All Chapters of My Final Flight: Too Late for Him to Come: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

"Rhys, Wren still hasn't texted you back?"The heater hummed inside the car. Daphne Langston sat in the passenger seat while Rhys Callahan, my husband, kept his eyes on the traffic light ahead."Not yet. She's giving me the silent treatment."I sat in the back seat, watching them both in silence.I wasn't giving him the silent treatment. I was dead. My body was still somewhere in the wreckage, still falling. But somehow, my soul had drifted back to Rhys' car.He picked up his phone and recorded a voice message. "Wren, I'm already at the terminal. Which exit are you at?"The message went through, but minutes ticked by with no reply.The wind whipped hard outside the terminal, and Daphne sneezed. "You don't think something happened to her, do you?"Rhys let out a dry laugh. "Like what? She's just mad I didn't come get her, so she's pulling a disappearing act."He picked up his phone and sent another. "Wren, there's a limit to how long you can sulk. Daphne and I are both out here

The next morning, Rhys tried calling me one more time before he left the house. But there was still no answer.He picked up Daphne and headed for the breakfast spot near the airport. Rush hour traffic crawled, and the radio was running the morning news."In the early hours of this morning, an inbound flight from Crestfield encountered severe turbulence and crashed. Search and rescue operations are currently underway. The fate of the 132 passengers and crew on board remains unknown."Daphne clapped a hand over her mouth, the color draining from her face. "Oh my god. Wren was flying back from Crestfield too. She wasn't on that flight, was she?"Rhys tapped his fingers against the steering wheel, completely unbothered. "She never takes that one. It's the prime-time slot, and the tickets cost more. She'd never spend the money."I sat in the back seat, watching his confident profile. He had no idea. I'd switched to that flight so I could get home earlier, all so I could surprise him th

Rhys went still for a moment, then let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. "No. You're joking. She wouldn't have been on that flight.""Mr. Callahan, I need you to watch your tone. We've cross-referenced the airline's passenger manifest. There is no mistake." The officer's voice cut through the noise of the restaurant."The search and rescue team recovered a female body from the core wreckage zone. The remains are severely damaged, and facial identification is not possible. We need you to come to the city forensic center as soon as possible for verification and to claim her personal effects."The voice on the other end kept going, but Rhys had stopped hearing it. He sat frozen with the phone still pressed to his ear, staring blankly at the empty seat across from him, the one no one would ever sit in again.He had no idea how he made it to the forensic center. The rain had finally broken, hammering down in sheets. His wipers slashed back and forth across the windshield but couldn't cle

Rhys picked up the medical report with shaking hands. It was a pregnancy test, dated two weeks ago.He remembered the day. It was Daphne's birthday, and he'd taken her to an amusement park to watch the fireworks show. While he was doing that, I'd been at the hospital alone.He lifted the tiny pair of baby shoes, and it finally hit him what I'd meant by the big surprise. I was carrying his child. I'd switched to that late-night flight just so I could tell him on our anniversary.I'd crossed the sky full of hope, desperate to get back to him. And he hadn't just ignored that hope over and over again.Every single time I needed him the most, he'd chosen someone else without a shred of hesitation. He'd even accused me of throwing a tantrum. When I'd sent him what was practically a cry for help, the only thing he could be bothered to type back was that he had to go pick up Daphne.It all came flooding back to him, my 86 flights in our five years of marriage.Every time I was about to l

The next day, Rhys took the urn to the cemetery.He bought the best plot in the entire grounds, the one that caught the most sun. On the day of the burial, a thin rain was falling.Rhys didn't use an umbrella. He knelt in the mud and lowered the urn into the grave himself, placing the tiny pair of baby shoes in beside it.The dirt went in one handful at a time, slowly swallowing the only thing he had left of us.I floated above and watched him sit in front of the headstone all night. The rain soaked him through, and by the time he finally lifted his hand from the photo on the stone, he had nothing left.After he came home from Southridge Cemetery, it was like he'd left his soul behind at the grave. He stopped falling apart, stopped breaking down, and eventually stopped crying altogether. Instead, he settled into a routine so rigid that it bordered on ritual.Every day at 7:30 am, he'd get up and go to the kitchen. He'd fry two eggs and set one plate down at the empty seat across