Before You Say Goodbye

Chapter 9

The theatre was empty when they arrived. Autumn dialled Marley’s number, but his mobile phone rang out from underneath their seats. He’d obviously dropped it the evening before. They picked it up. He had thirteen text messages, mostly from women in his contact list. When he finally arrived, he was with Hannah. She was holding his hand. Bowie rolled his eyes, but waited until Hannah excused herself to go to the toilet before he scolded his brother.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he said.

“Why?” Marley asked defensively. “She knows there’s no strings.”

“You told her that before.”

“She knows this time,” Marley said.

The cast and crew piled in shortly afterwards. Autumn was thrilled when both Phil and Clara greeted her with warm hugs. She liked them. They were open and friendly, and they really cared about Bowie. They were constantly asking him if he needed a break or if they could get anything for him. Autumn was glad to know he had people out there besides his family keen to take care of him.

She offered to pick up coffee and pastries so they could get started straight away. Bowie was anxious, and she figured satiating the cast and therefore hurrying the process was the best thing she could do to help. She knew why he was nervous. He and Marley had written new parts for almost every cast member, and some of the actors were looking more enthusiastic about learning the number than others. Bowie tried to encourage them with gentle and inspiring words. He sat front and centre on the stage, watching closely to see what wasn’t working so well and making corrections with good-natured encouragement. Marley moved from seat to seat around the theatre, watching each performance from the perspective of the audience. For quite some time, the whole thing was in total disarray. By mid-afternoon, the twins were almost hoarse from shouting.

“Sing the right fucking words!” Marley yelled, over and over again.

At times, it was painful to watch. There was a very obvious difference in the level of enthusiasm being shown by the members of the cast who were throwing themselves into it wholeheartedly and those that weren’t. Bowie and Marley pleaded repeatedly with three unenthused actors to give it all they had, but they did not want to get on board. At first, Autumn couldn’t work out why, but their attitudes towards Marley made it obvious eventually. They didn’t like him. Marley seemed to know.

“Maybe they’ll pull together when Marley isn’t here?” Larry said to Bowie.

“Sack them,” Marley hissed. “They’re supposed to be professionals, here to do a job. They’re dragging everyone down.”

“I preview tomorrow,” Larry said.

“You only need to replace the ringleader.” Marley pointed at a tall man with curly hair.

“Find me someone else with the talent and time to fill in at short notice and I’ll do it.” Larry shrugged.

Bowie spoke up. “Marley could.”

Larry shook his head. “No.”

“Oh, come on, Larry, it was years ago,” Bowie said.

“I don’t have a choice.” Larry held his hand up. “I put him on stage, I’m finished. You both know it.”

Autumn had no idea what they were talking about, but she saw Marley clench his fists and jaw. Bowie and Larry winced at each other.

“You three!” Marley shouted at the offenders.

Bowie sighed. “Marley—”

“You’re ruining the whole fucking thing for everybody. For Larry, for the audience, for your fellow cast members, who are working their backsides off to put on a good show. Get down here and watch them, and if you don’t think you can join in like the professionals you’re supposed to be, piss off somewhere else.”

The rest of the ensemble ran through the closing number again. Marley filled in for the curly-haired man. He did a good job of hiding his hurt. His performance was captivating, but Autumn could see from the stillness in his eyes that there was something lurking just beneath the surface. Bowie saw it, too. Every time his eyes landed on his brother he flinched.

Autumn wasn’t sure if it was public humiliation or a desperate need to prove they could do it better than Marley, but the three under-achievers upped their game after that. Bowie had been promising the cast they would know when they’d nailed it. It was late in the evening before that happened. They launched themselves into each other’s arms in congratulations. Autumn stood up to applaud them. She was genuinely impressed. She had never seen so much talent in one place. Solos and duets were layered with intricate harmonies and combined with rhythmic melodies and acapella sections. Performers ran on stage and then off again, dancing and singing their hearts out to a song it was obvious they loved. Even the choreographer with anger issues seemed appeased. Bowie and Marley embraced, and the cast swarmed around them. Autumn had never felt pride like it. Their difficult morning was long forgotten, though the words Bowie had said to her had not been far from her mind all day. He loved her. This wonderfully talented, passionate man was in love with her.

