Kayden stared down at the grave that held his father and knelt before the giant marble slab, holding a vase of flowers. It had been a while since he had visited and needed to have a conversation. Some days, he couldn’t understand how his dad could marry a woman like his mother.Was she always so manipulative and cunning, or did something happen to make her that way?He couldn’t remember her being disliked growing up, but then again, he wouldn’t have known about grown-up situations then.
“Hey, Dad,” he squeezed out through clenched teeth.
A cold wind ripped through the bare branches overhead, the only sound in the oppressive silence of the cemetery. Kayden knelt, the damp, frigid earth seeping through the knee of his jeans. He removed a few brittle, dead leaves that clung to the headstone, his fingers tracing the chiseled, unforgiving letters of his father’s name. He still couldn’t believe almost six years had passed since he died.
“I’m sorry... sorry I was such a disappointment to you for so many years,” he whispered, his breath clouding in the cold air. “I’m trying my best to do better now. I really am.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath and wiped his face of the first stinging tears with his good hand. His right hand hung useless at his side, a dead, alien weight. A constant, terrifying reminder. He’d tried to clench it on the drive over, but there was nothing.
No flicker of movement. He feared he’d never regain use of it again, that this broken, incomplete version of himself was permanent. He didn't want to put this new, suffocating fear on Lana; she had enough to deal with. He worried about losing her, not just to the external chaos of their lives, but tothis as well. To his weakness. To the fact that he was damaged.
“I cleaned up my act,” he continued, focusing back on the stone. “I found a wonderful woman... her name is Lana. You’d like her. God, you would. I think you and Joel would’ve liked her a lot. She doesn’t take any of my shit.”
He managed a slight, wet chuckle, the sound foreign and harsh in the heavy silence. But saying his brother’s name was like striking a match in a room full of gasoline. His chest instantly seized, a sudden, crushing weight that stole his breath. Before he could even process it, the emotions consumed him.
A raw, guttural sob tore from his throat, and he collapsed forward, pressing his forehead against the icy, unyielding granite of the headstone.
“It hasn’t been easy, though,” he choked out, the words muffled against the stone, his shoulders shaking. “And not because of her. It’s me. It’s always been me. My choices... and the people I let in my life.”
He took a breath and calmed himself, zipped up his leather jacket, and sat on the grass.
“Kim tried to hurt us. Really, she did hurt us, but she didn’t break us. I won’t let that happen.”
Another gust of wind blew around him, rustling the leaves on the cold, wet ground in the cemetery. The sun began to set, andover the treetops, the sky was drenched in deep pink, yellow, and purple tones. Picturesque, untouched beauty, like the woman at home, he couldn’t comfort, no matter how he tried.
“We’re getting married, Lana and me. We were having a baby, but...because of the accident…we lost it.”
Kayden’s gaze drifted over the sea of cold, silent stones surrounding him. Each one was a life, a story cut short, a stark, gray reminder of how precious and fleeting it all was. A visceral chill, sharper than the wind, shot down his spine as he realized how easily, how terrifyingly easily, he and Lana could have been buried under stones just like these. They had comethatclose.
The thought, as always, brought a fresh wave of nausea, immediately followed by the bitter, familiar sting of his mother’s betrayal. How could she? How could she know they had nearly died, that their lives had hung so delicately in the balance, andstillchoose to help Kim? How could any mother, knowing that, align herself with the very person who had tried to put her own son in the ground? The betrayal felt vast and incomprehensible, a dark, cold void that echoed the cemetery’s silence around him.
“You know, when I was in the coma, I had a dream, at least I think it was a dream. I was with you and Joel, and we were fishing like we used to.”
He pulled out his metal flask and twirled the cool pewter in his hand.
“Was it a dream? Or was it real? It felt real. Lana says she thinks it’s your way of saying you forgive me. Hope so, I really do, because I’ve decided to forgive myself. I have to if I want anything real with her to last.”
He ran his thumb over the engraving of his name.
“I’m done with burying my feelings and running from what I did. It was stupid and reckless, and I will have to live with the consequences of that for the rest of my life. I’m going to be better—better than who I was.”
He rested the flask against the gravestone.
“I don’t need that anymore, but I filled it for you. Have one for me in heaven, Dad.”
He stood from the grass and batted the wet, clinging leaves and dirt from his pants.
“I have to get back to Lana now, but before I go, I want you to know I made a promise to her today. I won’t let Kim get away with what she did, and I meant it. But I won’t let it fester and twist me into the person I used to be either.
He set the vase of flowers near the headstone and looked back down at his father’s name, the fancy script letters spelling:Vincent Capshaw.
“I love you, Dad,” he said, then walked through the field of graves to find Lana.
LANA PERCHEDON the edge of the chair in Arthur Spence’s office, her fingers tightening on the edges of the proposal for the building restoration project. It felt less like a plan and more like an anchor. Shehadto get out of the house. The last few days had been a suffocating blur of being cooped up, oscillating between restless sleep and a self-pitying misery she couldn't stand.
She needed a focus. The best, perhaps theonly, thing she could do to stop her mind from obsessively plotting, from finding the hole Kim would be hiding in over in Shelby, was to stay busy. The office itself felt trapped in time. The air was thick with the musty, sweet smell of aging paper and stale coffee.
A single, bare bulb hummed overhead, casting a sallow light on a massive, unfinished wood desk that dominated the small space. Against the entire length of one wall, a row of old,rusty file cabinets stood at a slight, uneven slant, their labels faded and peeling. Lana’s fingers twitched.Probably filled with decades of guest information,she thought, her nurse's mind recoiling at the archaic, disorganized system. They needed a computer, a modern database, a fresh start. She could relate.
