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“I am angry at you,” Tessa said.
Will sighed, “I know, but Tess—”
“No,” Tessa interrupted. “No. I don’t think you do know. This is not you dying. We’ve known that would happen for decades, and although I hate to talk about it, I have known it was going to happen. This is not that, William. This is you choosing to leave before that. You’re leaving—” Tessa paused to calm herself back down enough to finish her sentence. A sob was building in her throat, making it difficult to speak, but she pushed through it. “You are choosing to leave me, and I am angry at you.”
She was crying now, tears streaming down her face. Will stayed quiet for a while. It hadn’t been an easy decision, and he knew she wouldn’t take it well. He sat there for a while, but nothing he could think of saying would have calmed her sobs, so he sat there, holding her hand but doing nothing more while she cried and tried to get herself under control. “It is not—” she started, and hiccuped. “It is not that I don’t want you to do what you want, but I cannot imagine—” Tessa stopped again. “I do not want to live in a world without you in it.”
Will nodded and squeezed her hand. “You’re not saying anything,” she said. “Fifty years of marriage and you have not stopped talking, and now is the time that you choose to be quiet?”
Sighing again, Will shifted. She sat next to him on a sofa in the library, and he positioned himself to hold her closer. She reluctantly let herself be pulled in and laid her head against his chest. “Tess,” he started, and then paused to reconsider. “I don’t like the way things are now. I don’t like not knowing whether or not today will be the day that I stop forgetting little things like the address to our house in Wales and instead of forgetting things that matter, like marrying you and having Jamie and Lucie. I don’t—” he took a deep breath. “I don’t ever want to have to face them the day after I forget them. Enoch said that it was going to happen, and I do not want to be here when that does.”
Tessa sobbed harder. She knew it, too. She had been preparing herself for it happening, what she would say when she would make a joke and he wouldn’t laugh, what she would do if he forgot about her entirely. They had not told their children about it yet, but Tessa knew they had picked up on it. Whenever Lucie came to see them, she would give more information than was necessary for talking to them. “Jesse and I were thinking of going out to dinner tomorrow night, that one place downtown with the dark floors and the stained glass windows.” Will knew the restaurant, of course he did. It was the one that Tessa and Cecily had always gone to when they went out and left Will and Gabriel to wrangle in their children. But he had forgotten enough things frequently enough that Lucie compensated for it.
She could not think of anything to say. It was his choice and even though she hated it, truly despised it with every bone in her body, she wouldn’t force him to stay if he didn’t want to.
“I love you,” she said finally. It was all she had. She was angry at him and she was grieving him even though she could hear his heart beating in his chest, but she did love him with all of her heart, and that she could give him.
“I love you, Tess,” he said. “So incredibly much. I do not want to leave you, but I—” he sighed. “There is more to living than not dying.”
Tessa shook with her sobs. Quoting Jem had made it click. She had lost the ability to touch and be with Jem in the way she wanted, but she could still see him, could still talk to him when she needed to. She would not have that when Will left, and it was tearing her apart years before it happened.
“I hate you both,” she murmured.
Will laughed and held her close.
Will’s memory got worse slowly over the next decade. His refusal to undergo treatment still angered Tessa, but she was adjusting. Each day was a new challenge, and she was exhausted from keeping up. She hated waking up next to Will not knowing if her presence would startle him when he woke. One time, she had curled into him, wrapping herself around him and pressing a kiss to his neck. He stirred slowly and then stiffened as soon as he woke.
“Tessa,” he had whispered. “What are you doing?”
Tessa hadn’t answered him, just held him closer and took a deep breath. “What if Jem comes in?” he had asked, worry and betrayal slipping into his voice. It was then that she untangled herself, forcing the tears not to fall and steeling herself for the long day that was now staring down at her.
“I’m married to you,” she said simply. “Jem isn’t here.”
Will shook his head. “No,” he said adamantly. “You’re engaged to Jem. He won’t ever forgive me for this.”
Tessa reached for his hand but he pulled away, and she inhaled sharply as if she had been burned. “Jem is a Silent Brother, William. He forgave you and I a long time ago. You and I have been married for over fifty years.”
“No,” he said again. “No. That’s not true.”
She had sighed and nodded. Some days, the reminder was enough to bring him back, but others, it left him confused and angry. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, Will. I’m sorry. I’ll leave you be.”