Despite their utter exhaustion, Larry persuaded them to stay for a drink. Someone offered to pick up beers and snacks, and they moved backstage into an enormous dressing room. Autumn sat cross-legged on the floor between Phil and Clara, away from Bowie. She wanted to give him a chance to catch up with his friends. Sipping contentedly from her bottle of beer, she talked about how they’d met, her love of writing, and what it was like to live with the Whittles.

“They’re the most gloriously eccentric family I’ve ever met,” Clara said. “I loved them. Their mother is such a doll and their dad is just the sweetest man.”

Autumn couldn’t agree more. In the weeks she’d been living in the family home, she’d bonded with Bowie’s parents in a way that secretly rather alarmed her. True to their word, they’d treated her as one of their own. Autumn cooked and shopped and watched trashy television shows with Emma. Some evenings — usually when Autumn was feeling a little down — she offered to brush her hair for her. Soon, Autumn was dismayed to find she was craving this kind of attention from Emma constantly. It made her feel safe. Bowie’s mother was a sweet-natured and demonstrative woman, quick to hug and kiss, and her love for her children knew no bounds at all. She existed for them all, and Autumn felt lucky to be part of it.

Ben was even more adorable. He had brazenly become like a father to her. There was no discernible difference between the way he treated Bluebell and Maddie and the way he was with Autumn. She’d found they had so much in common. They both read widely, wrote for pleasure and loved to discuss the news, from politics to economics. He gave her his favourite reads when he’d finished them, told her off when she was being unreasonable, and put his arms around her when he knew she needed to be comforted. At first he had been reluctant to express his affection for her physically, but following a frank and open discussion about it one evening over a bottle of gin, Ben now hugged and kissed Autumn without hesitation, just as he did his daughters. She’d once accidentally called him Dad, and he had been visibly thrilled; he had encouraged her to continue to do so, if she wanted to. Autumn had politely declined, citing her respect for his children. She was sure that her slip of the tongue, while lovely, had come as a consequence of the fact that five of the eight people living in the house called him Dad. She didn’t tell Ben that, though. He enjoyed feeling like a father to her. Like the rest of the family, he knew nothing of her troubled background, only that Autumn never mentioned her family, and that they were not aware that she was back in England.

The long and short of it was, Autumn knew Bowie’s parents cared for her very much. He’d told her once that they were concerned about what she might do once he’d gone.

“There’s no pressure, Autumn. You can stay here or you can go wherever you need to go. Do whatever you need to do,” Bowie had said in bed one morning. “But you should know that they love you and they’d be very happy for you to stay.”

Autumn hadn’t answered. She hadn’t been able to. Not only because she was completely overwhelmed by the idea that they cared for her so deeply but also because she’d managed to block out of her mind the fact that Bowie would be gone soon, and his candour had taken her breath away. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She had no idea what a loss so monumental would do to her and didn’t want to commit herself to anything.

She would think about it only when she needed to.

* * *

One post-rehearsal beer became two, followed by three, four and five. By the time she stepped outside at midnight for a cigarette with Marley, Autumn was drunk. She was completely intoxicated by the atmosphere backstage and she really didn’t want to go home, but she could sense that the frivolity was drawing to a close. The cast and crew had a show to open the very next night, and Bowie was obviously completely exhausted. She was distracted enough that she didn’t want a cigarette, but this was important. Despite her excitement about the spontaneity of their gathering, Autumn had taken time out between conversations to check on Marley and had spotted a sombre expression across his face more than once that evening. This was the first opportunity she’d had to ask him about it. She forced the tipsy grin off her face.

“You OK?” she asked him, nudging him affectionately.

“I’m fine,” he said.

She let him wallow in silence for a few seconds. Marley had a habit of saying he was fine at first but, if she let him stew for long enough, he usually revealed the truth without further prodding.

