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In fact, I’m quite certain I’ve never stopped.
“Wait,” she says. “You promised we’d watch the sunset.”
“I can multitask.” She laughs, batting my hands away from her breasts, and then saunters outside knowing I’ll follow her.
We make our way across the overgrown field, now free of vines and trellises, to our favorite hill. Someday soon there’ll be live horses out here among the dead ones.
We sit in the grass. Mariah leans into me, and I hold her to my chest. After a short while, she says, “I’m going to say hi.”
“Go on,” I tell her. “I’ll join you in a minute.”
She walks over to where the horses are grazing. They look up, and a couple even flick their tails at her approach. They know us now. I dare say a few even missed us while we were away.
Isabella appears on the edge of the field, like an eraser acting in reverse, becoming more and more solid with every step. Mariah smiles, happy to see her. They walk together and talk. As I watch them, I find myself thinking about how far we’ve all come.
I feel Katherine’s presence manifest in the grass beside me.
“I suppose I owe you an apology,” she says. “Though, to be fair, what I saw did come to pass. I just didn’t see that it was Edward who’d bitten her.”
“Is that part of your apology? Because it sucks.”
She shoots me a look that saysdon’t push it.
Isabella climbs onto a horse and trots circles around her daughter. Mariah laughs, spinning in place. I’m sure she’s tempted to project herself into the twilight realm so she can ride, too, but then she’d have to miss out on the sunset.
“I am sorry, William,” Katherine says. “I was wrong about you.”
“Apology accepted.”
“That’s it?” Katherine scoffs. “No wise cracks or subtle digs? I’ve waited a year to say that to you. You’ve made it too damn easy.”
“Life’s too short to hold grudges, Katherine.”
“Says the man who’s going to live forever.”
“I doubt I’ll live forever,” I say with a smile. “But watching the woman you love bleed to death puts a lot of things in perspective.”
I get up and join Mariah and her mother just as the show’s about to begin. Wrapping my arm around Mariah’s waist, I turn her in the direction of the setting sun.
The sky catches fire. Clouds glow like cinders, burning orange and magenta. Mariah melts against me, and I hold her up.
I willalwayshold her up.
Long after the fire in the sky burns out, and the darkness comes to claim us.
