His eyes widen, but he just nods, taking the urn out of my hands and holding it tightly, like something precious that he’s afraid to drop. I bend down, unlacing my boots, and I hear Jaxon make a sound of alarm behind me.
“Athena, what are you doing? You’re not going to walk into the water—it’s freezing cold. You’ll catch pneumonia—”
“That won’t be the worst thing that’s happened to me the last few weeks,” I tell him dryly, still unlacing them. I know it’s not the smartest idea in the world, but I want to feel the water on my feet, the way I had in my dream. I want to feel everything.
The sand is cold between my toes as I take the urn back from him, and I stride forward, into the lapping waves surging up onto the sand. I gasp when the water touches my bare feet, the cold sucking all of the air out of me, but I keep going forward, until the water is swirling around my calves, and I close my eyes.
Athena. Athena!
I can almost hear my mother calling out to me, the way she did in my dream, and I try to call that memory back to myself, the way she’d picked my child self up, swinging me up into her arms and holding me tightly. Protecting me. Keeping me safe.
I wish more than anything that I could go back to the time when I believed that would never change.
Slowly, I take the lid off of the urn, tossing it aside. I don’t care what happens to it, I’m not taking it back with me. It means nothing to me—just what’s inside of it.
I tilt it, letting the ashes run out over my fingers, just like the grave dirt had not that long ago. The wind catches them as they pour into my palm, blowing them out across the water, and I feel tears rise in my throat hot and thick, and spill out over my cheeks.
“I love you, mom,” I whisper, my voice broken as I watch all that’s left of her float away, scattered across the water. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry it wasn’t enough.”
That’s why I’d agreed to all of it in the first place, anyway. To protect her. I hadn’t cared about myself.
But that’s all I have left now. Just myself, and the three men who have decided to ally themselves with me. I can’t live for anyone else now. And if there’s anything I’ve learned from all of this, it’s that I’m not the kind of girl to just lay down and die.
“You named me after a goddess,” I whisper, watching the last of the ashes float out and blow away. “I’ll try to live up to it.”
And then, when there’s nothing left inside, I let the urn fall out of my hands, splashing into the water as I look out across the seemingly endless stretch of rippling black waves, tears running down my face silently. I don’t cry aloud, I just stand there, my hands at my sides as I look out over the water and let the tears come, until I hear the splash of boots in water and I feel Jaxon’s hand at my back.
“You can’t stay out here forever,” he says gently. “You really will get sick.”
“She’s gone,” I whisper, the words coming out choked and broken. “She’s really gone.”
“You still have things to hold onto.” Jaxon presses his lips against my hair, his arm sliding around my waist. “You know that. It’s not enough, I know. But not everything is gone.”
“I know.” I turn then, pressing my face against his chest. “I didn’t think this would happen. I really didn’t—” My shoulders start to tremble. “I don’t want to think about how she died—”
“Don’t.” Jaxon’s voice is firm, almost rough. He reaches for my shoulders, pushing me back a little so that I can see his face. “Don’t do that to yourself, Athena. Take it from me, you don’t want to go down that road. You came out here to honor her, to remember good things, to give her a peaceful and fitting burial. To leave her in the place where you were both happiest. Don’t leave bad memories here. Only good ones.” He leans forward, kissing my forehead as he squeezes my shoulders, bringing me back to the here and now with the pressure of his hands. “Tell me about them.”
So I do. I let Jaxon lead me back up out of the water to the beach, and I put my boots back on so that my feet don’t freeze. He pulls me down onto the sand next to him, and we sit there, looking out across the water as I tell him the things I remember. I tell him about picnics on the beach just her and I, about swimming in the summer and walking out here bundled up in the cold like tonight. I tell him about sunshine and salt, about her vanilla perfume, about sandcastles and games of tic tac toe drawn in the sand, and he sits there and listens. I wouldn’t have imagined Jaxon to be a man who would sit and listen to childhood stories of cupcakes and sandcastles, but he does, every word. He listens to all of it, and when I finally go silent, with nothing left to say, he reaches out to take my hand.
“There,” he says quietly. “Now they’re all here. All of those memories, here on this beach like the ashes. And if you miss her, and you need to remember, you can come back here.”
I nod quietly, leaning against his shoulder, feeling tired and drained. “Do you want to talk about Natalie?” I ask softly, and he goes very still, silent for a few moments.
“Not now,” he says finally. “Maybe some other time. It might be good for me to—to share it, if you’re willing to listen. But not here. Not now.”
“Okay.” I close my eyes, willing myself to think only of the good, and not of the things that hurt. Not the things that make me cringe and shudder and want to scream. Only the good. So that I never come back here and think of anything else.
It feels like we sit out on the beach for a very long time. Finally, we gather ourselves and head back to where we left the bike, and Jaxon shrugs his jacket back on before donning his helmet and firing up the engine. “You ready to go back?” he asks, and I nod wordlessly.
I’m not sure that I’m ready, really. But I know that it’s time.
The ride back is sobering. The sense of adventure and purpose is gone, replaced with a reminder that tomorrow I’ll wake up, and my mother will still be gone, and I’ll still be living in a town where there’s those who want to see me dead too, with only myself and the three boys I’m living with as a bulwark between me and them.
Jaxon parks the bike and follows me inside, and we both immediately hear the sound of voices coming from the living room. The moment the front door shuts, they go quiet, and barely a second later Cayde appears in the doorway to the living room, his face grim.
“Both of you, in here, now.”
I blink at him, instantly feeling the hot flush of rebellion. “I’m tired,” I tell him curtly. “I was going to head up and go to bed—”