Page 86 of The Dearly Departed

Yet his expression looked as conflicted as ever. "We've never talked about marriage though.”

“In all the time you guys have been together, you’ve never talked about what you want in life?” I asked, my brow furrowed.

I had never been in a relationship, and I didn’t think I’d know the first thing about how to make a woman happy. But I figured it was a fairly common thing to discuss future plans at some point. How would you know if you were compatible otherwise?

He shook his head with a sheepish, almost-guilty look on his face. “No. We’ve never really talked about the future or anything like that. I just sort of … assumed, you know? And I bought a ring, thinking that's what should come next, and I was gonna ask her, but then Leonard went ahead and died."

He was killed, I wanted to say.

He would still be here if it wasn't for me, I wanted to say.

But I bit my tongue, swallowed, then replied, "Yeah, things have been a little, um … crazy … with everything.”

Shawn nodded as if what I'd said wasn't the stupidest thing to ever come out of my mouth. "Honestly, I've barely seen her over the past couple of weeks or so."

"She came to the funeral," I offered.

"Yeah, she did. But she left right away. Didn't hang around afterward. Didn’t come back to the house. Fuck, did she even come to the cemetery? I honestly can’t remember.”

I lifted a hand in a weak shrug because, honestly, I hadn’t noticed either. I’d been too busy thinking about Gerald Crowley and the murder staining my soul.

And Analise.

I was always, in some way, thinking about Analise.

I wished I could stop … but I couldn’t.

“Anyway,” Shawn continued, “I talked to her last night, and she said this is all too much for her. That I'm too sad."

I frowned at that, suddenly very present and no longer lingering in a warehouse, removing the head from a gargantuan man named Tick.

"Too sad?" I repeated, disgust heavily laden in my tone. "Leonard died. The man was practically our father."

"I know," he said, nodding. "That's what I said. And she told me he wasn't my father. That he was a nice guy who saw a charity case and—"

"Oh, fuck that," I cut him off, shaking my head. "No. You're going to break up with that bitch."

And then I'm going to kill her.

No. No, I'm not. Stop it.

Shawn's eyes met mine then, a crushing sadness worn plainly on his face. "I have to, don't I?"

"Listen, you don't have to do anything," I said. "But I sure as hell wouldn't want to marry a woman who talked to me like that, especially after losing someone as important as Leonard. Abso-fuckin'-lutely not. She can fuck right off with that bullshit."

"Yeah," he replied softly, dropping his sorrowful gaze again and nodding. "I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around … all of it. All the shit with Leonard …” He ran his hand over the back of his neck. “I just never would've expected her to say something like that."

I lifted my drink again to take a sip as I said, "No, I understand that."

The conversation stalled as Shawn sat back in his seat and grabbed his phone from off the table. His brow was set into a determined scowl as he tapped across the screen for a few moments, and then with a sigh, he laid it back down.

"There," he said. "I told her we need to talk."

"Good for you," I replied, already worried she'd somehow talk him into reconsidering his decision to break up. "And, hey, I'm sorry. It fucking sucks."

"Yeah, it does," he replied before deflating with a long sigh. “But … I dunno. Maybe it’s better I learned about this now, instead of ten years down the line after we’ve been married and had a couple kids.”

That was Shawn. Rational. Capable of finding the silver linings, no matter how dark the clouds above his head happened to be. He’d adopted that mentality easily after we moved in with Leonard and all our lives changed—quite literally—overnight, and that was how I’d known he was the best of the three of us.