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Face screwing up, a joyless smile ached the corners of my lips. “You think I’m that stupid? That I’ll have a few drinks, a rough day, and it’ll all come tumbling out. I’ll ruin my life, yours, and—” I almost mentioned Sebastian, but only because his involvement was so fresh in my mind. Not because she was right. “I handled it. I’ve handled all of it. I didn’t ask for your help, I didn’t need your help, and I don’t need it now.”

Her frown only deepened. “I don’t think you’re stupid. I’m sorry if it came out that way. I just don’t want you to say or do something you’ll regret.”

No, she didn’t want me to say or do something she would regret.

Shaking my head, I went back to my cocoa. A ladleful into the carafe, followed by another. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. You’re upset, and⁠—”

“No shit, I’m upset.” I dropped the ladle back into the pot. Didn’t faze me when it splashed my hands this time. “Delilah’s dead. My friend is dead.” My voice broke as the tears burned across my eyes. “I’m never going to see her again, and she’s never even going to get justice. It took a barely there cover-up for them to believe she killed herself. So yeah, Simone, I’m upset.”

Nostrils flared, lips quivering, I thrust my hands down at my sides. “I don’t get why that’s so hard for you to wrap your head around. Every damn day, you’re telling me that I need to open up more, that I need to talk about how I feel, and this is how I feel. I’m sad. I’m angry. And I just want to be sad and angry and drunk today. I don’t want to be strong. I’m always strong, and for one day, I don’t want to be. I want to cry. I want to cry with people who miss her too.”

“Then cry, Gwen.”

Rhiannon’s voice came from behind me. As I spun to face her, it felt a lot like looking in a mirror. The whites of her eyes burned bright red. She wore no makeup. The edges of her nostrils chafed, as did the corners of her eyes.

Closer now, she grabbed my tumbler, held it out before me, and lifted another off the stack next to the cocoa. “You don’t have to be strong. You can be sad and angry, and you can cry. Of all the places in the world to fall apart, do it here. We’ll help you put yourself back together.”

Eyes watering, lips quivering, I took the cup. Rhiannon bumped her Styrofoam filled with chocolate against mine. Together, we held our drinks to our lips, and we tossed them back.

A fire burned in the middle of the street.

About two dozen of us sat or stood around it. Faces I recognized, some I’d met in passing, all with tears in their eyes.

Music sounded in the distance. Loud enough that I could make out the words if I listened closely, but too quiet to hold my attention. Snowflakes fluttered from the gray sky, accumulating on my black sweatpants. Much like the snow that’d rested on Delilah’s puffer coat when she showed at my door that day. No different than the snow piling on her picture beside Rhiannon. A quarter inch already lay on the golden frame.

Simone had started to sit beside me, but Junie pulled her to the other side of the fire. There, they sat beside Lori who managed the daycare.

No sign of Lizzie yet, which I was grateful for. Simone had been right earlier, no matter my instinctive, defensive reaction. Lizzie didn’t need to see me like this.

The already hushed crowd quieted when Rhiannon stood. Hands in her hoodie pockets, she gazed into the fire. “Thank you, everybody, for coming. It’s really not much. Not as much as Delilah deserved. But I think all of us who knew her are feeling the ache right now. She was one of those people, you know?”

Rhiannon looked up, eyes shifting over the crowd. “Delilah had a contagious energy about her. After those first few days here, she was always grinning about something. Giggling or shimmying or dancing. Or giving. She liked to give.” Blinking fast, Rhiannon swept a tear away. “At Thanksgiving, she made a pecan pie. We shared it at our table, and my God, it was the best damn pecan pie I’ve had in thirty years.”

Quiet laughs echoed from the crowd.

I remembered that pecan pie. The sweetness of it, the crunch, the hint of vanilla.

“She gave me the recipe.” Rhiannon squatted and grabbed something from beneath the fold-up chair behind her. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I tried making it. Figured it’d be nice to bring here and share with you guys.” She tilted the aluminum tin toward us for a better view. Even if I weren’t drunk, I doubted I could make out the details of it from the distance. “Tastes like shit. I don’t know if I did too much salt, or butter, or hell, I may have forgotten the sugar. But it’s bad. It’s real bad.”

A few more laughs sounded. Even Rhiannon’s as she wiped the corner of her eye again. “I can’t let anybody eat this thing. I was gonna toss it, but then I remembered something. Back when the ranch was a campground, we had this little ritual at the end of each season. All the kids would bring something. Maybe a craft they’d made, maybe a cool stick they found, even a marshmallow for a s’more. Something that reminded them of this place, something they had found here. And on the last night, we’d have a big bonfire. One by one, we’d go around the group, and everyone would tell us a little bit about the item they brought. Why it mattered to them, how it reminded them of the camp, and then they’d toss it in the fire.

“The idea was twofold.” Rhiannon wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve. “The fire brings us together. We sit around it, and we tell stories. We listen to one another, and we connect. And it burns, but it doesn’t destroy. It transforms. Through the time we spend around it. The people who sit beside us. The stories we all tell. It turns an object, like a hunk of wood, or craft, or stick, or marshmallow, into smoke. We all breathe it in. We all let it out, and it floats up into the sky.”

She glanced up. “Into the stars. The same atoms inside of us are inside of them. Those same stars look down at us, and we look up at them, and the stories we tell, the memories we make, we burn them here. All our smoke travels up there, and it tells our stories to the stars.

“Until we join them.” She tossed the pie into the fire. The flames pulsed higher, brighter, warmer. The heat that blasted against my cheeks and knees did nothing to ease the chill that crept up my spine. “If anyone else wants to share a story with the stars, or burn something to send to them, you’re welcome to.”

Junie, who’d cuddled up in her mom’s lap, hopped down. She took a few steps toward the fire. Holding something in her hand, she looked up at Rhiannon. “I can too?”

“You can too, kiddo.” Rhiannon stretched down to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. “Tell the stars whatever story you want.”

Junie stepped a little closer to the fire. She kept looking down at that thing in her hand. “Me and Delilah made friendship bracelets once. We both put a butterfly wing on it. So I made her this.” She lifted the cookie she showed me yesterday—now decorated—but didn’t aim it at anyone in particular. Her gaze fell back to it. “I wanted to give it to her for Christmas. But maybe the smoke can give it to her, instead.”

She dropped the cookie into the fire.

As it went up in flames, the knot in the back of my throat thickened.