One
Elodie
Every year on the date of his death, we honor the first man I murdered.
Cole sets the photo on the small table by the living-room window and lights a white candle on either side. The flamelight dances on the pewter frame.
Behind the glass, Asher beams at us with his easy grin. A breeze has ruffled the short waves of his fawn-brown hair. The sunlight makes his green eyes gleam even brighter than usual.
It’s not completely accurate to call him a man. He was only seventeen when he died.
When I killed him.
A prickling sensation spreads through my palm. I rub the mark there, tracing my thumb over the dark pink shape that stands out against my light brown skin. Following each of the narrow points that jut from the center to make it look like a star: one, two, three, four.
One for each of my fated mates, the matches who can set off a spark down to my soul for the rest of our lives.
Most of us only get one or two. Other people would say I should be happy with the three I have left.
Those people are fucking idiots.
Cole brings a stick of incense to one of the candle flames and then sets it in the holder. A sharp herbal fragrance laces the air: rosemary, for remembrance.
As he lays out the rest of the objects we use in our private ceremony, the prickles in my palm spread to my stomach. They jab deeper with each memory provoked.
There’s Asher’s favorite sweatshirt that he wore even after the cuffs were worn to threads. He lent it to me one chilly evening, and I put it on over my pajamas that night so I could sleep with his warm amber scent wrapped around me.
There’s the picture book about a new puppy that Asher kept on his bookshelf even though he outgrew it more than a decade ago. He once showed me the loving note his mom wrote on the inside cover, with a doodle of a mother and father embracing two kids.“It’s the last thing she ever gave me.”
There’s the “lucky” stone Asher always carried in his pocket, a smooth oval of rosy granite flecked with mica. He never told me why he thought it was lucky. When I prodded him, he’d give me a secretive smile and say,“As long as I have it, anything I lose will come back to me.”
Maybe that was true, but it can’t bringhimback to us.
And no one else in this room has any clue I’m the one who took him away.
Cole steps to the side of the table, angled so he’s partly facing the three of us and partly the photograph, as if he’s talking to both the living and the dead. As Asher’s older brother, he always speaks first.
He rakes a pale, sinewy hand through his chestnut hair as if to sweep it even farther back, but a few strands drift across his forehead anyway. His jaw works beneath its shading of stubble.
When his voice comes out, its usual crisp tone has gone hoarse. “It’s been three years since Asher passed, but he’s still with me every day. The comments he’d have made, the things he’d have laughed about. News I’d have shared with him, meals he’d have shoveled down. Or maybe he’d have finally lost that crazy teenage appetite by now…”
The hoarseness thickens. Cole stops to clear his throat.
“He was a fantastic brother. Always finding a bright side, always looking after every person and creature around him as much as he could. May the goodness in him live on in everything he touched. He deserved so much better than what he got.”
Yes, he did.
A burn forms at the back of my eyes. I’m pretty sure there’s a whole dagger in my stomach now, twisting hard.
Cole touches each of Asher’s former possessions in turn and then rests his hand on the framed photograph.
Salvatore slips his fingers around mine to give them a quick squeeze. He pushes forward when Cole steps back.
In the otherwise dim room, the candles’ glow highlights the mingling of Salvatore’s mixed Irish and Italian heritage: the ruddy undertones in his messy black hair, the smattering of freckles that nearly blend into his tan skin. His massive shoulders flex before he shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his posture unnervingly awkward for a guy who’s usually so brashly confident.
“I didn’t get to know Asher very well,” he says, “but I can tell I missed out. I know no matter how much the pricks at school hassled him, he never showed that he was shaken. He’d be smiling away an hour later. He must have been pretty toughto put up with all that. I’d have liked to have a guy like that in my family.”
He doesn’t mention that he was one of the pricks back then—not as bad as some, but I had first-hand experience with his “hassling” too. We all know how guilty he feels about it. He talked about that part a lot the first time we held our memorial.
