Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
“I miss you.” The loss of her was no longer an open sore, but it had never healed right, either.
She seemed to dance in the grass in the distance, not as I’d last seen her, but as the girl who’d played through this landscape with her sister. Wild and beautiful and as fragile as the frost.
I wanted to see more of her world.
Putting my empty mug on the veranda railing, I decided to explore the family cemetery that was no longer any kind of nightmare. It had featured in many of my frost-laden shots this morning.
Now, I walked through it in respectful silence.
Though it was tidy and clearly regularly maintained, the majority of the headstones were old and weathered. Only two remained shiny and black, bearing no moss or other signs of time. I knew whose they were before I knelt down to read the inscriptions.
I’d attended their funeral service in Auckland, watched the two somber black hearses depart for the airport.
Katherine Jenkins Shepherd, beloved wife of Martin, and adored mother of Darceline and Beatrice. She sleeps with the angels now.
The next was for Martin Blake Shepherd and included the words “beloved husband of Katherine, and cherished father of Darcie and Bea.” I gave a small laugh, surprised by the joy in this melancholy place. Mrs. Shepherd had hated that all her daughters’ friends almost always used their nicknames, had insisted on calling Darcie and Bea by their full names, while Mr. Shepherd had been in favor of the nicknames.
No real tension to it, just the loving bickering of a longtime couple.
Kneeling down, I brushed off a couple of leaves that had fallen on the glossy black veined with gold, and looked instinctively to the right and then the left. But of course there was no Bea. She should’ve been here with her parents. All her ancestors were here. All her family was here.
My stomach tightened, my chest a hard knot. I told myself that Bea was here nonetheless, her spirit in every blade of grass, her laughter imprinted in the walls of the house, but God, I was so angry. If Darcie had buried her here, I could’ve talked to her, could’ve sat with her.
A prickling on the back of my neck.
I looked around, then up to the house—toward my room. Nothing. But movement flashed when I turned my attention to the other half of the hallway. A person shifting away from a window.
Frowning, I tried to work out who was in that room. Yes, of course, it was Ash and Darcie. Maybe Darcie had gone up there to get rid of her jacket now that it was warming up.
Talking of how much time had passed . . .
I wiggled my toes. Yep, they were on the road to going numb.
Consciously deciding to leave my anger in the graveyard where it wouldn’t wreck the week or destabilize an already vulnerable woman, I wandered back. Because it didn’t matter how much I screamed at Darcie; Bea was still dead. And Bea was the true target of my rage.
How could she have just left us? Just vanished without a trace?
How could she have left me?
13
When I stepped into the kitchen after taking off my wet boots and leaving them on the veranda, I found it bustling. Phoenix was making eggs, while Darcie put on a fresh pot of coffee and Ash sliced what looked to be a fresh-baked loaf of bread.
“Where did that come from?” I asked, putting my mug aside as I took a deep breath of the yeasty air.
“Parbaked,” Darcie said, her smile bright now. “We stocked up enough for the entire time we’re here. Frozen. Just chuck the loaves in the oven for, like, fifteen minutes and yum.”
My vision trembled, the brilliant life of this scene after the gray melancholy of the graveyard disconcerting. “I’ll be back to stuff my face after I get out of my wet clothes,” I managed to say. The frost had turned into water, damp seeping into my bones at my knees and on my face.
“Scrambled, right?” Phoenix asked. “With smoked paprika.”
I stared at him. “How do you even remember that?”
He rolled his eyes. “Did you really think Vansi was a domestic goddess all those nights you spent over at ours? I was her secret kitchen slave.”
Startled into a laugh, I left him to the eggs and headed up to change. I’d forgotten how often I had actually spent time with Nix over the years. Our quiet friendship, I realized, had become submerged under the deeper weight of my bond with Vansi—and my potent connection with Bea.
It was only after I’d pulled off my T-shirt that I realized that it couldn’t have been Ash or Darcie at the window. Not given the timing. They’d both clearly been in the kitchen a while—I’d seen Darcie’s pink jacket hanging off the back of a chair, and Ash had showed no signs of having raced down the stairs to take up position at the breadboard.