You like her sassiness. She’s not prickly in bed.
Three, the things she’d said had hurt him.
You’re a pussy. Your expectations that she would fall in love with you in the space of a week are ridiculous.
Yeah, but the kicker was, he’d fallen for her, hard. Alex had never been a big believer in love at first sight. But with Genevieve the impossible became possible. If something as magical as her powers could exist, the entire universe opened up, a blank slate of anything goes.
Something bigger than both of them must be out there, something that had brought him to her. He’d never thought of himself as a romantic, but when he’d seen her, he’d known they were meant to be together.
Unfortunately, she clearly didn’t feel the same way. Alex leaned his head against the wall, looking into the darkness. His heart ached at the thought of never seeing Genevieve again.
Of course, he’d take never seeing her again if he knew she was alive and safe somewhere in the world. They were in such a dire situation here, a recovering invalid and a young woman against a trigger-happy gunman. Not good.
As if she heard his thoughts, Genevieve stirred. He spared a glance to find her reaching under the frame of her bed and withdrawing a large box of some sort. They’d left only one candle burning, in an attempt to keep their visible silhouettes to a minimum, so he couldn’t see very clearly. As tempted as he was to ask her what the box was, his pride had him keeping silent. Let her tell him if she wanted to. He didn’t need the scraps.
Nonetheless, his heart sped and his ears perked up when she crawled over to where he sat. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“I just realized I could die pretty soon.”
His heart seized, the thin layer of ice he’d drawn around himself cracking at her pragmatic announcement. “The hell you will.” Even if Genevieve didn’t return his love, he’d be damned if he lost her. No matter what he had to do.
“I’m not stupid. Anyway, I don’t have a will or anything. So I wrote down what I want, and I’d like you to sign it as a witness. I don’t know how legal that is, but I figure it’s better than nothing. Just in case, I’m going to tell you too.”
Like a child, he wanted to plug his fingers in his ears and hum. “Please don’t tell me this.”
Her hand rested on his arm. A little zing of warmth flooded into his system. How could she not feel as intensely about him as he did about her? “I have to. This is important. I spread my mom’s ashes around this place.”
He focused on the outdoor landscape. “You want the same thing?”
“No.”
The word was so emphatic, he couldn’t help but look at her. Her eyes shone in the darkness, the whites very visible. “I don’t want to be anywhere near here after I die. I don’t care what happens with my ashes, but I don’t want them here.”
“Why do you live here if you hate it?”
Instead of telling him off for asking her a personal question, she smiled slightly. To his surprise, she answered. “Penance.” Before he could ask her to elaborate, she opened the box in her hands. “These things are important to me, and I’ve written there that I want them cremated with me.”
He didn’t speak, though his curiosity was itching. As if she knew, she picked up the item on top. It was a small rag doll, the kind women used to make by hand. His mother had one of them from her own childhood stored away somewhere. Genevieve’s doll was missing an eye and wore a faded terrycloth dress. “This was the doll I carried around when I was little. Her name’s Betty Lou. When I was seven, I accidentally bleached her dress and cried because I was sure she wouldn’t be pretty anymore. So Mom made a new one out of an old towel. She said she would buy me a new doll when we went to town, but I loved this one so much, I wouldn’t let her.”
She placed the doll gently back in the box. She held up a pressed flower encased in plastic. “This was the first rose I ever saw, when I was five. My mom said I carried it around in my pocket because I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. She planted rosebushes in the backyard for me, but after she died, I guess I didn’t take care of them right, ’cause they all died.”
Next, Genevieve stroked her fingers over a folded-up swatch of material. “My mother had to sell my grandma’s wedding dress. I wasn’t born yet. But she cut off a tiny scrap so I would have something of it.”
Tears were streaming down Genevieve’s cheeks, but she didn’t seem to realize. Alex noticed, though, and his heart was breaking. “It sounds as though she loved you a lot. You should speak of her more often, honor that love.”
“You don’t even know how much she loved me.” She withdrew a piece of paper from the bottom of the box. “This is the last picture I have of her.”
The Polaroid showed an older woman who looked remarkably like Genevieve, only more frail, her eyes sunken, her hair thinning. She sat on a knitted blanket outside. The woman in the photo stared at the photographer with a tenderness that shone through the print and brought a lump to his throat. Thin and wasted, she had the same look his grandmother had worn in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, a kind of resignation and helplessness that conveyed death was near. “She’s as beautiful as you.” Alex passed the photo back to Genevieve, who lowered it with reverence back to the box. The click of the lid closing was very loud in the silent room.
She cleared her throat and handed the notebook and pen over to him. “Can you sign this, please?”
As much as he hated the idea, Alex couldn’t deny the woman anything, and he signed before he glanced over the document. Besides her post-death wishes, which he still couldn’t even begin to consider, she’d also listed a quick rundown of her assets, which were pitifully bare; the cabin and a bank account, which she had left to some man, a friend, Alex remembered her telling him about, and her horse, which she left to…
“You want to leave me your horse?”
“And money for his upkeep.”
Ahh, yes, he saw that as well. “Why are you leaving me your horse?” Forget the fact that if she died, he didn’t think he’d be alive. God as his witness, the only way she wouldn’t be alive was if someone shot through him first.
