I step over the words to stand a breath’s distance from him. I look up into his eyes, which are dark and sad and hopeful. “It’s going to work,” I say softly. I cup my hand around his cheek. “It’s going to work.”
He leans forward to push my hair back. Runs his fingertip along the curve of my ugly ear, and I stiffen when his fingers reach it. “Why do you hide it?” he asks. “That cute little bump on your ear?”
I nuzzle his chin up with my nose and kiss just where his neck meets the place I love most on his jaw. He flushes and pulls me close to him, tilting his mouth toward mine, when we suddenly hear a dry twig cracking underfoot and jump apart at the sound.
“Aww—” Beas beams at us, drawing Thom’s arm tighter around her waist. His other arm is sheltering a small steel box against his rib cage. “Oh, don’t stop!” Beas cries, clapping. “I’ve been waiting for this for ages.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, smoothing my hair as my face flames. I step forward to take the box from Thom.
“Mmhmm.” Beas grins, picking up a shovel.
Heaviness settles back around us, and the mood dims with the weight of what we’re about to do. The four of us turn our attention to digging a grave. We pick a spot right next to the bench, where we can cover the disturbed earth and eventually hide it under a newly planted garden. We dig deep, deeper than any of the other boxes were hidden, deep enough to make sure that what we bury can never be found. Finally, when my arms and legs are aching and the first glimpse of dawn is warming the horizon, a hint of worry begins to creep in.
I straighten. “Shouldn’t George and Eliza be back by now?”
“Yes,” Thom agrees.
My stomach twists, and I fish out my Star. “Do you think something happened? Should we go after them?”
“Wait.” Beas freezes and points to a distant bend in the road. “There’s someone coming.”
We grab our weapons and fold together into a line, points extended.
“Thanks for the welcoming party,” George’s voice calls out through the darkness, and I almost collapse from relief. “I know Eliza looks frightening, but she’s really all bark and no bi—?Oof,” he says, as she clubs him in the stomach with her elbow. He doubles over, and she strides forward with the final box, one that’s barely larger than her hand.
I take it from her and align it with the others. When George catches up, he immediately sets to work, arranging the bones inside Will’s makeshift coffin with a scientific intensity. We form a protective circle around him, facing outward. When he’s finally finished, he stands and brushes off his hands.
“As far as I can tell, they’re all here,” he says. “I think we’re ready.”
We turn toward the deep pit we’ve formed in the earth, and the air grows still.
“So, uh,” Thom says. He clasps his hands in front of him. “Should we say something?”
“How about ‘Excuse me, Bard,’” Eliza says. “‘We gave you your peace back, now please return ours?’”
Beas steps forward. Puts her hand over her heart and gestures for all of us to do the same. Then she murmurs solemnly, “Mr. Shakespeare: ‘May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’”
They all look to me, and I unclasp the Stone from where it has become so familiar around my neck. I hesitate. It pools in my hand like water.
I don’t think Mother ever knew this Stone was anything more than a pretty trinket. She died without realizing how much damage it had done, how many seeds of resentment it had sown, how much it had protected her all her life.
I wish I could tell Stefen that she tried to send it to him. That she’d wanted to put things right between them and had died before she could. That taking it off when he asked for it might even have been what killed her.
I run my fingers over its smooth glass one more time. This last physical piece of my mother.
Then I return the Helena Stone at last to its rightful owner. I drop it into the coffin and turn away as Will secures the final screws to seal the bones together, never to be separated again.
Will and Thom jump down into the depths of the pit and lower the casket in stages. We help pull them back up out of the grave, and then, with long, shaky breaths, we each take a shovel.
The earliest rays of dawn begin to heat the horizon as my first clump of dirt hits the coffin.
The second shovelful hits.
The third.
And then something knocks into me as strong as a wave.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
