CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CONNECTICUT, PRESENT DAY
“Charlie! Wait!”
It was deep into the night by the time we were leaving Melanie’s house. A frosty chill sliced through the sweater I wore, and Stormy shivered as she ran toward the car to get it warmed up. I turned on my heel to watch Melanie run down the steps in a pair of flip-flops, trying to keep her cardigan wrapped tightly around her while clutching a piece of paper in her hand.
“Mel, you’re going to freeze out here,” I scolded.
“I know.” She was breathless by the time she reached me, short, silvery puffs leaving her mouth and dissipating into the air. “But I remembered this, and I didn’t want you to leave without it.”
She held the paper out to me. I took it from her and realized it was an envelope. My hand trembled as I looked down at my name scrawled in Luke’s shitty handwriting.
“What is this?” I asked stupidly.
It was obvious what it was.
My brother had written me a letter.
“I don’t know,” Melanie replied. “I never opened it. Luke had given it to me over the summer and said, ‘When you see Charlie again, give him this.’ I told him I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again, and even if I did, he could give it to you himself, but …” She sucked in a deep breath and shuddered as she hugged herself tighter. “He insisted I hold on to it, so …”
I nodded as a sickening ball of dread burned a hole through my gut.
“I-I think …” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.
“What?” I asked softly.
Her shoulders dropped with an exhale, and she opened her eyes to pin me with her gaze. “I think he knew . Like, I-I think he knew he was going to die. Not necessarily when or how or-or-or anything like that, but … he knew . And I didn’t realize it at the time, you know? Because your mind doesn’t want to go there, but looking back, I see it. All these … little things he was doing, things he’d say … giving me that letter for you … God, do I sound crazy?”
“I will see you again.”
“No, you won’t, Charlie.”
I dropped my gaze from hers and eyed the letter in my hand. “Not crazy,” I muttered.
She blew out another silvery breath and waved her hand in the air, as if dismissing the idea. Like it was too insane to believe. Or maybe she just didn’t want to think about it anymore.
“Anyway, I’ll let you go,” she said before wrapping me up in what had to have been the two hundredth hug she’d given me since Stormy and I had reluctantly decided it was time to head home. “I love you, Charlie. And please, please come back soon. Come back whenever you want. It would be good for the boys. And it’d be good for me too. We can go to the cemetery if you want, to visit your parents and Luke and—”
“I love you too,” I cut her off, unsure I could hear any more without breaking down again. “And I will. I’ll come back soon.”
She smiled against my chest. “You know, Christmas is coming.”
I sighed and nodded. “I’ll be here.”
“Good.” She patted my back and stepped away, glancing toward the car. “Both of you, okay?”
“Okay.”
An overhead lamppost caught the teasing glint in her eye. “Seriously though, Charlie, you’d better marry that woman.”
I rolled my eyes and felt my cheeks heat despite the late November chill. “Oh God …”
“No, come on! You obviously love her, she loves you, and you are absolutely perfect for each other. You might think you have plenty of time to spare for stuff like that, but believe me, you don’t. There’s never enough. Never .”
The moment was sobering, and I could only nod as I said, “I know.”
She offered one last smile before taking a step back and turning around, heading toward the house that was no longer mine.
“I mean it, Charlie!” she called, glancing over her shoulder. “Stop wasting time! And if you don’t, I wouldn’t put it past your brother to come haunt you until you do!”
I laughed in reply and nothing more. Because what Melanie didn’t know—what nobody knew—was that I now believed he already was.
***
It was after midnight by the time we returned to the cemetery, and what a long day it had been. A long, exhausting, emotionally taxing day.
The moment I locked the gate behind us and returned to the car, Max called to say hi and ask how my little getaway had been. I started to say it was okay, good, or some other basic, blanket answer that would barely touch the surface, but then I thought better of it and considered that, you know, maybe I wanted to talk to Max. Maybe I wanted to be his friend the way Ivan was my friend.
