I'll Wait Here for You in My Time of Dying

“I’m thinking we hit up the library again,” Sarah decided. “Maybe...no! Wait!”

She jumped to her feet excitedly and grabbed my arm, trying her hardest to pull me to my feet. I stared up at her, an amused smile on my lips as she carried on pulling though it was having no actual affect on me. Sarah grumbled to herself as she let go of my arm and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Get up Hulk,” she quipped, grinning at me as I scowled at her, before she left the living room.

I sighed and ran my hand down my face, putting the photo down on my coffee table and standing up.

“Where are we going?” I asked my sister as she grabbed her bag up.

“I’m thinking we go to town hall, see if we can get a look at the records they have on people from our town who have died in the army.”

Sarah stared at me, blinking expectantly as if she was waiting for me to suddenly burst into a dance to show that I thought her idea was excellent. I would have if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m neither completely off my rocker or did I think it was a good idea.

“Sarah, you are aware that you can’t see those records without being like part of the army or council or whatever right?”

Sarah rolled her eyes and pulled her phone out of her pocket, squinting at the time.

“Right, if we’re doing this we’ve got to go now because I have a hot date tonight,” she smirked over at me, wiggling her eyebrows a little.

I shuddered in disgust, making Sarah chuckle. “You sicken me.”

“All part of my charm,” she replied and opened my front door. “Now are we going or what? If you’re worried about it being a wasted trip because we won’t get to see them...don’t worry, I have connections.”

I scoffed. “You sound like you’re in the mafia.”

Sarah shrugged and leant against the doorframe. “Well, are we going?”

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“So what was his name again?” Sarah asked as she picked up various sheets of paper and looked at some of the books she had spread out in front of her.

“Tyler Jacobs,” I replied, still somewhat in awe that my baby sister was able to get us access to this stuff. “So remind me again how you have connections.”

Sarah smiled and shrugged. “I did some work experience one summer here and they had an awful filing system for all this stuff. I was the one to sort it out, because I’m awesome like that...”

“More like loser,” I corrected her.

Sarah scowled at me and put down the sheets of paper she was looking at.

“Do you want me to help you? Seeing as there is no one else to help you?”

I held my hands up in defence and smiled innocently at my sister.

“Innocent my ass,” she scoffed and started to look through everything again.

I looked down at the books in front of me and wished that I knew more about Tyler. Regiment and everything would be a lot more helpful, it would definitely have narrowed down our search more.

“This is ridiculous,” I commented after another half hour of searching. “We’re not gonna find him.”

“You said that when we were looking for Lesia,” Sarah replied as she glanced up at me. “Have a little faith. We’ll find him.”

I sighed, wishing that I had the same kind of hope as Sarah did. I didn’t even know why I was hoping to find him so much. To find Lesia peace? Surely that was the reason. Maybe if she found peace in Tyler then she’d be able to move on. But did I want her to?

There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted Lesia to be happy and, especially after last night, I knew she wasn’t happy. Not with the way things were. She had been adjusting and then I came into her life and fucked things up. I reminded her of what it was like to have someone around. What it was like to have some kind of contact with someone, then I selfishly took it away from her.

Was this my way of making up for it? I hoped not. I liked to think that I wasn’t doing this to stop myself from feeling guilty. Though some people do say that there is no such thing as a good deed. Even if it’s just the satisfying feeling of doing something good, you always get something out of it.

But then if Lesia moved on, then I knew that the house would begin to feel empty. Even in the last couple of weeks I knew she was around, I just hadn’t really paid attention to her. My mind had been on other things, or rather someone else.

I could go around in circles with how I felt about everything, but it all came down to the same thing. I just wanted to see Lesia happy. And being in this world, it didn’t make her happy. So regardless of the guilty feelings I had in me, or the selfish ones that made me want her to stay, I knew that this was something I had to do for her. I had to...

“Found him,” Sarah sang making my thoughts stop for a second as I looked over at her. “Tyler Jacobs right?”

I dumbly nodded and Sarah grinned as she looked at the book in front of her, her finger keeping place of something whilst she looked at the piece of paper also in front of her.

“Tyler Jacobs of Hawthorne Avenue,” she recited. “Gives rank, yada, yada, yada...”

“What happened to him?”

“It says here that he,” Sarah paused and looked up at her me slowly, her eyes looking saddened and as she spoke I knew why. “He died due to an injury he had sustained in battle.”

“Fuck,” I breathed and sank against my seat.

“It says that whilst doing a swoop of a town, his regiment got bombarded by civilians and he ended up shot in the leg and in the side. He was taken straight to an army hospital and remained there until he died, four days later.”

