Page 84 of What Remains

"I know."

"I shouldn't feel—" She couldn't finish the sentence.

Liz nodded knowingly. "You aren't replacing Mark. No one could. No one ever will." She rested both hands on her sister's shoulders, steady and sure. "But you're also not the same woman you were before the world ended. Neither of you is." She glanced briefly toward the staircase. "That man lost his wife. He lost his little boy. You lost your husband. You've both been carrying that weight alone for a long time." Her voice dropped even softer. "I don't think you fixed each other, Jo. I think you just... stopped pretending you weren't both a mess."

Josie finally let herself cry again—but these tears came differently. Less desperate. Less consuming. Something closer to release.

"I was scared you'd be disappointed in me," she said.

Liz looked genuinely startled. "Disappointed?" A quiet laugh escaped her as she shook her head. "Oh, Jo." She pulled her younger sister into a tight hug. "You kept yourself alive for months for Layla's sake. Yesterday, you walked through that front door carrying more pain than any one person should have to bear." Her voice began to tremble as she held Josie a little tighter. "If one night reminded you that you're still alive... then I'm grateful for it."

Josie buried her face against her sister's shoulder. "I miss him so much."

"I know."

"I always will."

"I know." Liz kissed the top of her head, the way their mother used to. "And someday..." She smiled gently against her hair. "...you'll miss him, and still smile, because someone else made you laugh."

Josie closed her eyes, letting the words settle.

She took another sip of coffee. The bitterness on her tongue was real, and so was the warmth spreading through her hands. For now, maybe that was enough.

Consciousness returned to Seth not in a rush, but as a slow tide.

No nightmare had dragged him from sleep. No gunfire, no screams, no vision of Molly reaching for him as he failed to reach her. No AJ calling for his dad in a voice that always dissolved just before Seth could answer.

Just silence.

He blinked against the morning light filtering through the lace curtains. The farmhouse sat quiet around him, save for the occasional groan of old wood settling and the faint whistle of wind beyond the walls. He frowned. The bed beside him lay empty—but still warm. His hand drifted almost on its own across the quilt, finding the hollow where Josie had slept only minutes before. He closed his eyes as the night returned to him in fragments.

The knock at his door. The way she'd stood in the hallway, uncertain and brave all at once. The way she'd looked at him—not like a Marine, not like the man everyone expected to have all the answers, but like he was simply Seth. He remembered surfacing sometime after his watch, finding her asleep against his chest with one hand resting lightly over his heart, looking more at peace than she had since the day he'd met her. Without thinking, he'd kissed the top of her head and let sleep take him again.

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He hadn't understood how much he'd missed this—waking beside another person, the comfort of it, the quiet weight of a second heartbeat in the room. For a few precious hours, the loneliness had loosened its grip on him.

He breathed in, catching the faint scent of apples on the pillowcase where her head had rested. And with it, another name, another woman.

Molly.

The name was a physical blow.

Seth swallowed against a tightness in his throat.

"What am I doing?" The words barely escaped his lips.

His eyes drifted toward the window, where snow fell softly beyond the glass. He remembered the vows he'd spoken years ago, standing straight-backed and certain in his dress blues. Until death do us part. Death had done exactly that. So why did it still feel like betrayal?

He scrubbed both hands over his face. "I'm sorry, Mol." His voice cracked on her name. "I'm so damn sorry. I never wanted—" He couldn't finish the sentence.

He hadn't gone looking for someone else. He hadn't planned any of this. He certainly hadn't expected one stubborn trauma surgeon with tired eyes and a little girl named Layla to quietly dismantle everything he'd spent months carefully arranging around himself.

The guilt settled over him, heavy and familiar. Had he moved on too quickly? Did too quickly even exist when his world itself had ended? He didn't know anymore. Everything that once defined right and wrong lay buried somewhere beneath ash and snow.

He could still hear Molly's laugh, still picture the freckles that scattered across her nose every summer, still see her standing on the porch with AJ balanced on her hip, waving as he pulled out of the driveway. Nothing about last night erased any of that. Nothing ever could. He loved Molly. That hadn't changed, and it never would.

Then why had being with Josie come so naturally?

Not because she reminded him of his wife—she didn't. The two women differed in almost every imaginable way. Josie wasn't filling the empty space Molly had left behind. She had carved out an entirely different place inside him, one built on shared grief, shared survival, shared understanding of what it meant to keep breathing when the person you loved most no longer could.