She shook her head again. “You don’t. You can’t. You can’t possibly…”
“I’ve known for years. I think I’ve always known.”
“You don’t,” she said again, crossing back to the trees. “I. Needed. Him.” She drew in a breath between each of these words, then with her ungloved hand she reached for the tree beside her, a gray pine, at least sixty feet tall. The trunk of the tree blackened under her touch with what first looked like a burn, then became rot. Long pine needles began to fall from the tree, showering down on her. As they fell, their color turned from a grayish green to black before they hit the ground. When all the needles were gone, I heard a moan, then a loud creak, a harsh, high-pitched squeal, followed by a crack, and the tree was falling. It toppled to the right of her, and all the while, Stella remained perfectly still, her hand on the trunk. When it hit the ground, it broke into dozens of pieces—not the trunk of a newly cut tree, but that of one which had spent a lifetime rotting away before finally succumbing to gravity and crashing to the earth.
When it was over, she didn’t look at me. She looked to the ground. “That thing you saw me do, in the basement,” she said. “I have to do it. If I don’t, I’ll die.”
“They used you.” I said this in the calmest voice I could. I needed her to calm down. Already, her fingers were flexing, reaching for another tree. I knew, trees would not be enough.
“They were feeding me. They kept me safe. I’m glad to be away, to be out, but…I need…”
I went to her. I wrapped my arms around her, and although her arms remained at her sides, she pressed her face into my chest, carefully avoiding my flesh, the exposed skin of my neck.
“We need to hide him. We need to get him into the water. Will you help me?” she said softly, her voice muffled.
She pulled away from me and tugged her glove back on, her face pleading.
I nodded silently.
We dragged him around to the driver’s side and managed to get him in the seat behind the wheel. Leo Signorelli was my height, my build, but gravity somehow affects dead weight differently than alive, and moving him proved a struggle. Once inside with the seatbelt fastened, I started the car, turned the headlights back on, slipped the car into neutral, and released the brake. I took a last look around the interior to ensure Stella hadn’t left anything inside, then rolled down the driver-side window to steer.
“What about this?” Stella held Leo’s gun between the tips of her gloved fingers. “Better to throw it out into the lake or put it in the car?”
I thought about this for a second. “It’s no secret he was mixed up with some nasty people. Probably best to leave it in the car.”
She opened the door and dropped it on the passenger seat, then together we pushed the small car into the water. The reservoir had a steep slope—the car went under fast. The engine died right away, the headlights blinked out after about thirty-seconds. Air bubbled up through the open window, then the BMW disappeared from view.
We stood there for a long time, watching where the car had been, then she finally turned to me and her eyes found mine, the sadness in her look so deep, so overwhelming. When she opened her mouth to speak, two words slipped out. Two words worse than the blade of any knife through my heart. “I can’t…”
She ran toward the trees. She pushed through the bushes and branches until the night swallowed her whole, and I was certain of only one thing—I couldn’t lose her again.
Stella didn’t answer my calls.
I screamed out her name as I chased after her. I didn’t care who else heard me. The same branches that had welcomed her sliced at my skin, scratched and bit me, but I didn’t care about that either. I ran as fast as I could, my arms and hands pushing them aside, oblivious to the pain.
Twenty minutes passed before I found her.
Stella was sitting on a large rock, her head buried in her gloved hands. When she heard me approach, her breath caught and she jumped up.
I held a hand out to her. “Don’t run. Please, no more. Just… Just hear me out. Please.”
“This isn’t you, Jack. It never was. You’re a better person than me. I can’t pull you into this with me. I can’t.”
I took a step closer. “I love you, Stella. I’ve loved you from the very first moment I saw you all those years ago. ThesecondI saw you sitting on that bench.”
“We were only kids.”
“You felt it too, I know you did. I saw the painting in your room. All the jabs, the mean comments, it was all bullshit. It was that old woman whispering in your ear. None of it mattered anyway, because the truth was in your eyes, it always was. Eight years old, eighteen, or eighty, it doesn’t matter. Every thought I have is of you. Every breath, every sight, every sound, itallreminds me of you. You’re a piece of me, and I’m dying without you. There’s a hole in me without you. I love you, Stella, with every ounce of my being. I know you love me, too. I know you do.”
“I don’t deserve to love. I’m some kind of monster.” She said this so softly, tears welling at her eyes.
“That’s the old woman again, Latrese Oliver. I know it is. You do too. You know what’s in your heart—what’s always been there.” I took another step toward her, only inches from her now. “Nobody else matters, there’s only us.Nothingelse matters.”
“They made me—”
I took her hand then, felt her warmth through the glove. “Look at me, Stella.”
She did.
