Page 147 of Shatter

He makes a small, broken sound.

I kiss them again, and again.

Then I lay my cheek against his forearm, right over his sister's name, and hold on.

He doesn't say anything else, and he doesn't need to.

He pulls me in tight, his lips pressed to my hair, and I feel his chest hitch once, twice, under my ear.

I hold him while he cries.

I think it might be the first time in twenty years.

The lamp burns low while the fan ticks around.

And somewhere over the pines, the sky opens up.

Outside, the rain starts, and for the first time in my life, I'm exactly where I want to be.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Hakon

It rains the day we bury her brother.

Warm rain, Florida rain, coming down straight and steady out of a low gray sky onto the cemetery on Old Bainbridge Road.

The grave sits under a live oak so old its lower branches rest on the ground, hung with Spanish moss dripping on everybody's shoulders.

The entire club is here.

Every patch, every prospect, the ol' ladies in black dresses and borrowed umbrellas, Aziza with her arm hooked through Vail's.

Tindra's holding Sigurd, asleep in a sling against her chest.

Forty bikes are lined up along the cemetery road behind us, chrome beaded with rain.

Nobody from Seattle came.

Anni stands at the edge of the grave in a black dress Tindra lent her, a size too long, the hem dark and wet from the grass.

She hasn't cried today.

Two days straight after Apalachicola, she cried, great tearing sobs in the dark shaking the bed, and then on the third morning, she stopped.

She hasn't said much since.

Her hand is in mine.

Her fingers are cold, even in the heat, and I hold them tight enough she'll know I'm here.

The preacher is a friend of Aesir's, an old man with a gravel voice who didn't ask any questions.

He reads something from a worn black book.

I don't hear the words, because I'm watching her face.

In her other hand, she's holding Pierce's phone.