Without allowing myself the time to reconsider, I replied, “It's a long story, and I'd tell you if we weren't exhausted.”
“Ah, I get it, man.”
I swallowed and blew out a deep breath as we turned to drive up the hill toward our little stone cottage. “Maybe I'll stop by tomorrow night, if you aren’t—”
“Sounds good, man. I'll have the coffee ready,” he replied, and I swore I could hear the smile in his voice.
It was one I returned. “Make mine decaf.”
“You got it, brother.”
Brother . Fuck .
Stormy parked the car as I dropped my eyes to the sealed envelope in my lap. In the darkness, I couldn't quite make out my name scrawled in Luke's shitty handwriting, but I knew it was there. I could sense it, the bold black pen taunting me with a plea to read the words inside. I would, but not yet. Whenever I was ready … or gave myself no choice but to be ready.
I wished Max a good night and hung up. Stormy glanced at me, and though it was dark, I could see the details of her soft smile.
“You ready?”
I blinked my tired eyes toward the house. The small iron sconce hanging beside the heavy wooden door, casting a halo of misty light within the layer of fog. What a dreary, rainy night it was. How fitting.
“No.” The word was released with a sigh. “I feel like, the second I walk through that door, life will resume the way it was before, and everything will be the same. But it's not the same. Nothing will ever be the same again.”
It probably sounded like nonsense, but not for me. The last time I'd suffered tremendous loss, my life had perfectly reflected the way I felt inside. After our parents died, everything Luke and I had known was turned onto its bloody, misshapen head. It had been chaotic and messy. But now, my brother was dead. He'd been dead for two months, but for me, the wound was fresh and oozing. It hadn't been given the chance yet to scab over and likely wouldn't for quite some time. Yet I still had a job to do, a girlfriend to love, and a cemetery and all its inhabitants to care for. I had a life to live, and it couldn't come to a screeching halt despite the piercing ache throbbing, dull and deep, in my chest. I couldn't let that happen, but how the hell was I supposed to push forward in a world my brother no longer called home?
“I don't think it's supposed to be the same,” Stormy replied, her voice gentle. “Honestly, I think, sometimes, we're supposed to experience pain in order to make us change.”
I gnawed on my lip, keeping my eyes fixated on that ring of light, blurred at the edges. “I just wish it didn't hurt so fucking bad.”
Her palm covered mine. I didn't take her hand or wrap my fingers around hers, but feeling her touch was enough to help me breathe.
“I know. But if it didn't hurt, could you say you ever loved him at all?”
As if the question were a bullet, piercing my brain and soul, I threw my head back against the seat and exhaled through the crushing pain against my heart. “What the hell is the point of loving anything then if the road always ends like this? Why would anyone choose this?”
It wasn't meant for her, nor was it meant to hurt her. But the moment the words left my mouth, I felt the guilt from saying them at all. I pressed my eyes shut and shook my head, muttering a stupid apology, but her fingers lay over my lips, halting my voice from saying anything else.
“You know, I thought the same thing for a long time,” she said. “Why give myself to another man if the possibility of being hurt again was there? Why give myself permission to love if it eventually, in one way or another, leads to pain? And, yeah, it is a choice we make to open ourselves up like that, but I think we make it because, ultimately, that's what living is all about.”
I snorted at the irony of these words being spoken by a woman in black, shrouded in shadows and adorned in more silver than a werewolf hunter. “What? Love?” I asked, sounding a little more condescending than I'd intended.
“ Everything is better with love, Charlie,” she replied, curling her fingers around mine. “It can survive anything, and where there is love, nothing is empty … not even death.” She sniffed a gentle, quiet, humorless laugh and turned her head, and while I couldn't make out her eyes well in the darkness, I knew she was surveying the hallowed ground surrounding us. “When you really think about it, places like this wouldn't even exist without it. What would be the point?”
“For history ,” I forced from my lips and tightening throat.
She turned back to me and tipped her head. “But who gives a fuck about history without the love to keep it alive?”
