The dock was cool beneath her bare feet, the boards still damp with dew.
Tiffany stood at the end of it, watching Lake Minnetonka wake up. The water lay still as glass, catching the first gold of sunrise, reflecting the trees that lined the shore in perfect mirror image. Somewhere across the lake, a loon called—that haunting, lonely sound that meant Minnesota in a way nothing else could.
Two weeks since Sydney. Two weeks since she’d nearly died in a different kind of water—salt and blood and the weight of the harbor trying to drag her under.
Dakota had stayed. Through the surgery, the recovery room, the endless beeping of hospital machines. She’d drifted in and out of consciousness for the first three days, and every time she’d opened her eyes, he’d been there—in the chair by her bed, or standing at the window, or holding her hand while she slept. He’d barely left her side.
After a week, when the doctors finally cleared her to travel, he hadn’t taken her to a hotel. Hadn’t sent her back to whatever safe house the Black Swans might have arranged. Instead, he’d brought her here—to the Silver family home on Lake Minnetonka, where Selah and Chloe were visiting their parents. Where the Jones, Inc., family could keep watch. Where he could stay close.
Take the time you need, he’d said, settling her into the guest room with its view of the lake. Figure out who you want to be next.
She’d looked at him—this man who’d jumped into Sydney Harbour for her, who’d held pressure on her wound while she bled out, who’d said I love you too, Tiffany like he meant it with everything he had.
What if I just want to be myself? she’d whispered. With you?
He’d kissed her forehead, gentle and sure. Then that’s who you’ll be.
Two weeks of healing. Two weeks of learning to be Tiffany again—not Jayden, not Lynx, just herself. Two weeks of Dakota bringing her coffee in the mornings and sitting with her on the dock in the evenings, watching the sun set over the lake. Two weeks of Selah’s quiet kindness and Chloe’s easy laughter, and the slow, steady work of becoming whole.
This water was different. Fresh. Still. Safe.
She touched the locket at her throat—worn silver, warm from her skin. She’d carried it everywhere for three years. Through missions and covers and a thousand hotel rooms where she’d been anyone but herself. Through the turbulent flight where Dakota had held her hand. Through Sydney Harbour, where she’d sunk toward the dark and prayed the most honest prayer of her life.
Save me.
And someone had.
Now she opened the locket with fingers that trembled only slightly. Inside, the tiny compartment held what remained of her sister—fine gray ash, almost nothing. All that was left of Skylar’s laughter, her prayers, her fierce belief that God was good even when the cancer was eating her alive.
“I’ve been carrying you for so long,” Tiffany whispered. Her voice sounded strange in the morning stillness—raw, real, unpracticed. “Everywhere I went, you came with me.”
The lake lapped gently against the dock pilings. A cardinal sang from somewhere in the trees behind her.
“I thought if I let you go, I’d lose you.” She touched the ash with one fingertip—so light, so impossibly light. “But you’re not in here. You never were.”
Skylar was in the worn Bible waiting on the Adirondack chair up on the lawn. In the verses she’d underlined with yellow highlighter, the prayers she’d scribbled in the margins. In the faith she’d clung to even at the end, when she was too weak to hold the book herself and Tiffany had held it for her.
“He will take great delight in you.”
Tiffany looked up at the sky—pale blue, streaked with gold, impossibly peaceful.
“Rest now,” she said softly. “I’ll see you again someday.”
She tipped the locket over the water.
The ashes fell like dust motes, catching the early light before they touched the surface. They dispersed slowly, spreading in soft gray spirals, and then the lake accepted them and they were gone.
Tiffany stood there for a long moment, tears slipping down her cheeks, the empty locket warm in her palm. She didn’t wipe the tears away. Didn’t try to stop them.
They were real. She was real. And that was enough.
She closed the locket and let it fall back against her collarbone. It felt lighter now—but not emptier. Just . . . different.
She was still wearing it when she turned and walked back up the lawn toward the house. She would always wear it.
Some things you carried forever. You just learned to carry them differently.
The Adirondack chair was warm with morning sun, the grass soft beneath her bare feet.
