“No,” he murmured against my head. “You wouldn’t. I’m going to call Guido. You need to go home and get some sleep.”
“Brando…” I pulled from him. He wiped my eyes and then my nose with his handkerchief. “I’mnotleaving you.”
“It’s so cold out,” he whispered, but his eyes were trained on something behind me.
“He’s here?”
He nodded once. “He thinks he murdered his brother, Scarlett.”
Brando got out of the car, moving toward my side to open my door. In the time it took for him to reach me, I realized something I had never before. Brando felt that he had doomed Elliott by not being there that night.
* * *
A cemetery wasn’t a place to be during the day, much less at night. Somehow the air seemed more still, less active, less souls in need of the oxygen it provided. It felt colder, for the same reasons. And so quiet that I could’ve sworn the three hearts in the vicinity beat as loud as a drum in church.
Our feet crunching against frigid grass was the only sound. Brando walked with more purpose, but I was lighter on my feet. For a man of his size, he was not nearly as loud as he could be, though.
I wasn’t sure how Brando had made it out here an entire night alone. These cemeteries were sometimes referred to as silent cities. This one was so silent that it almost seemed deafening with white noise. The wet cold clung like lost souls looking for a warm body. A constant seeking but never truly touching, unless you were alive to feel it.
Brando’s hand sheltering mine was the only warmth that could be found, and I clung to his side like an extra hip.
“Tell me if you see anything,” he whispered.
“I don’t see Mitch.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
In the glow of his flashlight, he sent me a narrowed look.
A gust of wind, whining like a small child, twirled around us, sending me deeper into my coat and closer to the warm security of my husband.
“I’m not seeing anyone, deadoralive,” I whispered back.
Brando didn’t care for the fact that I had seen my dead grandfather once, the night of our wedding, during a storm outside of a castle in Slovenia. I couldn’t blame him; I didn’t care for it either.
What I refused to share with him was that sometimes feeling was worse than seeing. There was no closing my eyes to escape when a myriad of different emotions clung to me at once, stronger than cold arms and as transparent as gossamer wings.
There was no shedding them, even if I tried. All I could do was give them color, a swirl of red here, a twirl of blue there, perhaps a stroke of green in the center, like a seeing eye, a border of shimmering gold to create the shape.
Curiosity called to me, though. Was it the ones that were close enough to sense warmth that came closer? Or was it just the ones that had been close to me, or connected to my lifeline in some fashion? Did we share the same blood? Had they passed down memories to me through the generations, or only the shape of my nose or the color of my eyes—or this peculiar ability to feel almosttoomuch?
I had been told of an ancestor in Scotland that came from my father’s lineage, a woman who had tied up her husband to keep him from going out to sea on a boat. She had known he was going to die if he left her. She had sensed the coming storm and the end of his life. Through perseverance and cleverness, she had saved his life.
Therefore, I became me. They had no children before the storm. The tale had been passed down from generation to generation, which gave me a frisson along my spine, something akin to white lightning across the sky. Was the humming in my blood what she had felt? What was it about being here that made me think of it?
I had felt a sensation close to this one before, in Italy, at thecastellothat had belonged to my grandfather’s family, in the rose garden there.
The overwhelming need to call out for Mick, to speak to him, to…do something almost brought me to my knees. I had felt him in life as I had felt all those that I loved—even some that I didn’t. Would I be able to feel him here? Did I want to so soon? I wasn’t sure if my heart could take it. My mind whirled, bringing him in and pushing him out. Not wanting to believe, but not having any other choice.
I’m sorry, Mick. I am so, so sorry.
Brando squeezed my hand, as though he could hear my thoughts. The beam of light from the flashlight roved over the cold ground, picking up stones and two almond-shaped eyes that almost made me jump into Brando’s arms.
The breath left Brando’s mouth in a cloud. “A deer,” he said. “She’s eating flowers.”
We watched her for a moment as she watched us. She was as still as the stones she stood between—except for her ear twitching. Not wanting to scare her, we attempted to go another way, turning the flashlight away, cloaking her in darkness. Still, after we had gone, she had too. The grass crackled beneath her hooves as she ran.
Two more eyes caught the light next, but these were not so sanguine.
