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trying to ease out her breathing until the room stopped spinning. No tears, though. At times she thought she’d cried out all the tears her body could possibly hold. It had been months since she’d cried. Not because she didn’t want to but because tears wouldn’t come. The tears had dried up inside her, just like all the other emotions. Now she felt as dry and shriveled as a husk of corn. Most days she was surprised the wind didn’t just carry her away, she felt so insubstantial.
    She wasn’t here. She was a ghost. She had already died only her body hadn’t noticed yet.
    The only thing that told her she wasn’t actually dead were those flashes of heat when she was near Joe Harris. He seemed such a nice man, but she didn’t dare tell him he reminded her that she wasn’t dead.
    It sounded so weird, so incredibly neurotic. Yes, she’d lost her family. But he’d been blown up. In battle. Her own physical injuries paled next to his. Her spirit had broken, not her bones. His spirit hadn’t broken at all.
    Who knew if Joe would or even could understand that? He seemed so...straightforward. So sane. He’d probably had a Putting Joe Harris Back Together Program going the instant he woke up after the explosion. Yeah, that sounded like him. He probably had some kind of timetable for recovery, and was moving ahead with it, step-by-step.
    Get wounded, do rehab, get better.
    Whereas she was still mired back at step one. Lose family. She’d never really gotten beyond that in any way. Every night when her nightmares woke her up, she felt the pain of their deaths every bit as keenly as when she’d woken up in the hospital and the nurse had given her the news. She relived that, night after night after night, in some hellish endless loop, but was never able to remember anything else in the morning, only grief and horror and terror.
    When the dizziness passed, Isabel stood, exhausted. She hung up her coat in the hallway and moved to the kitchen for a glass of water. Her feet were shuffling and she had to remember to pick them up, to walk normally. Every single thing she did had to be done like a child learning it all for the first time.
    Except...except walking back home. That had been great. Arm in arm with Joe Harris she’d felt almost normal for the first time since the Massacre. He’d kept pace with her, moving as slowly as she did but making it seem perfectly normal. She had a feeling that if she’d crawled, he’d have crawled right alongside her.
    Clearly, he could walk faster than that. Hell, he ran almost every morning. But coming back from the park, he’d kept step with her without making any kind of big deal about it. And it had felt just great. Arm linked with his, feeling him so big and warm and strong at her side, well...she’d felt strong too. Just a little. It wasn’t like the old days when she was fit and happy and energetic. Those days were over, maybe forever. These days she felt a hundred years old.
    But she’d definitely felt better with him by her side. She didn’t need to watch her feet. He wouldn’t let her fall if she tripped. So for the first time in what felt like forever she’d walked with her head upright, seeing the street for the first time. Acutely aware of the big man by her side. Wishing they could walk together forever.
    But that was crazy. He was just walking his nutso, next-door neighbor back home because she’d nearly been knocked over by a dog. Couldn’t even be trusted to take a short walk to a nearby park.
    Oh, God she was so
tired
of this! So tired of being a pale shadow of herself, so tired of not sleeping, so tired of feeling guilty because she hadn’t died together with her parents and her brothers and her aunts and uncles and cousins.
    Yes
, she should have said.
I’d love to come over.
Sit by his side while he played cards, listen to the male banter, laugh at their corny jokes. They’d probably watch their language around her but she didn’t care. Teddy had passed