If He Had Been with Me

by Laura Nowlin

Sometimes I am disappointed with love. I thought that when you were in love, it would always be right there, staring you in the face, reminding you every moment that you love this person. It seems that it isn’t always like that.

“Two houses,” I said. “And four people.” “It’s our houses,” he said. “And our family.”

“Finny,” I say to the lonely dark. “Finny. My Finny.” My breath shudders and my eyelids close against the pain of loving him. Finny. My Finny.

“I’m fine,” I say. I always am. Comparatively.

Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life;

On August 8, Phineas Smith died,

If he had been with me, Finny would still be alive. If he had been with me, everything would have been different. But whose fault is it that he wasn’t?

Death happens to him more suddenly than I can describe to you or even care to imagine.