Chapter 26
twenty-six
“You don’t have to talk to anybody,” Naomi said, low. “I’ll handle the door.”
Greta nodded against her dog. She had her fingers buried so deep in Atlas’s coat that her knuckles ached, and she couldn’t make them let go.
He didn’t seem to mind. He stayed there, breathing slow and steady under her hands, his warmth seeping into her palms, into her arms, into the cold hollow place in her chest that had been there since the creek.
Alice was dead.
Alice… was… dead.
Alice. Was. Dead.
No matter how many ways she turned those three words over in her head, they wouldn’t make sense.
She’d known. She’d known for years, probably.
Some part of her had known since the second year, when the tips dried up, and the detective stopped returning her calls, and the flyers on the telephone poles started to fade.
She’d known, and she’d kept moving anyway, because moving was the only thing she’d ever been any good at.
Naomi sat on the floor beside her, back against the couch, and wrapped one arm around her shoulders. “You want me to send everybody home, I send everybody home. You want them in here, I let them in. Your call. Every time.”
“Don’t send them home. I don’t want to be alone.”
“Okay.”
When the first knock came, Naomi squeezed Greta’s arm once and got up. She crossed to the door in her socks — she’d kicked her boots off at some point, Greta hadn’t seen when — and opened it just wide enough to talk.
“Hey.” Nessie’s voice was quiet on the porch. “I brought a bunch of stuff from the diner. Soup, bread, lemon bars. I’ll just put it in the kitchen.”
“Come in.” Naomi stepped back. “She’s in the living room.”
Nessie came through with a casserole dish and two shopping bags full of food and crossed straight to the kitchen. A cabinet opened. A plate met the counter with a small ceramic sound.
Naomi was back on the floor before Nessie made it out of the kitchen, sliding into the same spot, her arm finding the same place across Greta’s shoulders.
Nessie came around the couch and lowered herself to the floor, cross-legged, close enough that her knee brushed Greta’s hip. She rested a hand on the small of Greta’s back. Warm. Solid.
Greta’s throat closed up. She really did have the best of friends.
But there was really only one person she wanted right now.
“Is Bear back yet?”
Naomi moved her thumb once across Greta’s shoulder. “Not yet. He went across the street to check on Logan. Wanted to put eyes on him after everything tonight.”
Greta nodded into Atlas’s fur. She hadn’t realized she’d been listening for his boots until Naomi said his name.
“He won’t be long,” Naomi added.
“Okay.”
Another knock came a few minutes later. Two sets of boots on the porch this time.
Naomi stood again. “I’ll get it.”
Maggie came in first with her arms full of folded quilts — three of them, stacked to her chin, the top one a pale gray cable knit Greta recognized from the back of the couch at Maggie and Anson’s cabin.
A box of tissues balanced on top. Mariah followed, the fresh green scent of the flower shop on her clothes, holding a small planter full of tiny white flowers.
Maggie set the quilts on the back of the armchair, unfolded a soft cream wool one, and brought it over. She crouched and draped it across Greta’s shoulders over the blanket already there, tucking it down around her hips, around the curve of Atlas’s back, all the way to the floor.
“I’m not going to fuss at you.” Maggie kept her hands on Greta’s shoulders for a second longer, gentle, then pulled back. “I just want you warm. You went into the water tonight, and nobody’s told me you got dry properly.”
“Oh, Greta.” Mariah’s South Carolina accent came out thicker than usual as she crouched in front of her.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to bring.
Nessie had food, Maggie had the blankets, and I stood in the shop for ten minutes wondering what flower could possibly make any of this better.
And then I realized nothing would, but then…
” She held out the flower pot. “This is Sweet Alyssum. It’s a little flower used for filler, but I thought — sometimes it’s called Sweet Alice, so I thought you’d like it. ”
Greta looked at the small pot in Mariah’s hands.
The flowers were tiny, white, clustered together like stars.
She stared at them, and hot tears flooded her eyes.
She thought about Alice at sixteen, ironing a patch onto a jacket she’d never take off again, and the crack in her chest spread wider and wider until something gave way entirely.
The sound that came out of her didn’t feel like hers.
It was ugly and raw, and it shook her whole body. Atlas pressed his head harder against her, Naomi tightened her arm around her, Maggie brought her hand back to her shoulder, and Mariah stayed exactly where she was on the floor in front of her.
