“Ah.” She tucked a loose lock of hair behind his ear, “Fuck.”

“Genni...”

“Goddamnit, Beaumont.” She laughed out the words, but her eyes were wet, and she hit him with her half-clenched fist. He pressed his face against hers; he wanted to keep her close and he wanted to keep her quiet.

“I’m sorry. I’m so—”

“I guess I should have—” Her voice wobbled, just one more time, then strengthened. She sighed, and in that exhalation he heard her heart break, and he heard her accept him. “It’s all right, hon.”

She gave him one more kiss, sweet, and it felt like forgiveness and the end of things, “Come on. Dance with me.”

They had to pass Jack and Margaret on their way to the stairs, and Jack made some kind of primal animal sound behind him, and Theo’s heart stuttered. His body responded. He wondered, detached and shocked, if he was going to cry.

In some ways his world did end, that night, in the in-between space of the bell tower.

Genni never kissed him again.

Chapter Five

Jack woke up with his hand reaching out.

Something he would never tell anyone—something Meg could never find out—was that as soon as Jack heard about Theo’s divorce, he started waking himself in the early hours of the morning by reaching out one hand. It was jarring, uncomfortable, because his hand never seemed to find what it was looking for, and so it was an absence which startled him out of sleep. It was an odd feeling to be awoken by nothingness.

Meg slept on his left side. She never noticed this new habit, not in those months before he told her the whole truth, when he sat on his need for the end of their marriage. It was Theo who had slept on his right side, Theo who curled up with him in a too-small bed. He and Meg slept in a practical manner; once their nighttime snuggle and quiet chat was done, they occupied their own personal space on their pillow-topped king mattress.

Tonight, Jack woke himself on their couch, his hand knocking over an empty water glass. He closed his eyes again, gritted his teeth, and tried to force himself back into sleep. But there was a light on, somewhere, a soft glow permeating the dark, and he heard the fridge open, a drawer being shut.

No chance of sleeping now, he thought, as he rubbed his eyes and hauled himself up. His back twinged and he wondered when his body had started to feel so old.

Just a few steps down the hall, and he knocked lightly on the doorway to the kitchen.