Chapter 29
twenty-nine
OLEANDER
I didn't stop until the pavement shifted into something else.
The road that had brought me to Hollow Vale was a straight shot of asphalt, but standing at the edge of the town limits, it felt more like a warning.
The fog was a white, sightless wall that swallowed everything twenty feet ahead, turning the world into a series of ghosts.
Leaving should have been simple. I had a car.
I had keys. I had enough gas to get three towns over before I had to think about where I was going.
The others had a plan. They were going into the woods at first light to find the structure Dominic built and destroy it.
My job was to stay in town, stay on the phone with Liliana, and trust them to come back.
But my feet felt like they were made of stone, and the road out looked like something I could disappear into and never have to face any of it again. I looked back toward the town, toward the Victorian silhouettes and the spiraling decay, and then I looked at the phone in my hand.
I hit Liliana's name before I could talk myself out of it. She answered before the first ring finished.
"Oleander?"
"Hi, Lili," I said. My voice came out smaller than I expected. I leaned against the cold metal of my car. "I'm at the edge of town. I'm looking at the road out."
"Are you on it, or are you just looking at it?"
"Just looking."
"Tell me," she said. It wasn't a request. "Tell me everything. No more 'it's fine.' I want the version you aren't telling yourself."
I closed my eyes. I told her everything I hadn't said in our last calls, all of it, in one ugly rush, until there was nothing left to hide behind.
When I finally stopped, the only sound was the distant caw of a crow somewhere in the fog. My throat was raw.
"I told you years ago that something was wrong with him," she said.
Her voice was flat, devoid of the comfort I thought I wanted.
"And you looked me in the eye and said I was overreacting.
You did the looking-away thing while he was alive, you did it when he died, and you're doing it now.
So what are you going to do differently? "
She paused. "Because looking away didn't save Dominic. It just gave him room to finish what he started. And now three men who actually seem to give a damn about you are walking into the woods tomorrow because of what your silence let him build."
The first sob hit me without warning.I dropped the phone into the dirt and slumped against the side of the car, my face in my hands.
I cried for the first time since the funeral.
I cried for the man I'd married who didn't exist, for the man who did exist and had used my love as a battery.
I cried for Rowan and Julian and Theo, who had looked at my wreckage and decided it was worth living in.
The fog pressed closer, drawn to the salt and the heat of it.
I stayed there for a long time, my knees in the dirt, the road behind me forgotten.
Liliana's voice was still coming faintly from the phone on the ground, a tiny, persistent murmur of my name.
I reached down and picked it up, wiping my face with a sleeve that was already damp with mist.
"I'm going back," I said. My voice was wrecked, but the hesitation was gone. "They have a plan. And I'm done running from this."
"Good," she said, and for the first time, I heard the tremor in her own voice. "Don't you dare let him win twice, Oleander. You hear me? Don't you dare."
I hung up and looked back toward the center of the Vale. The town looked like a debt that had finally come due. I got into the car, turned it around, and drove back into the white.
The apartment was freezing when I walked in, but the scent of cologne didn't make me flinch this time.
It just made me angry. I went straight to the kitchen table where the notebook sat, its leather cover looking like bruised skin under the dim light.
I sat down and opened it to the page Julian had identified, the one where the musical notes started to look like teeth.
I'd spent my whole life waiting for someone to give me permission to be loud.
Dominic had taught me that my value was in my stillness, in my ability to be the quiet center of his storm.
The others didn't want my stillness. They wanted my participation.
They wanted me to be as dangerous as the things I was afraid of.
I touched the paper, tracing the frantic ink. My hand didn't shake. The silence in the room was absolute, but it wasn't the silence of an empty space. It was the silence of a breath being held.
I looked at the dark corner of the living room, where the shadows always seemed a little too thick.
"I see you," I whispered into the cold. "I'm done pretending I don't."