Henry continued to vacillate between peace and acceptance and a horrifying grief too intense to manage. He simply needed to believe that with time the peace would become stronger than his grief and he would be able to move forward. He often shared his feelings with the family and found they were each having similar feelings in regard to their own relationships with Kat. Henry knew that marriage constituted a relationship that was not comparable to any other, but that didn’t diminish his respect for the fact that her parents and sister—and even her aunt, who had not physically been present much of the time—all had their own unique and powerful bond with Kat, and this was difficult for all of them in different ways. The commonality they all shared was their love for Kat and their grief over losing her. But it was a commonality that strengthened their family bonds, and he was grateful beyond words to have been given the privilege to be part of this family and to not be facing this dreadful thing alone. More than once he’d tried to imagine how it might have been if his own mother was still alive and he’d taken his bride to live in the home of his upbringing. The thought made him shudder. There wouldn’t have been even a degree of the love and support and comfort he’d found here at Willenbrock House.

On an especially cold afternoon, the wind wreaked havoc outside with flurries of snow that were not coming down in quantity but were made vicious by the wind’s influence. Henry chose wisely to stay in and spent the morning with Kat, even though there was very little evidence that she was still alive. In fact, he had noticed the last few days that Viola and Oliver would come to briefly check on Kat for a few minutes; they’d hold her hand and kiss her cheek, but they never stayed long. He knew it was difficult for them to sit with her when she rarely showed any sign of life and when she did it was generally tainted by evidence of pain. Paulina’s visits to Kat were even more rare, but for all her devotion to Kat, she had never shared the ongoing closeness with her that the other family members did. Therefore, it was Henry and Amala who each spent significant time with Kat each day, and there were some maids especially devoted to Kat and Amala who would take shifts at other times to be certain Kat was never left alone and to notify him or Amala if anything changed.