Epilogue
SARA PARKER — FAIRVIEW MEMORIAL GARDENS
The snow drifted in slow flakes, whitening the edges of headstones and bare trees. The iron gate creaked when she pushed it, the sound carrying through the cold mountain air.
Her boots crunched over the thin crust of snow on the path. In her gloved hand, a single white rose.
Lauren Pierce liked simple things. Lattes, dog-eared paperbacks, and cheap notebooks crammed with too many words.
Sara found the new section without checking the map—she knew the way now. Second row from the back. Under a young maple that would throw shade in the summer.
The headstone was small. Modest. Clean.
LAUREN MICHELLE PIERCE
1999 – 2023
Beloved Daughter. Fierce Friend. Gone Too Soon.
Fresh flowers tucked into the metal vase were already dusted with snow. Someone had beaten her here today—maybe Lauren’s parents, maybe one of her college friends.
Sara stopped in front of the stone.
“Hey,” she said softly.
The word slipped out like it was nothing—like they’d run into each other outside a lecture hall.
Heat rushed up her neck.
“They arraigned him yesterday,” she went on, voice low. “Packed courtroom. Folks from campus. Half the town, I think. Judge Harlan kept his face neutral, but… you could feel it. Everybody seeing the same thing for the first time.”
A regular man. A neighbor. A teacher.
Her throat burned. Not from the cold—something deeper.
“You should’ve been there,” she whispered. “In the front row. With a lawyer beside you for civil damages. Not here.”
Snow clung to the top edge of the granite, to the carved letters of Lauren’s name. Sara brushed it away gently with her glove, like wiping hair from a forehead.
“I thought about you when he walked in,” she admitted. “Sinclair. Hands cuffed. Orange jumpsuit. No tweed. No books.”
“He didn’t look at me,” she said. “Not once. Not at Tessa either.”
But I watched him. I wanted him to see it on both our faces—that he didn’t win. Not with you. Not with me. Not with her.
Silence settled around her—heavy, close.
“I read your journals,” she whispered. “In that room—when I was trapped there.”
She swallowed.
“I felt like I was trespassing.”
“I’m sorry,” she added quickly. “I know you never meant for anyone to read those pages. But they helped us understand you—and him. They helped us find Tessa before it was too late.”
“You were so brave,” she whispered. “Scared. Angry. But still writing. Still… you.”
She shifted her weight.
“I keep thinking about that,” she admitted. “About how you wrote to stay sane. To stay you. How he took that and twisted it into something he could feed on. And then he tried to do it with me. With Tessa.”
Her gaze lifted, unfocused, to the sky.
“It wasn’t enough to take your body,” she said quietly. “He wanted your words, too. Your voice. That’s what makes me angrier than anything else.”
“We made it out. Because you kept writing.”
Snow fell a little harder. Tiny specks melted on her eyelashes.
Her voice thinned.
“I keep running scenarios. If I’d gone to campus sooner.”
She let the sentence die in the cold air.
After a moment, she crouched, knees protesting the chill, and set the white rose in the snow at the base of the stone.
“I can’t fix it,” she said. “I can’t give you back what he took.”
The words were simple.
“But I can do this much,” she promised. “I can show up. I can testify. I can look him in the eye in that courtroom and tell every damn thing he did. To you. And I can make sure your name isn’t a footnote in his story.”
She closed her eyes.
“He thought only finished stories mattered,” she whispered. “He was wrong.”
She reached out and rested her gloved hand against the cold stone for a second.
“You mattered.”
The snow thickened, flakes drifting down, beginning to blur the edges of the cemetery.
Sara straightened, wiped her cheek with the back of her glove, half-laughing, half-sighing.
She smiled faintly.
“I’ll go,” she said. “But I’ll come back.”
She took one step away, then paused.
The wind tugged at her hair. Somewhere down the hill, a car engine idled softly.
“I’m going to be okay,” she said, not sure if she was telling Lauren or herself. “I don’t feel it yet. Not all the way. But I think it’s coming.”
Her gaze drifted past the rows of stones, out toward the road, the tree line, the faint glow of patrol car lights parked where the cemetery drive met the street.
“Besides,” she added, “apparently I’ve got a shadow now.”
She didn’t wave. Didn’t acknowledge. Only turned and walked back the way she’d come, boots crunching, snow swallowing the sound.
Behind her, the white rose slowly collected flakes.
Deputy Luke Hale — Watch
Luke Hale shouldn’t have been here.
He knew it.
The engine of his cruiser idled low, heater ticking against the cold as he watched through the windshield. Wipers squeaked once, clearing a thin veil of snow.
He’d told himself he’d swing by Fairview Memorial Gardens on patrol. Just in case. To make sure no one bothered the fresh graves. To—
He exhaled.
To make sure she wasn’t alone.
Sara Parker had insisted she was fine when she’d left the office. She’d said she just needed a walk, some air, time to think.
He’d nodded, said all the right things. Watched her drive away.
And then, fifteen minutes later, he was here. Parked under a bare oak across from the cemetery entrance, lights off, pretending this was normal.
Out in the snow, he saw her step back from Lauren Pierce’s stone.
She was a small figure from this distance. Dark coat. Her face, he couldn’t quite make out. But he didn’t need details to read the set of her shoulders.
He watched her bend, lay something at the base of the headstone—a flash of white against gray. A rose, maybe.
He’d brought flowers to graves before. Parents. Victims. A partner he’d lost early in his career. But he’d never thought he’d care this much about whether someone had someone standing in the shadows when they did it.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Looks like you’ve got one.”
She straightened. Stood there for a long moment, head bowed.
He stayed in the car.
He knew enough about trauma to understand that some battles had to be fought alone—but that didn’t mean you had to be unguarded while you fought them.
When she finally turned and walked back toward the gate, he slouched a little lower in his seat on instinct—not wanting her to see him, not wanting to explain why he was there when he didn’t fully understand it himself.
She passed under the iron arch. For a fleeting second, she glanced toward the road.
Luke froze, waiting to see if she would look back.
If she saw the cruiser, she didn’t show it. She crossed to her own car, climbed in, and drove away, taillights disappearing.
He watched until the red glow was gone.
Only then did he let himself relax back into the seat, fingers drumming once on the steering wheel.
He huffed out a laugh.
But as he looked back through the gates, to where the fresh headstone sat under the young maple, his humor faded.
Lauren Pierce. Twenty-four. Never got the chance. Sara almost didn’t.
She was tough. Smart. Competent as hell.
Luke put the cruiser in gear.
“Yeah,” he said softly, to no one, to the snow, to the woman who’d just left and the ghost of the one who never would. “Yeah… I’ll keep an eye on her. For as long as she lets me.”
He eased away from the curb, headlights sweeping briefly over the gate, the stones.
As he turned back toward town, a faint train whistle threaded through the cold—distant, steady, right on time.
He aimed the cruiser toward the station, the paperwork, the next case.
He drove a mile before he admitted it to himself. He wasn’t sure when it shifted from duty to something else. Maybe it was the hospital room. Maybe it was the way she’d refused to break. Maybe it was the way she still showed up here.
But it had.
And for the first time in a long time, protecting someone didn’t feel like obligation.
It felt personal.