For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then Regan said, “You went to her grave last night.”
My head snapped up.
She didn’t turn around.
“You heard?”
“No.” She looked out at the water. “But you came down this morning different.”
Different.
I didn’t feel different. I felt hollowed out. Bruised in places no makeup would touch. Raw. Tired. Still angry. Still scared. Still me.
But maybe something had shifted.
Maybe the grave had taken one small piece of the weight back.
Or maybe it had given me something worse.
I folded my hands together in my lap and stared down at my knuckles.
“I had to go,” I whispered.
“I know.”
“You’re not mad?”
“At you?” Regan turned from the balcony, her face softening. “No.”
“Everyone else would be.”
“Everyone else is running on fear.” She came to sit beside me, not too close. “Fear makes people controlling. Even good people. Especially good people who love someone and don’t know how to save them.”
I swallowed.
The ocean kept moving outside, bright and endless, like it had no idea search warrants had hit the clubhouse or my name was sitting in the center of a storm back home.
“The grave was defaced,” I said.
Regan went completely still.
I looked at her, and the words scraped up my throat.
“Someone spray-painted it. Red.” My voice thinned. “Across her name.”
Regan inhaled sharply.
The sound was small, but it changed the room.
It wasn’t shock exactly.
It was pain.
Old pain.
Familiar pain.
