"She asked about you.Wanted me to tell you thank you.She said she knew you'd find her niece."
Kari felt relieved.She'd made a promise, and she'd kept it.Tayen was alive.Tayen was with family.Tayen was going home.
It didn't fix everything.It didn't bring back Jennifer or Amanda or the other women Diana had killed.It didn't undo the trauma Tayen had experienced or erase the three days of terror she'd endured.But it was something.It mattered.
"Get some sleep, Blackhorse," Carter said, standing up and gathering her jacket."You earned it."
After she left, Kari lay in the darkness of the hospital room, listening to the quiet beeping of monitors and the distant sounds of the building at night—footsteps in hallways, muffled voices, the occasional page over the intercom.
She kept thinking about what Carter had told her.The years Diana had spent holding herself together, maintaining boundaries, following the rules her therapist had given her.And then one girl—one lonely, trusting girl who reminded Diana of herself—had broken through those walls.
Jennifer had called Diana her guardian angel.Had shown up at her apartment with takeout.Had made Diana feel needed, important, loved.
And when Jennifer tried to leave, Diana couldn't survive it.Couldn't let her go.Couldn't accept that love didn't mean ownership that closeness didn't mean forever.
The tragedy wasn't just the five women who had died.It was also that Diana had spent years trying to be something other than what she was, trying to keep the broken parts of herself contained.And it had worked, until it hadn't.Until Jennifer had reached past all her defenses and touched something that should have stayed buried.
Kari wondered if there was a version of this story where it ended differently.Where Diana had kept her distance, or where Jennifer had stayed, or where someone had noticed the cracks before they became chasms.
But wondering didn't change anything.Five women were dead, and Diana was shattered beyond repair, and all the what-ifs in the world couldn't undo any of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Two days later, Kari sat in the courtyard of Tayen's hotel, watching the young woman across a small wrought-iron table.The courtyard was a quiet oasis in the middle of the city—flowering plants in ceramic pots, a small fountain burbling in the corner, the noise of traffic reduced to a distant hum.It felt like a different world from the storage facility where they'd nearly died together.
Tayen looked different than she had in those Glimmer photos, older somehow, despite being only twenty.The glamour was gone, stripped away along with the makeup and the careful styling and the curated perfection of her online presence.She wore no makeup now, her hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, her clothes comfortable rather than fashionable.
But there was something in her eyes that hadn't been there before.A depth, maybe.An awareness of things she hadn't known the existence of a week ago.
She also looked more at peace than Kari had expected, given everything she'd been through.
"Aunt Lola wants me to come back to the reservation," Tayen said, her fingers wrapped around a cup of tea that had long since gone cold."She says I can stay with her as long as I need.Finish my high school equivalency, maybe take some classes at the community college.Figure out what I actually want to do with my life."
"What does that look like?"Kari asked."Going back?"
Tayen was quiet for a moment, turning the cold tea cup in her hands."Scary.Embarrassing.I left like I was too good for that place, like I was going to come back famous and prove everyone wrong.And now I'm coming back with nothing.No career, no money, no...nothing."
"You're coming back alive.That's not nothing."
"I know.I know that."Tayen set down the cup."But it's hard to shake the feeling that I failed.That everyone's going to look at me and see the girl who couldn't make it."
"Some of them might.People can be small that way."Kari thought about her own return to the reservation after her years in Phoenix, the whispers and sidelong glances, the people who thought she'd gotten above herself and were quietly pleased to see her come back."But most of them will just be glad you're home.The people who love you don't keep score."
"Aunt Lola said something like that.She said the only person who cares about my mistakes is me."Tayen smiled faintly."She also said I could work at the trading post until I figure out what I want to do.It's not glamorous, but..."
"It's a start.That's all you need right now."
"What about you?"Tayen asked."Do you ever think about leaving?Going somewhere else, starting over?"
Kari considered the question.The chance to work somewhere with more resources, more support, more cases that didn't involve navigating the complicated politics of reservation life.
"Sometimes," she admitted."But the reservation is home.It's where my family is, where my mother is buried.It's where I'm needed."She paused."That doesn't mean it's easy.There are days when politics drives me crazy, when I feel like I'm fighting the same battles over and over.But I think that's true anywhere.You don't escape your problems by changing your location.You just trade them for different problems."
"So you stay."
"I stay.For now, anyway.Maybe that'll change someday.But right now, it's where I belong."
Tayen nodded slowly."I think maybe that's what I was running from.Not the reservation, not Aunt Lola.Just...the feeling of belonging somewhere.It felt like a trap.Like if I let myself belong, I'd never be anything more than what I already was."