Eventually, he sighed. “I fucking love the stage.”

“Well, yeah, that’s pretty obvious,” she said warily, conscious that Marley was already fragile. “Do you want to talk about this?”

He took a long drag on his cigarette, staring at her intently as he did so. He seemed to be searching for her understanding.

“I want to talk to you about it,” he said. “But I can’t fully explain it to you because it isn’t actually my story to tell.”

Autumn stayed silent. She nodded, acknowledging his predicament, and waited.

“I totally lived for it when I was younger. It’s the only thing I ever really loved to do. The band was OK. At least it gave me the chance to make music and play. But performing on stage was taken away from me. Today, doing this, I’ve somehow managed to forget about the fact Bowie will be gone one day, and it’s allowed me to focus on the only other thing I really love.”

Autumn squeezed his arm. He offered her another cigarette. Autumn knew by now that this probably meant that he had more to say. She took one and lit it, leaning back against the cold brick wall.

“Larry’s hosting his annual summer ball in a few weeks’ time. He’s trying to get us to sing a tribute to Bowie at it,” he said.

“‘Us’ as in ‘the family’?” Autumn asked.

“No, ‘us’ as in me . . . and you,” he said nonchalantly.

To say she was surprised was an understatement. She didn’t sing, not really. Larry had no idea if she could sing. True, she’d been cast in a couple of musical productions at school when she was younger, but she’d never done anything like it since. Nor did she plan to. She liked music, but it wasn’t in her to perform the way she’d seen the cast perform today.

“I was listening to your voice when we all sang the finale together. You can hold a tune. You can handle what I’m planning.”

“I-I’m not sure . . .” Autumn stammered.

“There’ll only be a couple of hundred people there. It’s a medley of the songs Bowie’s written for the stage. It would mean so much to him if we did it together and he definitely wouldn’t be expecting you to be a part of it, so it would make it a massive surprise for him. I don’t think you’d need more than three or four rehearsals and . . .”

“A couple of hundred people?”

She felt sick at the very thought of so many people looking at her. Marley put one hand on each of her shoulders, smiling down at her with affection.

“I’m not going to force you, but, please, think about it, Autumn. He would fucking love to see us up there together — I know he would.”

Autumn couldn’t argue with that. Bowie loved that Autumn and Marley got on so well. He was often pointing out their similarities and the qualities they shared, despite the fact it was already obvious to everybody. They were both largely unashamed of anything they said or did, unquenchably curious, stubbornly impatient and frustratingly provocative. Bowie was grateful they were able to find so much common ground. He was the first to say how important it was to him that his two best friends liked each other so much.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

There was one last drunken rendition of the finale in the green room before Autumn, Bowie and Marley jumped into a taxi together with Hannah, who had barely left Marley’s side all afternoon. She wasn’t the first woman Marley had taken home with him this week, but that wasn’t unusual. Autumn and Bowie would often hear him throw Pip out of the bedroom they shared to sleep on the sofa, and then they’d try valiantly to ignore everything they could hear through the ceiling. Sometimes, if it went on for hours, they’d laugh together, making jokes about his stamina and how shameless Marley was when it came to sex. The women had usually left by the time she and Bowie got up in the morning. If anyone else heard it, and Autumn suspected that they did, nobody seemed to confront Marley about it.

Still, Autumn knew Bowie suspected there was a more disturbing aspect to Marley’s sexual libertinism. His brother had always enjoyed the company of women, but his seemingly obsessive need for sex had increased as Bowie’s cancer had progressed.

“He’s a man, he likes sex, of course he does. It’s just that he’s never chased it in the way he seems to now. I think it’s a way of trying to forget how he feels about losing me. It all seems a bit empty to me. Like, he’s not actually enjoying what he’s doing, beyond the obvious need for physical release. It’s as though he’s just trying to find some way to escape the mess we’re all in for a while.”

