Hands covered my own, easing my fingers loose. Confused, I looked down to see Dr. Faulkner trying to release my hold on Nanna.
On Nanna’s body. Because she wasn’t here anymore.
I let him take her weight and lower her body to the ground. I couldn’t move, couldn’t feel my legs or arms anymore, couldn’t even feel the clothes that were plastered to me along with strings of my hair along my face and neck.
What should I do now? What did normal people do when their loved ones died in their arms in the woods? There must be a procedure, certain steps of some kind that should be taken by someone. But my mind didn’t seem to want to work to figure it out. Wiggling my hands, I discovered my fingers had somehow become buried in the earth. When I lifted them, clods of moss and mud clung to me. The same mud that would be all over Nanna’s back now.
Nanna wouldn’t want this. She wouldn’t want me to sit in the mud sobbing over her body, especially not in front of the descendants who had cast her out and turned their backs on her. She would have demanded that I get up, put on a strong front, hide my pain. Show them just how strong the Evans women could be. Focus on what needed to be done, and break down later in private.
For her sake, I took a deep breath and tried to wipe my hands clean on my pants, only to discover my shirt and slacks were covered in streaks of mud. I would have to wait until I was home to clean my hands of the mess.
Home. Where Mom would be waiting soon for an explanation. Oh God. She didn’t know yet....
“We’ll help you with the arrangements,” Mr. Coleman murmured, and Dr. Faulkner dipped his head in agreement.
What would Nanna have expected of me now?
“I think…she would have wanted to die at home in her sleep,” I said to Dr. Faulkner. “She wouldn’t want everyone to know…” Unable to say the rest of it, I gestured at the mess of it all, the slop of the mud and rain and grass stains all over Nanna’s once-pristine nightgown, which she’d always been so careful to bleach a blinding white.
“I’ll make that the official report,” Dr. Faulkner replied as he, Dad and Mr. Coleman stood up, too.
I looked around the clearing, for the first time seeing again the horrified audience watching my every move. They stared at me, many of them whispering amongst themselves, as if this were a play they were watching but weren’t really a part of. Didn’t they feel any guilt for Nanna’s death? Or was I the only true murderer here today?
Mr. Coleman turned in a slow circle, drawing everyone’s attention and silence. “Today’s events will never be spoken of. Is that clear?”
Slowly the descendants nodded, though my vamp abilities allowed me to pick up the general reluctance rolling off many of them as the crowd broke up and walked away in small groups through the woods.
“Savannah…” Sounding as if he were choking on my name, Tristan tried to cross the distance between us, but Dylan and another boy held him back. Cursing, Tristan fought against their hold.
Needles stabbed at my skin, a sign of his growing power level. Tristan was getting ready to use magic against them.
“Tristan, stop,” I called out. I looked at his father. “Can I…?”
Mr. Coleman’s gaze flicked down at Nanna’s body, then he nodded.
More pain bloomed inside my chest, trying its best to rob me of air. Part of me screamed that I’d already lost enough, that I needed to hold on to what happiness I could. That I wouldn’t survive losing anything else in my life right now.
But I had to. I’d made two promises now. And it was for his own safety.
I forced my numb feet to carry me over to Tristan. Moss squished beneath my shoes with every step I took, the sound loud enough to be heard now that the storm was nearly gone. It took far too few steps to bring me to the end of the only true love I’d known.
I tried again to memorize Tristan’s face…to see every line across his forehead, the full curves of his lips, now flattened and thinned by anger and guilt and panic, the raindrops dripping from those curls, darkened like antique gold, around his face and clinging to the back of his neck. At the edges of my vision, all around us were reminders of the moments we’d experienced in our shared dreams of this place…so many kisses while lying together on a picnic blanket as we’d talked for hours. The pine trees with their heavy boughs swaying in the storm’s retreat, the way they had swayed around us as Tristan and I had danced together barefoot on the mossy ground. Those same trees had been lit with thousands of tiny Christmas lights for my birthday last November as I’d kissed imaginary red velvet cake from Tristan’s lips.
And now here we were. We’d finally come to the real clearing in the real woods to create another memory. A memory I would never be able to erase, no matter how much I would want to.
He stood as if frozen as I closed the final inches between us. “Sav, I’m so sorry. I never meant for this—”
“I know,” I murmured. “I’m sorry, too. But the council and the Clann are right to want us to stay away from each other. It’s better that way. Safer.”
“No, Sav—”
I pressed cold fingertips to his warm lips, the water sliding down his face and around my fingers like tiny streams flowing around rocks. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see his face when I said the next words. If I did, I might not be able to say what had to be said.
Standing on tiptoe, I kissed his cheek, tasting the raindrops on his skin, lingering so I could inhale his faint cologne mixed with the ozone scent of the rain and feel his warmth against my skin one last time. Then I stepped back, my eyes still closed, holding on to it all as tightly as I could even as I made myself let him go.
“We have to end this. Please don’t try to see me anymore. This is the right thing to do. Someday you’ll understand.”
Before he could say anything to change my mind, I turned and walked out of our woods for the last time. Somehow I kept myself from looking back.
But I already knew I would be spending the rest of my life looking back on today, on the last few months, on every choice I had made, and wondering. What if I had been stronger? If I had only managed to resist the way I felt about him… If I had only followed the rules…
Nanna would still be alive.
CHAPTER 3
The next few minutes while I waited in Dad’s rental car were a blur as the pain finally had its chance to claw through me. At some point an ambulance arrived. It turned around in the driveway then backed up in the yard behind the Coleman home. Two emergency workers got out and unloaded a metal gurney, carrying it into the woods between them. Eventually they came back, slower this time, the gurney between them supporting a bulky black bag.
I looked away then, burying my face against my forearm on the dashboard.
Eventually Dad came back to the car and got in. He sat there for a few seconds in silence. Then he awkwardly patted my back. The attempted comfort from him was so unfamiliar that it was like a little mental shake, reminding me I couldn’t fall apart, not yet. We had to tell Mom first.
Dad started the car and followed the circle drive back to the road. Then we headed for my home.
Nanna’s home.
“Have you called Mom?” I asked, my croaky voice forcing me to clear my throat.
“No.”
“Then don’t, not yet. I don’t want her to hear while she’s driving.”
He checked his watch. “She should be home in