I didn’t wake up for two hours.
And when I did, Stella was gone.
Relief filled me as I found her at the metal guardrail, staring out over the deep ravine, water rushing past far below, surrounded by some of the tallest trees I had ever seen. She didn’t turn to me when I approached, but she knew I was there.
“That’s the Cowlitz River down there. Isn’t it beautiful?” she said.
“You’re beautiful.” I was so happy to see her awake. Such words would have embarrassed me a few years ago but felt so natural now, so right. If a void existed within me, it filled when she was near—this place in my heart belonging to only her, a room only she could enter.
Stella wrapped her arms around me and I, her. She wore her long black gloves, the ones that reached her elbows, over those she had pulled on a sweatshirt. Not a bit of her flesh was exposed, and even if it were, I’m not sure I cared. She was careful, though. A lifetime of practice behind her. The warmth of those arms, the feel of her fingers in my hair, her breath caressing my neck. I so wanted to pull her close and kiss her. Knowing I could not was maddening. Knowing I never would, more maddening still.
“I am to die soon, my dearest Pip. You know that, right?”
“Don’t say things like that, please.”
“The hunger will consume me again soon, and this time there will be no satiating it. I’ll grow so weak, I’ll become delirious. My thoughts will be lost to nothing but nonsense and babble. I’ve been there so many times. It’s like an ancient enemy knocking at the door, an unwelcome guest smiling at the window when I refuse to let him in.”
“You can use the river, this forest.”
“It won’t be enough.”
“Then we find someone.”
We have someone. Hobson, sitting patiently in the back seat.
No. I forced that thought from my head. Hobson was a victim, no less than us.
He’s broken.
No.
“I’ve told you, I won’t. No more.”
“Stella, I can’t lose you.”
“Yet, you will.”
“If those people in white find us again…one of them. Or maybe my father will know—”
“Life is not mine to take. My existence is selfish. All those years, they convinced me I was doing the right thing, but I knew in my heart it was never true. I still did as they asked, I killed for them. So many died at my hand. There is no atonement for my sins. I see their faces whenever I close my eyes. I hear their cries. Even the monsters, and many were, not even they deserved the pain I brought upon them. I think I welcome death, I welcome the silence of death. They’ll be waiting for me on the other side, and I’ll need to answer to all of them, and as frightening as that is, I know I must face them if I am ever to find peace.”
“You’re just being stubborn, Stella. We find someone bad, someone deserving…a killer, a rapist…someone who wouldn’t hesitate to kill us or someone else—”
Stella placed a gloved finger over my lips, silencing me. “I won’t, Jack. No more. I don’t want to talk about such things. I don’t want to think about them.” She smiled up at me, her eyes catching the moon. “Let us just enjoy this moment, this time together, the time we have left. A moment can be an eternity, if we let it.”
My God, she is so pale.
“I love you, Stella Nettleton,” I said softly.
“And I you, John Edward Jack Thatch. My Pip.”
I pulled her close. I held her so tight.
“Dance with me?” she whispered, burying her head in my shoulder.
And we did.
We danced at the edge of that cliff, we danced to a song only we heard.
