterics. This was too much, all of it too much. Losing Spider, the tragedy with Edward. Not dreaming. Finding Ben.

  She’d lost him in the dream world, and wished she’d never found him in the waking one. She’d kept no secrets from Ben. He’d done nothing but keep everything from her.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Time passed.

  The divorce went through. Kevin made good on his word not to fight Tovah for a greater portion of the settlement from the insurance company. The check itself came and she looked at it for a long, long time before putting it back in the envelope to deposit later. Her life would be easier now. Simpler. Just her and her dog, enough money in the bank to make working for a living a possibility instead of working to barely make ends meet. She’d begun thinking about starting her own web design business, a job she could still