Autumn was not concerned about sleeping through Marley and Hannah’s lovemaking tonight. Bowie slept all the way home in the car — despite an animated debate between Autumn, Marley, Hannah and their taxi driver about whether or not the Beatles were overrated — and nobody slept like Autumn slept when she’d had a few too many. It had been a long and busy day, and she couldn’t wait to crawl into bed beside the man who’d told her he loved her.

Bowie was so exhausted he was barely able to walk unaided, so she and Marley drunkenly helped him into the house and undressed him. Once he was nestled comfortably beneath the duvet, she shooed Marley out of their bedroom into the arms of Hannah, who was waiting for him in the hallway. Autumn climbed into bed and kissed Bowie on the cheek. He groaned in his sleep, clasping her hand.

“I love you,” she whispered drunkenly into the dark.

* * *

Autumn woke up with a start. She never woke in the night, especially not when she’d been drinking. Something felt wrong.

Bowie was gone.

She sat up, her eyes searching the darkness, but she could tell the room was empty. The door to the hallway was ajar. Autumn panicked. Bowie never left the room during the night without rousing her to tell her where he was going. He didn’t want her to worry. She leaped out of bed and raced into the living room, hoping she might find him dozing on the sofa, but there was no one there. Autumn’s heart fluttered with panic.

She ran to the nearest bathroom, the one next to the kitchen. They’d had a lot of gin so perhaps he’d had a sudden urge to be sick and not had time to tell her. Even as she was thinking it, she knew she was wrong. Bowie always shook her awake. Always. She grabbed the doorknob and tried to twist it, but it was locked. The knot in her stomach dissolved into panic and she heard herself make a noise, something between a scream and a shout. She banged her fist on the door, yelling Bowie’s name as loud as she could, knowing it would wake the others.

“Bowie!”

There was no answer. She rattled the handle as hard as she could, hitting the door again and again when it didn’t budge.

Marley reached her first. He launched himself at the door with a power that would have impressed her if she hadn’t been so terrified. The wooden door cracked a little, but didn’t break open. He threw himself at it again. Ben was suddenly behind him, pulling Marley away.

“Move!”

He rammed a knife he was holding into the lock.

“What’s happening?” Emma’s hands were in her hair. Bluebell, Maddie and Pip were close behind her, the two girls clinging to each other desperately. They stood watching Ben struggle with the handle. Autumn was hoping against hope she’d made a stupid mistake. That her lover might appear, drowsy and confused, from somewhere.

It took Ben’s shaking hands three attempts to swing the lock back and get the door to open. When he did, he revealed Bowie lying motionless in the middle of the bathroom floor, his legs and arms splayed out in a manner that told them that he had collapsed. His lips were blue. Autumn stepped back, shaking her head from side to side. No. This could not be happening now.

Emma started screaming, a high-pitched, frantic scream that Autumn knew would be lodged in her memory forever more. She rushed towards her son, but Ben and Marley were already there, and Autumn knew Bowie’s mother could be of no help in the state she was in. She held Emma back. It took every ounce of strength she had.

“Take your mum with you and go and call an ambulance!” she yelled at Bluebell, wrestling them both in the direction of the kitchen. Bluebell dragged Emma away, still shrieking.

“You do this at work.” Pip was shouting at Maddie. “Do something.”

Relief flooded through Autumn. Maddie was a care worker. She was trained in resuscitation. She could step in and save her brother. She could tell them what to do to bring Bowie back to life. Autumn urged Maddie forward with her hands on her back. Pip — on the other side of his sister — was pushing her towards Bowie, too.

“I can’t.” Maddie put her head in her hands, turning her face away from where her brother was lying, dead the worst case and dying in the best. Autumn caught sight of the scene before her, gave up on Maddie, and watched. Ben was holding Bowie’s head and trying, through sobs, to breathe air into his son’s mouth. Marley was pressing his entire weight against Bowie’s ribcage, hysterically begging him not to die. Autumn could hear Bowie’s ribs cracking beneath Marley’s desperate palms, but he was not responding. Bowie’s head flopped limply from side to side with each compression.

Autumn had never felt more useless.

