AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Faron had sat silent throughout my story, his expression growing somber as his eyes widened. After I finished, he continued to sit there, drink in hand. He swallowed, hard, and finally said, “I’m so incredibly sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
“There isn’t much you can say. There aren’t any Hallmark cards for ‘Sorry your fiancé was butchered in front of you and you had to watch the rats begin to devour his body.’ ” I stopped, wincing. “I’m sorry again—I’m bitter, I know. I try not to take it out on others, but sometimes it’s so hard.” I flashed back to Rian’s ghostly visit and added, “I’m trying to move on, but it hurts. I know he wants me to live, to grow and thrive, but it feels like I’m leaving him behind.”
“Survivor’s guilt,” Faron said, sliding his hand across the table, palm open and facing up. He waited.
I stared at his fingers, then quietly placed my hand in his. His hands were so large compared to mine. I had long narrow fingers, but his hands were large and callused. I could feel his feral blood beating in his veins. I could almost smell the musky scent that followed him.
“You aren’t leaving him behind,” Faron said. “He’ll always be with you. He’ll always be in your heart. You can’t ever lose the love you had with him. He died. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t yours. You were both in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the only blame there is on the vampire who did this to you.”
“Everybody tells me to get over it, that it’s time to move on…I know, logically, that I can’t let myself get mired but sometimes, the chasm feels so deep that I have to look up to see the bottom.” My voice was thick with tears. “I don’t want to say goodbye, Faron. I don’t want to see him leave my life. His spirit is moving on—he came to me earlier today for the first time and we talked. He’s ready to move on and asked me to let go. But how…”
“How do you do that?” Faron asked. “It’s not easy. It requires sacrifice. Let go because it’s best for them—not for you. You move on because it’s a selfless act and it sets their spirit free. You go through the motions at first, and after a while, the motions become real, and you find yourself invested in life again.”
I caught a glimpse of something in his eyes. Something that told me he understood me on a visceral level. That he’d been through what I was facing.
“What happened to you?” I asked, my voice soft.
“I lost my wife, ten years ago,” he said.
At that moment, the server appeared to take our order.
I let go of his hand and cleared my throat. “I’d like fried calamari for an appetizer, and then the fettucine Alfredo.”
Faron ordered the chicken Parmesan, and for an appetizer, he asked for a tomato-basil salad. “We can share appetizers if you like,” he said.
“That sounds good.”
The waitress took our orders and left us alone. Her interruption had given me enough time to breathe and take a step back so that I wasn’t on the verge of tears.
After she was gone, Faron cleared his throat. “I was married for ten years to a woman named Giada. She was a true Alpha among the women, and we were a power couple. She was far from a trophy wife, though shewasbeautiful. She ran an insurance company. We fell for each other instantly, and our families approved the match. So we married. We wanted kids, we planned on big family get-togethers. She was beloved by the entire Pack.”
“What happened? Do you have any children?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, we thought we had time so we decided to wait to establish a family until we could pay off our debts. We wanted to see the world—to travel back to Italy. Her family was Italian. Mine is British. A month led into a year led into a decade. We bought our dream home, and the Pack was thriving thanks to our leadership.”
“You sound like you were made for each other,” I murmured. “Soulmates?”
“Not exactly, but…yes, we complemented each other. Anyway, we finally decided to start a family and Giada told me she was pregnant. She had this glow to her—she was radiant.”
A light filled his eyes, and though I had never seen her, I could feel how beautiful she had been. I kept quiet, waiting for him to proceed at his own pace.
“It was near Samhain, ten years ago this year. The holiday has always made me nervous. In our Pack, we tend to see it as the time when—if you’re going to die in the next year—the gods mark you on that night. We bought candy for the secular kids for Halloween, and we handed it out. Well, around seven-thirty, the doorbell rang. Giada answered, but there was nobody there, Yet it felt like something had entered the house. Both she and I noticed it.”
“A ghost, perhaps? The spirits walk on Samhain,” I said.
“Yes, they do, but this felt deeper—like something powerful had walked over the threshold. It was as though a shadow had entered our lives. We didn’t talk about it over the next week or so, but in mid-November, Giada had to visit a potential client who lived over on the shores of Lake Crescent.”
Lake Crescent was a lake on Highway 101, near the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Known for swallowing people at will, the lake was dark and deep, and the roads alongside it were dangerous in the autumn and winter months. All it took was one wrong shift of the wheel and the icy depths waited with hunger. There was a creature in the lake, it was reputed, and the Lady of Lake Crescent was a well-known spirit.
A woman had been murdered and dumped in the lake in the late 1930s. She had been reported as missing, but some years later, her body appeared. She’d been saponified—essentially turned into a bar of soap by the chemicals inherent within the lake. Her husband was convicted of murder. Her spirit roamed the shores of the lake, it was thought, and she called people to her when she was lonely.
“Crescent Lake is a wild, dangerous area,” I said.
“It is. And during inclement weather, it’s worse. I begged her not to go. It was too dangerous—the roads are never good that time of year. But if she could contract this client, it would mean a huge coup. She had the chance to earn a five-figure commission and more work, given the scope of the policies he was interested in. So she kissed me goodbye and promised to take it easy. She left the house at eight-ten. I remember glancing at my watch and thinking I was late for work.” His voice was thick now, as he stared into his drink.
I waited, not wanting to hear the end, but he had listened to me, and now I would listen to him. The world was so dark sometimes that all I craved were bright lights and sparkles.
“Two hours later, Kent—the sheriff here before Daisy—showed up on my doorstep with the news. The wind had knocked a tree over onto Highway 101, right around a bend in the road. Giada didn’t know about it, it had just happened, so nobody had a chance to report it and set up roadblocks. She rounded the curve at fifty miles per hour. She saw the tree too late, and in trying to avoid running headlong into it, she put on the brakes and skidded to the side. Her car went through the guard railing, into the lake. She drowned, and our baby with her, too. They found her around half an hour after the accident, from what I gather. In a single moment, I lost my wife, baby, and the future that we had been heading toward.”
