All week, she’d been observing Noelle, because shiva was long and slow when it wasn’t hurting like hell. Her extended family was pleasant but distant, and Hannah was always running. Cole and the Matthewses were the only people who really talked to her. Drifting off, out of her body, and watching Noelle was easy, admiring the way she rolled her flannel over her strong forearms or flexed her thick thighs inside her worn-out jeans. It was simpler than facing the battering ram of grief trying to break down Miriam’s walls. And she was curious about this magnetic woman who had become so much a part of Carrigan’s while she was gone.

She’d seen Noelle’s easy way of being in her body, her humor, the warmth and care she showed everyone, but she hadn’t noticed Noelle’s distaste. Miriam sort of wished she had. Maybe it would have shut down her sudden, intense response to the woman. Lusting after a stranger while she sat shiva was unnerving and totally inappropriate. Especially since she was engaged to someone else.

Maybe Miriam’s emotions were coming back online after a decade of disuse, rusty and miswired. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried before this week. Maybe her grief was simply coming out sideways. But she didn’t think her interest had been obvious or the reason for Noelle’s animosity.

“Okay, I don’t know what you’re mad at Levi for, but I’ve met Levi, so I’m sure you’re probably justified.” She shoved her hands in her back pockets. “And I don’t know what you have against me, since as you said, we don’t know each other. I didn’t know anything about this. This is exactly something Cass would do, though. This is like, peak Cass Carrigan.”

“You don’t know what I have against you?” Noelle scoffed. “You left Cass here to die without you, and Hannah to deal with it. You never came back, the whole time she was sick. What am I supposed to think of you? And now you’re telling me exactly what Cass would do?”

Noelle’s accusations were like a punch. Miriam’s body folded in on itself. All that worrying about land mines from her childhood, and words from a stranger were what hurt her.

Noelle was right, she’d never come home. She’d thought she was protecting herself, but she’d been hurting everyone she loved. And now she couldn’t look herself in the mirror, and she didn’t know how to make it up to any of them, let alone Cass.

From somewhere outside herself, she watched herself heave a sob.

“I didn’t know,” she choked out. “I didn’t know Cass was sick. No one told me.”