“Can I do anything, Ben?” Her voice came out in a wail. She didn’t expect him to answer. Autumn couldn’t watch any longer. She dropped to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest and covering her face. She concentrated on listening for sirens, trying in vain to hear anything above Emma’s hair-raising screams from the kitchen and Pip’s hysterical sobbing from where he sat beside her on the cold tiles. He kept repeatedly asking if Bowie was dead. Autumn was certain he was. She didn’t tell Pip that, though. To do so would make it real.

When she heard sirens close by, Autumn stood up and bolted, barefoot, out of the front door and down the gravel driveway as quickly as terror could carry her. She punched the button to release the gates and raced alongside the ambulance to the house, screeching at the paramedics.

“Hurry up! Hurry the fuck up!” She yanked the driver’s door open as they braked by the porch. Ignoring her stream of profanities, the paramedics jogged after her, along the hallway and into the bathroom.

“Get away from him, please, guys.” The paramedics moved through the doorway. Both Ben and Marley fell back against the bathroom wall, weeping.

“He doesn’t want to be resuscitated,” Maddie shouted at them.

“Shut up, Maddie,” Pip cried.

“Dad, don’t do this.” Maddie addressed her father.

One of the paramedics turned to Ben.

“Go ahead. Please. I’m his father. He wanted to live. He just wasn’t sure.”

“He WAS sure!” Maddie was becoming hysterical. Autumn moved to take hold of her, but she was inconsolable, pacing the floor of the corridor manically and shaking her head violently when she heard them mention a defibrillator.

It took three attempts to restart Bowie’s heart, then they moved him rapidly onto a stretcher and carried him out to the ambulance. Bluebell had released Emma from her grip so she could go with them, but Emma had changed her mind about wanting to be beside her son, paralysed by the idea this might be the end. Ben had to lift her into the back of the ambulance.

The paramedic barked the name of a hospital at Maddie, and then they were gone.

Barefoot — and in various states of undress — Autumn, Maddie, Bluebell and Pip piled into Maddie’s estate car, leaving Marley’s lover sitting by the front door.

“I’m so sorry,” she said to Autumn as she passed. Autumn told her to get a taxi home. She promised she would give her the money next time she saw her, but Hannah shook her head.

“Are you sure you’re going to be OK to drive?” Autumn asked, plugging in her seat belt. They couldn’t hear the sirens anymore. They were going to have to move fast to catch up with the ambulance. Maddie nodded agitatedly, turning the key in the ignition and stalling the car. Autumn reached out to grab her wrist. Her hands were shaking violently. “Bowie wouldn’t want us to kill ourselves trying to get to him,” she said.

Haste was not worth risking their lives for. Bowie was on his way to getting the care he needed and they would get there soon. They sat for a few minutes in silence. Autumn didn’t know what the others were thinking, but she was working hard on pulling herself together. She knew shock was debilitating, and that wasn’t what Bowie needed from her now. She had to find strength from somewhere and she spent those few minutes scratching around in her soul for the strongest parts of herself.

“Is he dead?” Pip asked into the silence.

“I don’t know.” Maddie shook her head.

“He’s fucking dead.” Bluebell wailed, sobbing into her hands.

Nobody said anything. Autumn started to cry.

Maddie waited a few more seconds, then turned the key in the ignition. This time, the car roared to life.

* * *

When she woke, Autumn didn’t know where she was. It was light outside. She saw white sheets and Bowie’s clammy hand in hers, and it all came flooding back. She wished she was still asleep.

Emma was sitting across from her, holding Bowie’s other hand lovingly to her face. The others were all there: Ben, sitting with his back against the wall beside Pip, who was asleep on his father’s shoulder. Maddie, who was staring out of the window, and Bluebell, who was dozing in the foetal position on an ugly blue sofa. Marley was sitting at the end of the bed. Autumn was sure he hadn’t taken his eyes off Bowie since they’d all been allowed into his room a few hours earlier. The medical team had stabilised his condition but — with no idea how long he’d been lying on the bathroom floor — they couldn’t be sure when he would wake up, or what sort of state he might be in when he did.

