Chapter Three

Sebastian

"My love," Beth's voice brazenly makes me question my sanity as I wash my hands in the basin in our private en-suite.

My eyes implore me to gaze up, but I wish I hadn't followed the silent command as my eyes meet hers over my shoulder in the mirror.

"What the fuck?" I question myself with dismay. My voice is distraught with forbidden emotion and panic.

"You've done so well today," she tells me, her eyes shrouded in unhappiness as she steps closer behind me. A strange heat coursed through me as if she were truly my beacon of light and heat once more.

I close my eyes, imploring my mind to stop with this charade, but she's still there when my eyes open.

She's right beside me now, her beautiful hair flowing as usual, her features as breathtaking as the day my eyes first landed on her.

"What's happening?" I ask with disbelief, my tone evidently confused and upset.

"Unfinished business, I presume," she shrugs, reaching for the mirror before us, her hand print making itself known through the steam that was there only moments ago from my excessive hand washing. An old habit I fail to control on occasion.

"I've lost it," I cry to myself, reaching both of my hands up to the back of my neck, grabbing ahold of myself in a vice grip that causes pain in the form of a pinch.

Fuck, have I drunk too much?

Moving away from the counter and her, I internally beg myself to come to my senses.

This wouldn't do, the son of a CEO being sectioned for post-death breakdown.

Could you imagine walking back into the board to confront the men who look to me for reassurance when the CEO is grumpy?

Christ...

"Have I upset you, my love?"

"Upset me?" I ask incredulously. "The only person upsetting me is me. Jesus, why am I doing this?" I ask whilst swiping my hand through the air.

"You're doing nothing out of the ordinary, Seb."

"Talking to my dead wife, of whom I laid to rest not an hour ago, is strange, to say the least," I laugh nervously.

"Didn't I always tell you about the afterlife, Seb? It's truly beautiful; everything is so serene and slow. There's less hustle and bustle."

"Oh, great. So you're enjoying being there, are you? Without us?" I spit.

"Of course not, don't be so naive. But life had other plans for me, for us. We must embrace the life we've been given."

"I want our old life back. I want you back," I demand, almost stamping my foot like Melody in a show of defiance to this life sentence Beth's foreshadowed us with.

"That part of our journey is over now; there's no way back. My heart doesn't beat anymore. My body doesn't hold my soul as it once did."

"Your soul?" I ask, sobered.

The very soul I fell in love with?

The one soul that captured me, fulfilling my life with a happiness that never breached monotone colours before she stumbled into my life...

"Seb, who are you talking to?" My mother's voice wobbles close to my bedroom door.

My eyes widen with fear that I've been caught. That once childish fear of being found in the wrong scattering in my stomach like a swarm of spooked butterflies.

"What are you talking about, mum?" I ask, going through my bedroom to open the locked door.

She jumps back, standing up straight from a bent position. It's obvious her ear was to the door, and that only makes it more evident that she had been listening to me rabbit on to myself as I pretended my wife was standing with me in the bathroom in a heated argument on whether she was truly there or not.

"People have been asking for you," she frowns.

"Of course they have," I sigh, resigned to the fact I must show appearances downstairs.

We walk side by side down the hall and down the grand sweeping stairs case into the entrance of my home.

I stare at each person as they look up to my entrance and find that I immediately wish for them to leave my home.

Though I internalise those thoughts thoroughly, ensuring to grin, though I'm sure it comes off as a grimace, as I round the bottom step, walking into the first group of people waiting to share their shock and sorrow for the fact that Beth is now gone.

"I'm so very sorry, Sebastian," one of the board members' wives embraces me in an awkward and unwanted hug.

"Thanks," is all I managed as Mr Bennet tells me time will heal all wounds.

I'm screaming inside to challenge his explanation, but my mother's steady grip on my side prompts me to nod before turning to the next person.

It's one of Beth's cousins, Martha. Unmarried and with no children, she has aged well. She doesn't usually attend family functions, keeping herself away from the family as she lives her best life in the thick of the woods in Scotland.

"Oh, Seb. This is just awful. Life can be so unfair sometimes," she sobs into my shoulder.

"Beth always said life had its plans, and we were prisoners to follow its command," I mumble.

"She always did have unwavering faith. She's with you, Seb. I'm sure she'll never leave."

Her words strike me like a knife entering one side of my chest and exiting the other.

Will she be with me forever? Can I keep the version of her that was in the bathroom?

I'm questioning every scenario, every eventuality, as I move through the string of people waiting to share their sorrow of losing my wife, and I barely hear a word they say as I overthink the impossible.

That and this all feels fake.

No one but her parents and sister and brother can share the sorrow I feel, and perhaps not even them, as hard as I feel her loss.

There's so much I regret, so much time I spent away from her. There is so much we could have done that now she's missed out on.

Life is truly unfair.

Time isn't promised, yet no one ever told me that before the unfortunate appeared.

"Dada," Melody's voice arouses me, bringing me out of my mind and back into the room to see my hand in yet another board member's palm.

"Yes, darling?" I ask, bending to pick her up from the spot where she stands, holding Tina's hand.

She folds herself around my neck, holding onto me as tightly as she can, her head on my shoulder. The little sigh from her lips letting me know she's tired.

"She needs to go to bed," I announce. And it's almost as if the room falls into silence; everyone within looking distance is watching the pair of us with saddened or tear-filled eyes.

I feel like a spectacle.

"I think you're right. We'll, ensure everyone gets on their way," my mother reassures me.

"Thanks, Mum," I mumble after departing her and the others around us.