She cried until she had nothing left. Until her whole body ached with it, her chest hollowed out, her throat raw.
When the worst of it had passed, she sat there emptied out, the quilt around her shoulders, Mariah’s flower pot in her lap, the little white blooms blurring in and out of focus.
Sweet Alice.
She pressed the pad of her thumb against one tiny petal. Paper-thin. Softer than she expected.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “This was the right thing to bring.”
“Okay,” Mariah said, like she’d been holding her breath and could let it go now.
“Walker and the boys are all outside,” Johanna said quietly. “I got them set up with a carafe of Nessie’s coffee and some of her muffins, so they’ll stay out there as long as you need them. He says to tell you nobody’s going to bother you. That door doesn’t open unless one of us opens it.”
Greta swallowed and nodded.
Johanna sat on the edge of the coffee table, knees almost touching Greta’s, hands folded in her lap. “Tell me what you need, sweetheart.”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s fine. We’ll just be here until you don’t want us here anymore.”
Boots on the porch. Heavy ones this time. The whole rhythm of the house shifted with the sound of them.
The door opened a few inches and Bear filled the gap, hat in one hand, King at his heel. He didn’t step inside. He stayed on the threshold, looking straight at Greta on the floor.
“Hey, Tink.” He paused. “You okay?”
Greta tried to say something back and couldn’t get it out.
He looked at her for another beat and shifted his weight. He was a man used to doing, fixing, healing, and he couldn’t do any of it right now. She knew her pain was hurting him. But she was so tired of putting on a brave face for everyone.
More tears erupted from her eyes.
Bear took a step forward like he wanted to reach for her, but she shook her head. If he touched her right now, she would break completely, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to pull herself together.
“Why don’t you go wait outside with the guys for now?” Johanna suggested.
He glanced helplessly at Naomi.
Naomi nodded. We’ve got her.
“Okay. I’ll be right outside,” Bear said. “You need anything, you say my name. I’ll hear you.”
Greta nodded, and hated herself for sending him back out into the rain when she’d so desperately wanted to see him earlier.
He held her gaze for another second, then pulled the door shut quietly behind him. The latch caught with a soft click.
Through the front window, in the wedge of porch light that fell across the steps, Bear took up his place again with his back to the door and King at his heel.
Behind him, the other men stood in silence, arranged across the yard and the driveway in a loose semicircle — Walker with his arms crossed and his hat pulled low, Boone beside him, rifle slung over one shoulder, Hatch leaning against the side of Boone’s truck, Jax and Jonah near the Jeep with their heads down, Anson standing apart with Bramble at his side, the dog’s silver-gray coat catching the porch light.
Ghost was at the edge of the property with Cinder, both of them half in shadow.
Eight men and three dogs, facing the dark street as if they could fend off this nightmare for her.
Greta lifted her head a half inch and looked at them all. A year ago, she had Atlas and a Jeep and a flask in her glove box and a sister who might still be alive somewhere, might still come walking up the porch steps one of these days, might still—
Alice. Was. Dead.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered. “I don’t know how to live in a world where she’s really gone.”
Naomi tightened her arm around Greta’s shoulders.
“You don’t have to know how yet,” Johanna said and reached for her hands. “You just have to get through tonight. That’s all. Just tonight.”
The tightness in Greta’s throat climbed up behind her eyes and stuck there.
She pressed her face into the top of Atlas’s head and breathed him in — wet dog and dirt and the faint trace of the salmon treats she kept in the Jeep’s center console — and he didn’t move.
He took the weight of her grief without flinching, and she thought, distantly, that she’d never loved a dog the way she loved this one.
Time stopped meaning anything after that.
Nessie brought her a mug of something warm — chamomile, maybe, with honey — and Greta held it in both hands without drinking.
The heat seeped into her palms and that was enough.
Maggie moved through the house in soft socks, pulling another quilt over the back of the couch, turning on a lamp in the corner so they wouldn’t be sitting in the dark when the candles burned down.
Mariah stayed on the floor in front of her for a long time, then eventually got up and went to help Nessie in the kitchen.
Johanna sat on the coffee table and didn’t try to fill the silence. She just stayed.
Naomi never moved from her side.