Autumn reached across the bed to touch Emma’s wrist. She was crying quietly, her tears dripping onto the palm of Bowie’s hand.

“He squeezed my hand earlier,” she said.

At the sound of their mother’s voice, Bluebell and Pip opened their eyes. They searched Autumn’s face for any hint of a change in Bowie’s condition. Marley answered for her with a shake of his head. There had been none. Despite Emma’s insistence that her son had moved, Bowie was still unconscious. He was covered in deep purple bruises and was being closely monitored for signs of internal bleeding, a significant risk for someone with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The CPR he had been given in an attempt to save him could in fact kill him. It was an instance of irony Autumn did not want to consider too carefully.

“You need to get some sleep, Mum,” Bluebell said. Autumn looked at the clock. It was midday.

“I’m not going anywhere until he wakes up,” Emma retorted.

“ If he wakes up,” Maddie muttered.

Emma’s gaze was suddenly steely. She homed in on her daughter. “Maddie, Bowie doesn’t need your negative attitude. What he needs is positivity and love from us now.”

“He needs us all to do what he asked us to do,” Maddie said, her voice cracking under the weight of Emma’s glare.

Marley stood up, stepping in between them.

“What do you want us to do, Maddie? Rip his fucking breathing tube out?”

Maddie’s eyes darted to her poorly brother. She started to cry.

“Now isn’t the time, sweetheart.” Ben pulled her into a hug. She sobbed into his chest.

“I love him just as much as you do,” she said. “But what you’ve done here is wrong.”

“So why are you here,” Marley hissed. “If you want him to die?”

“I don’t want him to fucking die.” Maddie raged at her brother. “I want you to respect his wishes as a human being who knows his own mind.”

Emma’s eyes were back on Bowie.

“Stop it. You’ll upset him.”

“He’s dead , Mum.” Maddie sobbed.

Pip raised his hands to his ears to block out his sister’s words. “Shut up, Maddie, for fuck’s sake!”

“You need to come to terms with it . . .”

Marley moved in his sister’s direction in such a way Autumn felt compelled to hold him back. She wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but the last thing they needed was to be kicked out of the hospital. Bowie would be frightened if he woke up on his own. If he woke up at all. Autumn watched Maddie for a moment. She was already mourning him, Autumn knew.

“Calm down,” she whispered to Marley. She felt him soften beneath her grip. He was still staring at his sister.

Maddie tore her gaze from his and spoke again.

“This is uncomfortable for everyone, but he’s been in pain for years. He’s tired of it all. And I haven’t said this to him, or to any of you, but I do think the lymphoma is spreading to his brain. I’m sorry, but I do. His head is getting more and more fuzzy. His headaches are getting worse, he’s forgetting words. If he wakes up, you’ve confined him to an existence he never wanted for himself.”

“Stop.” Marley pleaded with his sister. “I can’t stand it, Maddie. I’ll jump out of the fucking window, I swear.”

Bluebell stood up and left the room. There was no sense of urgency. She opened the door and walked out without a word, as though she were getting up off the sofa at home to get a drink from the kitchen. She looked almost catatonic. Autumn thought about following her, but couldn’t bear to leave Bowie.

“I can’t just let him die,” Emma whispered, placing the palm of his hand on her cheek again, as though he were cupping her face the way he sometimes did. She closed her eyes and laid her head on Bowie’s shoulder, crying silent tears.

* * *

When Bowie woke up two days later, Autumn saw the exact moment he realised — to his horror — he was still alive. She saw the pain in his eyes when he registered his family had gone against his wishes. She didn’t know whether to be devastated for him or relieved his reaction was an encouraging sign of his cognitive function. He accused his family — one by one — with his stony gaze. When he met his mother’s watchful eyes, a tear ran down his face. Emma brushed it away.

“It’ll be OK,” she said.

“Everywhere hurts, Mum,” he whispered.

“It’ll get better,” she said.

