“When did this turn into a therapy session?”
“When you tried to make it about me.”
I frown. “What do you think Rose is having?” I blurt, the question coming from leftfield. “Could you imagine twins?”
He laughs, jolting me, and then stops abruptly. “No. I think one baby will cause enough stress, don’t you?”
“Boy or girl?” I can’t explain my curiosity. Part of me wonders is it’s something innate that’s guiding me. A maternal instinct that’s been unearthed and needs sating. Rose is my only outlet. Until, perhaps, she’s not. We’re nearly twelve hours into today and my period hasn’t come. Will it? A weird flutter happens in my stomach, and I smile to myself.
“Boy,” Fury says, disturbing my thoughts.
“Do you? Why?”
“I don’t know, Beau,” he says, exasperated. “I just do.” He rises to his full, towering height and turns toward the sound of a car coming down the track. “They’re here.”
“They?” I ask, pushing my palms into his back and craning my neck, blowing the hair out of my face. “James and who?”
“Brad.” He finally bends and lowers me to my feet, and my stomach flips as a result. “Do not move.”
“Where will I go?” I ask, helping myself to my gun from his hold and slipping it into the back of my sweatpants. It’s disconcerting that he knows me so well. “It was nice getting to know you.” I smile sweetly at Fury, and he bumps me lightly in the bicep with one of his boulder fists.
“I’d say the same, but I already knew you.”
“Smart-ass,” I mutter, going toward the Mercedes that’s driving with a bit too much urgency for my liking. What the hell is going on? We’ve been back in Miami mere hours. What could have happened already?
The car skids to a stop and both Brad and James dive out, both looking at my composed form with a mixture of concern and hesitance. “What?” I ask. “Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on? I just want to visit my mother’s gra—” I suck back air, homing in on James’s face. I hate his grieved expression. Hate it. Fury stopped me going to my mother’s grave. Why?
Panic crawls into my throat and clogs it. I can see James’s intention to get to me. To stop me. Can feel Fury behind me moving in, ready to grab me.
No.
I kick my flip-flops off and bolt to my right, the nastiest feeling rooting itself deep in my gut, speaking to me, telling me to get to Mom.
“Beau!” James yells. “For fuck’s sake, Beau, stop!” His boots hitting the ground behind me shake the earth, his bellows constant, begging for me to stop. I make it to the gate, and it takes me way too long fiddling with the latch to release it.
“Come on!” I shout, yanking at the stupid old, rusty thing. It doesn’t want me to go and farther either. I don’t listen. “Open!”
“Beau!”
I look back, seeing James getting closer, his tall, powerful body sprinting, his face straining. I have seconds. Maybe three. I give up on the latch and take hold of the iron gate, getting some leverage and throwing my legs over.
“God damn it, Beau, please!”
I feel his hand brush my arm as I break out into a sprint across the uneven grass, taking the shortcut across the graveyard, right over the graves and mounds, rather than wasting time circling the edge. I can’t hear him coming anymore. Can’t hear his yells or feel the impact of his boots hitting the ground. But I keep going, trying to focus on the far corner where what remained of Mom rests, but being unable to because of my jumping vision. I look back. James has stopped chasing me. He’s just past the gate, and I slow when I register the look of defeat and absolute agony on his face.
Because he can see what my eyes are failing to let me see. Because he’s standing still. Steady.
I breathe in and turn toward Mom’s grave, breathless, sweating, my muscles aching. Something’s different, the shape, the layout, there’s something not right. And then I realize.
“No,” I breathe, stepping forward, my eyes unable to comprehend what they’re looking at. A pile of dirt. A pile of dirt by Mom’s grave. I shake my head, refusing to believe it, as I walk forward, my stare unmoving, until I see a hole in the ground. “No.” It gets bigger as I get closer, deeper, until I’m standing on the edge looking into a dark, black pit of nothing.
It's exactly how my soul feels now. “No!” I scream, dropping to my knees, my palms slapping the ground hard. Fat teardrops fall, drenching the mud, my hair sticking to my face, my heart cracking. “Why?” I screech, throwing my head back, screaming to the sky. “Why, why, why, why!”
I suddenly can’t move, can’t breathe, as James seizes me in his arms and hauls me up, and I fight him with all I have. Problem is, I have nothing in this moment. Empty. Broken. Back to square one. My sanctuary has been destroyed. My calm place robbed from me. It was the only thing I had. Mom never wanted to be cremated, so I buried what was left of her. A few ashes and her invisible spirit.
I want to crawl into that hole and die.
I’m carried to the car and James slides onto the back seat with me cradled in his lap, holding me tightly, never letting me go.