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“Yes, it does.” I try not to get choked up at the idea of that someone not being my parents.
I fail.
Just when I finally feel like I’ve got a hold of myself, the rug is being pulled out from under me.
Dad opens his arms. I fall into him, just like when I was a little kid. I breathe in deep, savouring that sawdust and pine scent that’s uniquely Dad.
I let a tear fall onto his collar.
“Oh, Bree-bug.” Dad pats my hair. “It’s totally okay to be sad when our time with the house comes to an end, but this is a new chapter in our lives. Grimwood will go on without us, and we will go on without her, and everything will work out for the best, I promise.”
“Okay.”
I don’t want to lose Grimwood. But Dad’s right – barring some kind of lottery win, we don’t have the money to keep this place running, and I’ve seen him struggle to do things with his hands, like hold nails. Jobs that used to take him five minutes now take half an hour, and Mum’s already run off her feet – she can’t pick up any slack. There will come a time when it’s just too much for them, and they need to move on before then, or they will end up hating this place, and that would be worse.
I’m not a kid anymore. I can handle hard truths.
I hold my father and squeeze him hard, as if my hugs have the same healing powers that his once did when I was a kid. As if I can hold him tight enough and love him hard enough that I can cure his Parkinson’s.
Over his shoulder, I see Pax at the end of the hallway, watching us. His jaw tightens, and he peers from me to my father and back again. His blue eyes widen with a look of utter delight, and my stomach sinks into my toes.
Why does Pax have a look on his face like he’s planning something?
Should I be worried?
31
Edward
BANG BANG BANG
“Edward, wake up, or by the gods, I will sculpt your eyeballs into delicious truffles, like the ones on Bake-Off last night.”
I bolt upright. I’ve heard all manner of threats over my many centuries of maudlin existence, but the Roman has a certain poetic elegance that cannot be denied. ”You may enter.”
Pax thumps the door again, before realising it’s not locked and stumbling through. (I don’t have the dexterity to lock my own boudoir, oh the humanity of it.) His cheeks are ruddy and one of his Roman sandals has slid off his foot, hanging on to his ankle by a thin leather strap. Pax skids to the edge of my bed and glares down at me, hands on his hips.
“Pax, what are you doing in my boudoir?”
He starts at my appearance. “You are still a ghost.”
“My, we are intelligent.”
“From the way Bree and Ambrose were jumping around last night, I felt certain you would be human by now.”
I felt certain too, for a moment there. But my hope is forlorn. I should know that by now. The only thing that got me through the night is immersing myself in the memories I saw when I was inside Brianna. The secret thoughts she let me see are enough to keep my from losing myself utterly to desolation.
And now there is a Roman disgracing my boudoir. How has my afterlife come to this?
“It’s a good thing I’m not, because if you were I would have run you through the moment you burst into my private chambers. What do youwant, Pax?”
I want Pax to go away. I want to wallow in my own misery and reread Hugh’s letter over and over until the words are etched into my soul. I want to stamp down the wretched hope that surged through me when Brianna first handed it over and said that it could turn me Living.
Not only am I still a ghost, but I’m amurderedghost.
I’m a walking cliche.
And I still have no clue what unfinished business I could have.