The light from the sconce flickered, tugging my attention toward it once again. A plummeting sense of grief and sorrow collided with the tiniest bit of hope and desperation as I waited for it to flicker again, but moments passed and nothing. I was being stupid, looking to a light bulb for signs and reassurance, but there was a pull there. Something .
“I love you,” Stormy said despite all my naysaying, her fingers pulsing around mine before letting go.
Those words touched my heart with the promise of the worst heartbreak of my life if she were to die before me, yet I found every bit of salvation within them, and my soul longed to curl up beneath the shelter that only she could provide.
But I had something to do first.
“I love you too,” I replied with resignation.
“Even if it might kill you one day?” she asked teasingly, lifting her hand to cup my cheek.
“Well, by your logic, that's the best kind of love there is,” I said, my tone matching hers.
She hummed a small, contemplative sound as her thumb stroked my flesh. Then, she yawned and pulled away to unbuckle her seat belt.
“I'm gonna lie down,” she told me, opening the car door. “You coming with me?”
“I will,” I promised. “But I think I'm going to sit out here for a few more minutes first.”
She paused in climbing out of the car to glance at me, as if she might protest my need to be alone. But then she whispered, “Okay. Whatever you need to do. But I'll be there when you're ready.”
I nodded my appreciation, but said nothing else as she climbed out of the car and closed the door behind her. I watched as she walked up to the house, keys hanging from her hand. She unlocked the door and glanced over her shoulder at the car for only a brief second before disappearing inside. A light in the living room illuminated the lattice-framed window, a call beckoning me to come home, and I would. But there was a letter in my lap, and though I wouldn't read it yet, I knew the author was somewhere out there, and he'd been trying to grab my attention for a while now.
It hadn't occurred to me initially. At first, I thought those little signs and mementos had been left by a stalker, and then, when it was apparent that I was being watched by a more supernatural entity, I assumed it was Tommy coming to torment me in his afterlife. But the only thing that hadn't made sense in that was, why now? Why had he suddenly, after five years, decided now would be a good time to start haunting me?
The answer was, he hadn't, and I'd put that together nearly immediately after learning when exactly Luke had died.
I opened the car door and stepped outside, letter in hand. I held it up to the night sky before clutching it to my chest and looked from one side to the other, half expecting to see that cigarette-smoking, hooded man who'd been bold enough to visit me weeks ago.
God, how had I not recognized him?
Because I didn’t want to.
“Got your letter,” I said, only feeling a little foolish for talking aloud to seemingly nobody. “I, uh … I don't know when I'll be able to read it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to read it, to be honest with you. A-and it's not that I don't want to, you know. It's just that I, um …”
I hung my head and gripped the back of my neck, squeezing my eyes shut and pulling in a deep breath. “This is such bullshit, Luke,” I struggled to say against the tidal wave of emotion that wanted to sweep me away. “It’s such fucking bullshit, and I'm not ready to say goodbye to you, okay? I feel like-like-like if I read this fucking letter”—I held it up again, shaking it for the stars to see—”then I'm saying goodbye to the last piece of you that I have, and I won't do it. I can't . Okay? Maybe I will one day, maybe I'll be ready, but it's not today. I don't give a fuck if that's what you'd do because now, I have to do what I would do, and that is to run as far away from this as I can. Not forever. Just … for now. Okay? Can you be good with that?”
With tears streaming unabashedly down my face, I lifted my head and surveyed the hill my house stood upon. Nothing had changed. Everything was as it had been moments before, and the sconce beside the door remained still and shining.
“I'm so stupid,” I muttered to nobody, shaking my head. “God, I'm so fucking stupid.”
There was nothing left to say. There was no point. Nobody was here, lingering between the veil separating the living from the dead. Nobody was listening. Nobody had ever listened.
I deflated with a forlorn sigh, clutched the letter in my shaking hand, and dragged my feet toward the door. Knowing that life would continue as it always had, knowing it would never feel the same again, and knowing my only choice was to accept it or die.
And I had to choose to live.
It was what Luke would've done.