CHAPTER 30
BLANCHETTE
Nothing good comes from Graymore.
His words followed me all the way home.
They were still echoing in my head when I unlocked my apartment door and stepped inside. I didn’t bother turning on the lights. The dim orange glow from the hallway shone in for a second, then vanished as the door clicked shut behind me, leaving the place in a colorless shadow.
I dropped my keys onto the little entry table. I missed, and they skittered to the floor.
My bag slid off my shoulder and thudded down beside them.
I ignored both.
For a moment I just stood there, my back to the door, eyes closed. The city hummed outside…traffic, sirens, someone shouting on the street a few floors down. All of it muffled, far away, like I was underwater.
Then my knees gave out.
I sank onto the floor, back pressed to the door, palms flat against the old wood on either side of me as if I was strong enough to keep the whole world out by holding it shut.
A sudden tickle hit the back of my nose. I turned sharply and sneezed, the sound breaking the silence as I fumbled blindly for a tissue.
Then, the first sob slipped out before I could stop it.
It wasn’t loud. Or dramatic. Just a small, faint sound, barely audible. My chest hurt with the effort of holding everything in, and then, slowly, I gave up.
Nothing good comes from Graymore.
I pressed my hand to my mouth, as if I could shove the words back down. It didn’t matter…I was still split down the center.
My phone buzzed in my bag. Then again…and again. I ignored it.
When the sobs finally faded into silence, I reached for it in my bag and found it.
Eight emails. Three missed calls. One new voicemail. None from Jonathan.
A message from Megan, timestamped twenty minutes ago: Tell me you’re not still at the office or I’m staging an intervention.
Another followed.
Also, I had a dream you were making out with Forest Daddy on a mossy rock and I feel ROBBED that it wasn’t a live feed. Yeah, I’m a perv. Whatever. Call me.
A broken laugh came from me. She still had mixed feelings about Jonathan, but I’d assured her that whoever she thought he was, he was different. Now? I wasn’t so sure.
I didn’t have the heart to reply to her though. Not now. I loved her so much, but I couldn’t answer her. Not like this. I set the phone face down on the floor.
Somewhere down the hall, the building’s antiquated laundry buzzer went off with three harsh beeps. My neighbor’s kid laughed at something on TV, a high, uncontrollable kind of laughter that always made me smile.
Tonight it didn’t reach me.
Life went on without me. Doors opened. Someone laughed. Someone argued on the phone. Packages arrived. Shoes clicked down the hallway. A couple laughed outside my window. They sounded happy. Maybe they were in love. I hoped so.
I registered every sound but couldn’t feel any of it. I sat there, unaffected.
Maybe Graymore was letting go…or maybe I was. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care. I just sat in the dark on my floor, numb.
Eventually I found the energy to push myself up. My legs felt hollow as I walked farther into my apartment. The living room was a faint outline of familiar shapes—couch, shelves, the crooked lamp Megan insisted was “charmingly cursed.”
I ended up in front of the big window.
Outside, Graymore sprawled in a jagged grid of lights and shadow, skyscrapers piercing the low cloud cover. Neon signs blinked. Traffic crawled in lines of red and white. From up here, the city looked almost beautiful.
Almost.
My reflection hovered over it in the glass—pale, eyes swollen, mascara smudged in tired arcs. My hair was coming loose from its clip in tangled waves, the collar of my blouse wrinkled, my shoulders slumped forward like I was defeated. And in a way, I was.
I studied the woman looking back at me.
She looked like she belonged here. A city girl in a city box, framed by concrete and light pollution. She had a Skoll badge still clipped to her blouse pocket. Dark circles beneath her eyes.
But I didn’t recognize her.
Maybe I was never meant to fit in here. I never really had. And the more I’d tried, the less I had.
The thought came quiet and clear, like someone had whispered it to me.
My gaze drifted past my reflection to the sky beyond, where the clouds thinned to reveal a pale, hazy moon hanging over the city. It was the same moon. Same shape. Same glow. But here in Graymore, it looked faded…and served to remind me I wasn’t where I longed to be.
Memory rose up so sharply it almost knocked me back.
A flash of lantern light on the path to my cabin, the smell of wet pine and woodsmoke, Jonathan’s hand brushing mine in the dark.
My grandmother’s garden. Plump moonshade berries staining my fingers.
The way the night in Everwick felt like it was breathing with me instead of against me.
My throat constricted.
“I want to go home,” I whispered to the girl in the glass.
The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
Home.
I didn’t know if that meant Everwick. Or my grandmother’s cottage. Or the Hollow. But I knew it meant…anywhere that wasn’t here. Anywhere I didn’t have to shrink to exist.
I retrieved my phone, debating what to do. My fingers hovered over the dim screen.
Someone inside Skoll had the answers I needed. And I thought I knew who might.
Polaris Equity. Shell structures. Dam proposals.
Things Bernie had been too tired to endure anymore. Things Erik smiled about when he thought no one was looking.
Jonathan thought I’d set him up…lured him into the wolf’s den. He was wrong.
But if I didn’t do anything…if I stayed small and safe and afraid, then maybe, in the end, he’d be right about me.
My hand closed around the phone.
“I’m not from here,” I said softly, my voice steadier this time.
I didn’t know how I would prove anything. I didn’t know where to begin.
But for the first time in a long while…I knew what I wanted to do.
I called Bernie.