It was not gentle, the way I did it, because I was frightened, and fear is rarely gentle.

“Every time I look at you,” I told him, “I’m terrified that I’m just looking for Santiago.

That I’ll marry you and spend the rest of my life searching your face for a dead man.

You don’t deserve that.

No one does.” He was quiet for a moment, the way he always was, and then he said the thing that I carried with me for months afterward.

“Then don’t marry me,” he said, simply.