She had gotten up then, pulled on her clothes as quickly as she could and retreated to the library. Curling up in a big bay window in the back corner of the second story, she grabbed a random book off of the shelf so she could pretend she was reading if Will came in, and only then did she let herself cry.
Will found her fast asleep two hours later. Hesitantly, he rubbed her shoulder to wake her up. She blinked up at him and readjusted herself so that she was sitting up. “May I join you?” he asked, polite and using formalities that they hadn’t used with each other since they had been teenagers tiptoeing around each other.
She nodded, not trusting herself to talk. His blue eyes were the same blue they had always been although his hair now was graying and not the jet black that it had been. “I love you,” she said and instantly regretted it. “I’m sorry,” she said immediately afterward. “I shouldn’t force that on you.”
He just nodded, looking lost and confused, a soul stuck in a time that wasn’t now and in a body that he didn’t remember being his own. “What are you reading?” he asked.
Tessa looked down at the book, reading the title off the spine. “History of Downworld Politics in the Clave,” she answered.
Will wrinkled his nose. “That is an atrocity! I had you picked for a much better taste in books.”
She laughed and stood up, reaching out a hand to him. “Show me something you would read, then,” she said.
He laughed with her and took her hand. It tore her apart to have him like this, like he had been before and not remember the years that they had spent together, but at least she had him. She was still her Will, with his blue eyes and biting humor and smile with a mischievous tilt he had never been able to shake. Her Will and she would hold onto him as long as she could, so she held his hand a little tighter and smiled through the grief.
The day finally arrived, the one Tessa had been dreading for nearly a decade now. He had shaken her gently awake. “Tess,” he whispered, and she opened her eyes to look up at him. He smiled. “I love you,” he said.
“What’s going on?” she said.
“I think I am going to die today,” he whispered.
She took a shaky breath. “Okay,” she whispered back.
Everyone came to see him, and he spent the day surrounded by his children and grandchildren and even one great-grandchild who he held carefully. Marcus Herondale was a fussy baby, only a few months old. He cried whenever anyone but his mother held him, but this time, he didn’t. Instead the baby looked up at Will with dark blue eyes and smiled, holding onto Will’s finger with his tiny little fist. Will looked up at Tessa, and she started to remind him who the baby was, but the look he gave her wasn’t confusion. Look , it said. I told you so.
Tessa just smiled at him, a sad smile, so that she wouldn’t have to acknowledge that look. He smiled back at her and went back to looking at the baby.
Slowly, the family trickled away to other parts of the Institute, and it was just Tessa left with her husband. “I love you,” he said.
“I know,” Tessa answered with a deep shaky breath. “I love you.”
“Come here,” he said, holding out a hand to her. She curled up next to him in bed, tucking her head against his chest. “I remember everything. From yesterday to the first day I met you,” he said.
“I hit you with a jug,” she said bluntly.
He laughed. “And quoted Dante at me.”
She laughed with him, and they traded stories back and forth until late in the night.
Jem came into the room around ten, and they pulled him into bed with them so Tessa lay against Will’s side and Jem lay against the other. “Did Tessa tell you?” Will said. “I am going to die today.”
You’re an idiot, William .
“It’s true,” Will said.
I know . A short simple statement. Tessa knew too, but she was trying so desperately hard not to think about it.
“He’s just being dramatic,” Tessa said, keeping the teasing going that Jem had started. “It’s nearly eleven now. If you have caused me all of this stress today for nothing, I will divorce you.”
“I’m not lying,” Will said.
“I know,” Tessa said. “I’m not divorcing you.”
They went through memories with Jem in them, of the three of them on the train to York and Jem helping deliver both of their children. Of Jem saving Will from breaking his arm when they were fourteen and of Will fighting to save Jem from the cure that was killing him. The stories slowed down as the clock turned closer to midnight, and as much as she hated it, Tessa drifted off into sleep with Will and Jem’s voices still talking over her.
She woke an hour later, shortly before one, to Jem brushing her hair back from her face. Tess , he murmured. He’s gone.
She tucked herself in closer to Will’s body that was no longer Will and hoped to find a heartbeat, but Jem was right. There wouldn’t be any more conversations of Will leaving. He was gone.