Page 161 of The Ampersand Effect

It hurt—right to the heart—that Tobin felt she had to shield her from her joy.

“Dagný says she has it under control. I can’t wait! It just feels so…” Tobin paused, and Grier admired the softening of her features—the gentle tilt of her head, the dreamy haze in her eyes—as she searched for the right words. “… complete. Like—of courseDagný would be the one to finish my sleeve!”

Grier accepted her meal from Tobin. She managed to get most of the soup down, but the sandwich stuck in her throat. A lump had formed there. She was realizing just how much she was going to miss Tobin when she left. The aching of absence settled in her core—dense, familiar, and unbearably close to the grief already weighing on her today.

Then Tobin’s warm hand found her thigh—a soft triplet of squeezes. A reminder: she was still there, and they still had tonight.

“What time do you have to leave tomorrow?” Grier asked, her voice timid.

“Not until mid-afternoon. I fly to Grayport, then direct to Reykjavík from there.” Another gentle squeeze from Tobin followed—this one coaxing Grier to look at her. “I’ll land early the following morning.”

Tobin’s eyes brimmed with concern again. Grier offered her a smile, but she didn’t need a mirror to know it was the most pitiful smile she’d ever attempted.

Tobin immediately slid an arm around her and pulled her in, cradling her against her chest. They stayed on their own stools at the kitchen island, a small abyss of space between their bodies, their meals forgotten.

“I feel pathetic,” Grier admitted—more to herself than to Tobin.

She needed to voice it, so she could accept it and correct it.

“You’re not pathetic, Grier,” the admonishment in Tobin’s voice was gentle but assertive. “Everything about the last two weeks has been trying. You’ve been shouldering a burden that shouldn’t be yours to carry. It shouldn’t exist at all…”

“You’re wrong.”

The conviction in her voice startled even her. But she had to correct Tobin.

Tobin’s grip around her torso tightened, a flicker of confusion passing through her at Grier’s abrupt tone. Grier gently unwrapped herself from the embrace, needing to meet her eyes.

“Not everything in the last two weeks has been trying,” she said, steady now. “Before…” She stilled, unsure how to name the situation. “… before Jonah, I told you I loved you. And a few days later, you told me the same. That’s not trying. That’s our story.”

Tobin smiled softly. She reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind Grier’s ear, her hand lingering. The pad of her thumb gently stroked Grier’s cheek.

Grier leaned into the touch, her heart catching in her throat. She wanted to close her eyes, but she didn’t—she was clinging to this portrait of intimacy, wanting to lodge it in her brain before the aftermath of Jonah consumed her over the next week.

Her reverie was interrupted when she felt the softtap-tapof her watch, followed by the more invasive staccatoed buzz of her phone. A text.

Her stomach plummeted before she even saw Maren’s name flash over her watch. The lump that had been lodged in her throat swelled until it nearly choked her. Her breath hitched. Nausea rose, dizzying and sudden, as she gasped for a breath that wheezed pitifully, refusing to fill her lungs. It took her anunsettling amount of time to recognize that the keening sound she heard was coming from her.

Maren—6:17 p.m.

Clearance has been granted for Jonah’s final

takeoff. May he soar in peace.

Grier crumpled.

Her body slid gracelessly off the stool, too fast for Tobin to react and catch her. Her knees hit the floor with a sharp crack, but the pain barely registered. Her brain was consumed with the sadness of loss; her body was irrelevant.

Jonah was gone. This reality had been inescapable from the moment of diagnosis—she understood that. But this loss, thisone, specific, catastrophic theft of innocent life, would burrow into her heart and her memory and forever change her.

Grier lay on the floor, wailing—unable to maintain her perfectly composed silence any longer. She let her grief consume her, slipping into a dissociative state she hadn’t experienced since Nora’s death. She bellowed. She pounded her fists. She gasped for air that refused to fill her lungs.

She scratched and clawed and dug into the pit of her soul. There, in the midst of her darkness, in the blackest, bleakest void of her being… she found a spark.

She reached for that spark. And sheignited.

Grier opened her throat and screamed—screamed until there was nothing left, until the air was gone and she tasted blood in her mouth. She turned that spark into a flame, and with it she breathed the fire of her despair into the abyss.

And then everything turned black.