Oblivion

She didn’t care. The deal was this. And this . . . this was important.

“I’m sorry,” Varen said, at last reopening his eyes.

“Me too.” Sidling next to him, she took the hand of his good arm and squeezed. “Does your shoulder still hurt bad?”

“Everything hurts bad.”

Angling toward him, Isobel slid her arms under his jacket and around his middle. Laying her head against his chest, she listened to the steady thud of his heart.

“Your hair,” she said. “I’ve decided that . . . I really like it.”

“Your shrink friend’s suggestion.”

“Dr. Robinson?” Isobel asked.

“When I told her how Bruce and I first met, she thought it would be a good way to pay homage since . . . since I didn’t get to say good-bye. To mark his passing. And to . . . distance myself from . . . me.”

Curious, Isobel leaned back and peered up at him.

“How did you and Bruce first meet?”

A thinner version of Varen’s smile returned. “Before freshman year, I used to sneak into Nobit’s Nook all the time. Sometimes I could hide between the shelves, but whenever he caught me reading, he’d always kick me out. I used to think it was because of the way I dressed, but . . .”

“But . . . ?” Isobel prompted.

Varen shook his head. “He never said why, until one day I challenged him on it. He got mad and started yelling. Something about having enough ghosts to deal with already.”

Understanding dawned on Isobel, giving her already well-wrung heart another small twist. “He kicked you out because you reminded him too much of Grey.”

When Varen didn’t reply, Isobel knew to take his silence as confirmation.

“What . . . happened to Grey?” she asked after a beat.

“He never told me and I never asked,” Varen said, his expression darkening. “I didn’t go looking for information, either, because . . . well, he wasn’t asking me questions. I guess we both just sort of preferred it that way. It was like we had our own unspoken agreement. But at the start of last year, before I found out about his diagnosis, he asked me to start organizing the bookshop, and weeding through some stuff, I found pictures.”

“You do look a little like him,” Isobel said, shifting her eyes to the tombstone planted at the left of Bruce’s—Grey’s grave. “Now especially.”

“Intentional,” he said. “Given that the things he left me were . . . all Grey’s.”

“The car,” Isobel said.

“The car.”

“And . . . the suit?”

“You saw that?” Varen asked, but he didn’t wait for her to answer. “Graduation. In his will, he stated it was his wish for me to wear it under my robes when I walked. Because . . . Grey never got to.”

“Theeeen,” Isobel said, drawing out the syllable, “that just means you’ll have to walk.”

He actually laughed, one short half chuckle that he tried to hide by brushing at his face with the back of his sleeve. “Yeah, if your dad doesn’t call out a hit on me in the meantime.”

Isobel glanced reluctantly in the direction of the sedan, where Gwen stood next to her dad, both of them leaning against the car. Arms folded and frame tense, Isobel’s dad watched her and Varen with his circulating-buzzard face on, ignoring Gwen’s repeated elbow nudges and cookie offerings.

“Don’t worry about him,” Isobel said, raising a hand to touch Varen’s hair, which still felt silken between her fingers. “I have a feeling that as long as I play by his rules this time around, he might mellow out sooner rather than later.”

“On that note,” Varen said as he caught her hand and lowered it between them, turning it palm up, “since those rules happen to include that you’re suspended from seeing me until I go back to school, and since Robinson wants me to wait until the fall to return, I figured I’d better ask you now.”

“Ask me?”

“To prom,” he said, and he placed something small and hard in the center of her hand. His silver class ring.

Isobel’s eyes widened, but her fingers closed around the token, and she fluttered her gaze up to his. “Junior prom . . . or senior?”

“I’ll go with you to both,” he replied, “if your dad will make an exception. But you certainly picked a strange place to ask me.”

He’d said it so seriously that she had to smile. “So . . . I guess this means we’re official.”