Noon, Reznik said. I've got hours. Enough to drive north and walk into that camp at the appointed hour with my hands open and my heart already given away.
I'm sorry,I think to her.I love you, and I'm so sorry.
I put the car in gear and I drive north, toward the mountains and Reznik, toward the place where it started and the place where it ends.
I don't look back.
34
CAROLINE
I wake up happy.
That's the part I'll remember later, when I'm trying to make sense of this day. I wake up happy, for the first time in I don't know how long, because last night, after talking to Cass, I went to find Afon with my whole speech ready.
But I couldn't find him. The woman in gray said he was with Lukas and they should probably not be disturbed. So I went back to bed and figured I'd say it in the morning.
Today. The day of the wedding.
But as it turns out, I'm not going to get that chance.
Because when I roll over to stretch, my hand brushes something on the pillow.
Two somethings, actually.
I sit up. The room is gray with early light, the curtains glowing at the edges. The ivory dress hangs on the closet door like a ghost.
On the pillow next to where my head was, there's a ring. And a folded piece of plastic.
I pick up the ring first.
I recognize it instantly. It's the bronze band. Afon's ring. The one he's worn for twenty years. It's still warm.
My stomach drops. Slow at first, then all at once, like an elevator with a cut cable.
I unfold the paper with shaking fingers.
It's a granola bar wrapper.
Just a granola bar wrapper, the foil smoothed flat and folded into careful quarters, the kind of thing you'd find in the bottom of a backpack. And I know, the second I look at it, where it came from.
It's mine. The wrapper from the granola bar I ate the morning that Afon dumped me at the bus station in Pike Hollow.
He kept it.
He kept a piece of garbage I threw away, smoothed it flat, folded it, and carried it like a soldier wearing a locket in the war trenches.
For a long, dumb minute, I just sit there, holding the ring in one hand and the wrapper in the other, and I think,He left them for me. He took the ring off. He's ready.
And the happiness lasts about another half a second.
Because then the rest of it lands.
He took the ring off. He left it on my pillow with the most precious thing he owns. He didn't wake me and say anything to me—he did it in the dark, while I was asleep, without a word.
You don't take off a ring you've worn for twenty years and leave it on a woman's pillow because you're excited to marry her at noon.
You do it because you don't think you'llbethere at noon.