“Does it give the date?”

Sarah nodded a little grimly. “15th May 2006. Ten days after Lesia died.”

I swallowed and ran a hand down my face as I took this in. At least it explained why Tyler had never come back. I wordlessly began to close all the books that were in front of me before pushing myself to my feet so I could put them all back where we had gotten them from.

“Matt,” Sarah spoke up quietly. “What are you going to do?”

I shrugged and put the books back in the right place, my hand lingering a little on the one I had just put back.

“She needs to know,” I voiced and then looked over to my sister. “But how the hell am I going to tell her that her fiancé is dead?”

Sarah sighed a little sadly and stood up, gathering up the papers and putting them back in the folder they lived in before she began to stack up the books she’d been using. Much like I had, Sarah wordlessly put everything back where it lives before walking over to me and wrapping her arms around my waist. I hugged her back, squeezing her gently before looking down at her once she’d pulled away.

“You’ll work it out,” she commented. “It’ll be hard but things will be better for her if she knows the truth. Maybe she’ll even be able to move on.”

I sighed and nodded before dropping a kiss to the top of Sarah’s head.

“Come on then. We better go. Don’t want you to be late for you date,” I mentioned and smiled as Sarah grinned before she nodded excitedly and dashed out of the room.

I shook my head and chuckled, walking after my baby sister all the while trying to work out how I was going to tell Lesia about Tyler.

Sarah’s P.O.V

“Baby, you home?” I called out as I walked into our house.

I dumped my bag on the floor and listened out for an answer but didn’t get one. I checked the time and saw that there was still two hours until Jason had told me to be ready, so he was probably still out. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair before running up the stairs. I walked into our bedroom, pulling my vest over my head so I could go and shower and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw Jason sitting in the middle of our bed.

“Fucking hell,” I breathed. “You scared the shit out of me.”

I held a hand to my chest as I waited for my heart beat to go back to normal and looked over at Jason who was smiling cheekily at me. I rolled my eyes, though couldn’t help but smile myself, and dropped my vest to the floor as I walked over to our bed.

“How comes you didn’t answer?”

Jason shrugged and looked back at our TV. I looked to the screen to see what he was watching and grinned as I saw that he was watching our wedding tape. I climbed onto the bed and sat down beside him, feeling his arm automatically wrap around my waist and pull me closer to him.

“How comes you’re watching this?” I asked as I snuggled my head down against his shoulder, trying to ignore the way his fingers were dancing across my skin.

Jason shrugged again before looking down at me. “You have fun cleaning Matt’s house?”

I chuckled and shook my head. “It wasn’t too bad but then we went...”

I stopped when I realised what I was about to say. I couldn’t tell Jason about the ghost in Matt’s house because Jason would probably tell someone. More than likely Mattie or Jimmy. And then Matt would kill me, or worse never speak to me again.

“Then you went?”

I cleared my throat. “Library. I needed to take something back.”

Jason eyed me for a second before nodding slowly. “You know I don’t believe you right?”

I smiled and nodded, leaning up and pressing my lips to his. I snuggled my head back down onto his shoulder as he brought my legs round so they were over his lap. I looked back at the TV and smiled as I watched Jason and I say our vows.

I brought my hand up as a yawn escaped me and looked up to Jason as he squeezed my side gently.

“You tired?”

I shrugged. “A little I guess.”

“You want to have a nap before we go.”

I smiled and nodded, pulling myself off of our bed and pulling my jeans off. I pulled some shorts on and a vest before climbing into bed. Jason climbed in the other side and pulled me towards him, pressing his lips to mine and moving me onto my back as he climbed on top of me. I giggled and pulled away from the kiss.

“This isn’t a nap...this is, if anything, just going to make me more tired and we’ll miss our dinner reservations.”

Jason looked down at me, a playful smile on his lips as he shrugged.

“You haven’t really pointed out any kind of problem here,” he voiced, his head ducking down so he could press his lips to my neck. “What you’re telling me is that we can go and have dinner...or I can have my wicked way with you for the night...it won’t take a rocket scientist to know which one I would prefer to do.”

I smiled and wrapped my arms around his neck as Jason looked up at me.

“Unless you had your heart set on going out,” he added quickly.

I chuckled and pulled him down to me, pressing my hips up against his as I kissed him softly.

“I think I’d prefer you to have your wicked way with me,” I smirked.

Jason grinned and wiggled his eyebrows before kissing me, and successfully ridding my mind of any other thoughts.