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)
The others murmured their own goodbyes, with a crying Grace saying, “I wish I’d had longer to know you. The glimpses I did have of you showed me a man kind and loving and loyal, and I’m so happy you had such a beautiful life with Vansi. I wish you peace in your next journey.”
Ash’s goodbye was rough, short, and broken, Aaron’s heartfelt and the most personal of all of us.
“I’ll miss you, Nix,” he said through his tears, one hand on Phoenix’s body. “You were the best friend a guy could have. Thank you for standing up for me when I was a skinny twelve-year-old and for standing by me through life. I was going to ask you to be my best man—and you still will be. No one will take your place. No one could.”
He spoke his next words in his parents’ native tongue, a private goodbye between two boys grown into men who’d never stopped being best friends.
Then it was done.
And for all that I hadn’t wanted to handle his body, it was hard to leave my friend in this cold and lonely place. I lingered at the end, lifting my camera to my eye to take one final shot.
“Come on, Lu.” Aaron held out a hand from higher up the steps. “Nix is gone to our Father in heaven. What remains is the shell he occupied on this earth.”
I envied Aaron his faith at that moment, because I wasn’t so sure that Phoenix was at peace. That look of shock and terror on his face . . . No, I didn’t think Nix was at rest.
But I allowed Aaron to take my hand and lead me up and out.
Grace didn’t look askance at his grip when we appeared in the cellar doorway. Instead, giving me a teary smile, she took my other hand. Her hand was as fine-boned and small as Aaron’s was long-fingered and scarred over with the small burns accumulated over a lifetime by a man who loved to cook.
“It’s hard to leave him there, isn’t it?” Grace said. “It feels wrong.”
I nodded, my eyes burning as hot and as dry as the Sahara.
34
Darcie had already swept away the broken glass by the time we got back. “I convinced Vansi to lie down,” she whispered. “Gave her a sleeping pill I had. Just over-the-counter stuff. She didn’t resist—I think she wanted to shut out the world for a while.”
Her eyes searched Ash’s face.
Walking over, he ran his hand down her braid. “You did the right thing.”
The pinched look disappeared from around her eyes, her lips less taut.
Grace spoke then, but I wasn’t paying attention except to note that Ash replied to her.
Leaving the two couples to their quiet discussion, I went into the living room to check on Vansi and Kaea. I didn’t like the fact that Darcie had knocked Vansi out; I could’ve sworn that my friend had found herself again in the moments before we’d left with Phoenix’s body.
But what was the point of Darcie lying? Vansi would wake sooner or later, and then we’d all know whether she’d chosen to take the pill or not. And this wasn’t like any other situation V had faced in her life.
I couldn’t presume to predict her emotional responses.
I saw Kaea first as his sofa was closest to the door. He shifted feverishly in his sleep, his skin so hot that I didn’t even have to touch him to sense the heat coming off his body. “Kaea.” I shook his shoulder gently, was shocked at the burn of his skin.
No response. To my voice or a harder shake, a stronger call.
He was in trouble.
My heart pounding, I checked quickly on Vansi. Her breathing was even, her rest appearing peaceful. I couldn’t wait for her to wake—not just to see that she was okay, but because she was a nurse. If we needed anyone right now, it was Vansi.
“Kaea has a dangerously high fever,” I told the others from the doorway of the living area. “Do we have anything to help bring it down?”
Everyone glanced instinctively toward the spot where Phoenix’s body had crumpled.
The doctor in the group.
The one who’d been looking after our friend.
His startled, broken face flashed into my mind, a jigsaw outlined in red.
Jerking away my head, I found the others doing the same. We started talking all at once, but soon realized that the only thing we had was paracetamol—the kind anyone could buy at the grocery store or chemist, nothing stronger.
“Then we give him that,” I said. “It might help a little at least.”
Some small grain of knowledge at the back of my head said that a fever wasn’t dangerous only because of what it signified in terms of what was happening within the body—but of its own accord. Did it really heat up the brain? Or was I making that up?