“You don’t know that.” He started sobbing, wincing through the pain his own anguish exacerbated.

“I do.” She wiped away his tears with her sleeve.

Bowie cried and cried. He was full of rage and wouldn’t talk to anybody. Autumn knew he wasn’t angry with her. She’d had no idea what his full wishes had been. That felt wrong to her now, but this was not the time to ask why nobody, not even Bowie, had bothered to tell her what he wanted.

Autumn didn’t want to talk to his family either, not now Maddie had told her the whole story. Bowie had made it clear six months before — after he’d been warned by his oncologist that anthracycline-based chemotherapy treatment could have damaged his heart and that could be why he was experiencing chest pains — that he did not want to be resuscitated should he collapse. He didn’t think he’d have the physical strength he’d need to recover. Overwhelmed and petrified by the enormity of the thought that he might be debilitated until the end of his days, Bowie had told them, expressly, that if this happened they were to allow him to die, trusting them not to ignore his wishes. Autumn couldn’t begin to imagine why he hadn’t told her. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to upset her, or maybe he had really believed his family would honour his request the way they should have, so there would be no need for her to know. He certainly hadn’t expected something like this to happen so soon, she knew that, so it was entirely possible he’d been building up to telling her.

Autumn did have some sympathy with his family’s decision. She knew why they couldn’t let him go. They loved him. Still, she wanted to believe she’d have had the courage to stand in the way of Ben and Marley and stop them from trying to save Bowie if she’d known what he wanted. Letting him die would have been the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, but she would have done it if he’d told her to.

Autumn had growing admiration for Maddie, the only one who’d even tried to uphold his request. That must have been an incredibly difficult thing to do, especially when everyone you loved was against it.

Autumn would never say it, but she was beyond relieved Bowie had survived. She hadn’t yet had the six months with him she’d been promised and she wasn’t ready to lose him. She needed more time and was glad to have it.

She’d never dare tell him that, though.

* * *

“Rule Number Four.”

The first time they were left alone, Bowie spoke. Autumn smiled, leaning into him and running her fingers through his hair.

“If that happens again, make sure that they let me die.”

Autumn had been holding it together pretty well, but she let herself break down now. Bowie had barely said a word in the four days since he’d regained consciousness. It was good to hear his voice again.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“Why are you saying sorry?” He wiped her tears away with his fingers. “You didn’t know. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

She shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry you’re in so much pain. And that they didn’t listen. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you get out of bed and that you were all alone in that bathroom. I’m just so sorry for all of it.”

He hushed her gently, stroking her hair this time. She leaned her cheek against the palm of his hand.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said.

“Thanks.” She sniffed uncouthly to make him laugh. It worked. “Maddie tried to stop them,” she added.

“I knew she would,” he said. “What about the others?”

“Bluebell didn’t really do anything wrong. She called the ambulance, but only because I told her she should. I think she thought you were already dead. Pip just screamed at everyone.”

“And Marley?”

Autumn didn’t want to cause trouble between the twins. As far as she was concerned, Marley could be excused. Nobody could ever expect him to let Bowie die. The very concept of losing his brother was enough for him to threaten suicide. How could he be expected to control himself? Autumn shuddered at the memory of Marley pounding on Bowie’s chest. She wasn’t sure that she would ever forget it.

Bowie shook his head in response to her silence. She felt defensiveness rise up inside her. He hadn’t witnessed the extent of Marley’s distress that night.

“Go easy on him, Bowie,” she said.

“No! He promised to let me go when the time came. I knew he’d back out.”

“He loves you,” Autumn said.

“So does Maddie,” Bowie said belligerently. Autumn couldn’t argue with that. Perhaps there was even an argument that Maddie might love him more. She was the only one to try to respect his wishes and would be no less devastated by his death than any of the others.

“I know they love me,” Bowie said. “That’s never been something I have to worry about. And I know how lucky I am to have people who care so much. I just wish they loved me enough to let me make my own decisions. But they’re not thinking about me. They’re thinking about themselves.”