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One

HANNAH

I thought he was a ghost

The sahteenthe car behindthe beach, sweat soaking one of his faded green Michigan State T-shirts that seemed to multiply in the wash

And it never failed Every tile time, my heart would beat a little faster I knew it! I kneasn’t really dead! They’d been wrong I’d been right He was still here

Except he wasn’t Of course he wasn’t

“Hannah?”

But the voice was pitch perfect

My breath caught as I experienced a euphoric millisecond of hope before I realized the man next to me in the produce section at Foley’s, the one with my husband’s face and voice and hands, was not an apparition at all, but his twin brother

“Wes” I recovered, lad, if not happy Butthisback to take over his father’s medical practice Like Dreas supposed to “Hey”

We hugged, and I had to rise up on tiptoe, just like when I used to hug Drew His chest was hard and muscular, and his shirt was dark blue Drew had a shirt almost exactly like it Don’t breathe Don’t breathe This has been a Good Day, and if he smells like Drew, it will slide the other way in a heartbeat

Pulling back, Wes crossed his arreen eyes, unable to ood to see you”

“You too,” I lied, twisting er It was a diamond eternity band Eternity What a crock

“How are you?”

“I’ain, but I’d learned it was the answer everyone wanted to hear “How are you?”

“Okay Still a little jet lagged”

I nodded Wes had been in Africa working for Doctors Without Borders for the last several years He’d come home for the funeral, but I’d basically been an automaton in those days I don’t knohether it was my body’s defense mechanis It e thirty-four? But he was a doctor in perfect health! A man in the prime of his life! A father and husband and son and brother and friend! He couldn’t die—that was absurd He had his entire life ahead of him

And we had plans! We were going to have arden and take a trip to Europe We had dinner reservations and his father’s retirement and a three-year-old child to parent for the next fifteen years And ere only halfway through the third season of Game of Thrones! He couldn’t die now!