After enduring a check of our vitals and stumbling through our statements, Amelia and I are finally allowed to leave the paramedics’ side. The air is still damp, but the rain has thinned to a drizzle.
Down the cul-de-sac, red and blue lights strobe across the street as officers move in and out of Mom’s house. Here at the Holloways’, Madison is propped on their front steps under a blanket, an oxygen mask loose at her chin. The sight of her out here, free, alive, is difficult to process.
Amelia pulls me into a hug, and I go limp against her.
I almost tell her about Harrison, but when I glance at her pale face, her cheeks stained with mascara after I told her our mother was murdered, I decide that she doesn’t need another blow right now. I’ll tell her about it later, when we can breathe again. For now, all we need is each other.
We always have.
“I want to see if one of these officers will let me use their phone so I can call Wes,” Amelia says softly, swiping her cheek. “Are you gonna be okay for a sec?”
I nod, and she squeezes my hand, heading toward Officer Wright. Only getting a few feet away, she turns back to me.
“I’m so proud of you.”
The words make me inexplicably emotional.
Pride isn’t made for people like me. Not after what I’ve done tonight, not after what happened to Mom. I’m trying not to blame myself but finding it impossible.
What I did to Parker didn’t feel heroic. It felt feral. Like something broke in me that I’ll never be able to put back together.
But all I can do is nod faintly, because if I open my mouth, I might break completely.
I hear wheels skitter down the driveway behind me and turn to see two paramedics carting a body bag out of the Lanes’ house.
Meredith.
When I turn, I catch sight of Rory. He and his parents are talking to a uniformed officer, Harrison nowhere in sight. Figures.
The second Rory’s eyes find mine, he breaks away, coming straight to me.
He wraps me in a hug so tight it almost buckles my knees. It’s exactly what I needed.
“Are you okay?” he murmurs into my hair.
I fall into his warmth, breathing in his familiar smell, grateful to be alive, grateful to be in his arms again.
“I think I will be,” I whisper.
I don’t know how long it will take, how many new nightmares I’ll endure. But I’m determined to find the light. For me. For Mom.
He leans back, eyes sweeping over my tattered appearance. “Madison Tory is outside my house… I thought I was seeing a ghost. They told me everything… and that you saved her?”
“It’s all such a blur right now,” I manage. “I couldn’t have saved her without Amelia, though.”
He brings me close again, planting a peck on my forehead.
Thinking of how wrong I’d been about Rory yesterday, how much I took his kindness for granted, I pull him into a long kiss.
“Can we start over?” I ask.
He laughs lightly, shaking his head at me like I’m ridiculous. And I know I am.
Rory shrugs. “I heard you live in Seattle,” he says. “Maybe I can take you on a date there.”
“I’d love that,” I say softly, burying my face in his chest again.
A voice slices through the air farther up the road toward Mom’s house, an officer yelling, “We got a body! Confirmed DOA.”
Dead on arrival.
I release a heavy sigh, emotions mixing—relief, fury, exhaustion. They’ve found Parker.
Rory wraps his arm around me, anchoring me to the earth. And somehow, as I peer around at the little street I grew up on, the place that raised me and nearly ruined me, now bathed in red and blue strobes, littered with death, I feel something shift inside me. I sense a pulse of something I thought I’d lost: the idea that tomorrow won’t be worse than today.
This season of sinking—its hardship, its haunting—will live in my story.
But I am determined to stay afloat above the wreckage.
