I poured water from my pitcher into my stoppered sink, hurriedly brushing my teeth and hair. After pulling on some jeans, a hoodie, and my customary bandanna around my neck, I left my room.
In the hallway, I slowed. Jackson was sitting at the top of the stairs, opening his flask. He didn’t look like he’d slept, still had his crossbow slung over his back, his own bandanna smeared with soot.
I frowned when he closed the flask without taking a drink. He just stared at it in his hands.
Uneasiness settled over me, as if I were an animal sensing a storm. Pressure. Danger coming.
“Evangeline, your mère’s gone.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Leave it to a cretin like you to joke about something like that.”
“She passed away in the night.”
Even as it felt like a vise was grinding closed over my chest, I snapped, “That’s not funny! God, you haven’t changed a bit!”
“She’s passed on,” he murmured again.
“No.” Dread grew as I studied his tired face. “You’re lying.” I pointed my finger at him. “No!”
He just stared at me. As the world began to spin, I bolted down the hall, clamping onto her room’s doorjamb as I careened inside.
One look and I knew she was gone. Her face was truly peaceful. For the first time since the Flash.
Some wretched sound slipped past my lips. She’s gone. My mother is . . .
Gone.
In a daze, I stepped closer to the bed, realizing that she clutched a picture in one ghostly white hand.
I remembered the photo. It was of her, me, and Gran in front of Haven one Easter. I was standing between them, proudly displaying a basket full of eggs. The azaleas had been in bloom, dazzlingly bold in color. The air had smelled of new cane, gardenias, and a distant high tide.
Now, as I’d done a thousand times before, I sat beside Mom on her bed to talk. “You wouldn’t do this.” I barely recognized my voice. “You wouldn’t leave me alone like this.”
When she didn’t answer, a sob broke free, then another. I collapsed over her, resting my face against her chest.
It was quiet. Still.
Tears dropped, soaking the collar of her nightgown. “Come back, Mama,” I whispered, praying that I’d hear a heartbeat stutter to life or feel her take a breath.
Still.
“We need to go,” Jackson said from behind me.
Leave my mother?
“Evie, there’s no reason for you to stay now.”
I rose unsteadily, narrowing my blurry gaze at him. “She was getting better. And then you show up, and you want us to leave. . . .” Wiping my eyes, I demanded, “What did you do to her?”
He said nothing, his expression shuttered.
“What did you do?” I flew at him, pummeling his chest.
“I didn’t do anything!” He just stood there, letting me hit him. “I came in this morning, and she was like this.” Finally he caught my wrists. “She’d injured something inside her.”
We’d suspected that, but . . . “How could you know that?”
“You think I ain’t been kicked in the ribs enough to know an internal injury? Crawling to a hospital on Sunday mornings, me?”
“B-but she was recovering! And now . . . now she’s . . . d-dead.” I sobbed that word.
“She’s been dying for days. And she knew it! She was asking promises of me last night for a reason.”
Some distant, rational part of me knew that he was right. Her injury couldn’t possibly have gotten worse. I recalled the what-if questions. She’d tried so hard to get Jackson to like me—to want to take care of me. And she’d asked promises of me as well.
Because she’d known she was running out of time.
With no one to blame, my rage abandoned me. My legs gave way, and I slumped to the floor.
Jackson just . . . stared at me, as if he’d never seen grief. Instead of comforting me, he said, “You’re leaving here with me in the next ten minutes.” Then he strode to Mom’s jewelry armoire and started shoving jewels into his pockets.
My mother lay dead, and he was ransacking her belongings. “What is wrong with you?” I cried. “Show some respect!”
He turned on me, yanking me to my feet. “I intend to. By saving her daughter’s ass. We’re goan to need things to trade. You just let me be the bad guy that rifles through the dead woman’s jewels, yeah? I’ll get my hands dirty, so you woan have to.” He dragged me into my room, scanning the area. “Damn it, Evie! You didn’t pack?”
I hadn’t been about to pack for me but not for Mom, and I hadn’t wanted to wake her.
Had she already been dead?
He stormed into my closet, hauling a suitcase out. “Clothes in here. Now!”
“I c-can’t leave Mom like that! We have to b-bury her.”
He scowled as if I’d said something absurd. Then he went to work on my own jewels, filching heirloom brooches and pearls. “You got anything else of value in this house?”
Confusion. “I-I don’t . . .”
“Gold bars, windup timepieces, any guns I didn’t see last night?”
I could only stare at him.
Cursing me in French, he yanked a clothes drawer out, dumping its contents into my bag before seizing another drawer.
Wordlessly, I watched him fill my suitcase, then force it shut.
Bag in one hand, my upper arm in his other, he started hauling me down the steps.
But he didn’t understand. I’d never leave my mother as she was. “Help me with her, Jackson.”
“We doan have time to do right by her. I got other things I have to take care of.”
“Please, Jack.”
“Those men are coming. As soon as the winds die, you’ll hear the scouts fire guns into the air, and then the whole damned army’ll start grinding forward. They’ll take you, and there woan be a damn thing I can do about it.”
At the foot of the stairs, I thrashed against him. “I’m not leaving her here like this! Especially not if they’re as evil as you say.”
His eyes darted. “You’ll go with me if I bury her?”
When I nodded, he jerked his bandanna up over his mouth and nose, yanked the bracing off the front door, then plunged into the windstorm.
As he raced toward the barn, I followed dumbly, covering my own face.
He emerged with a shovel, and I thought he would dig right there, but he found a spot beneath the windmill, where Gran’s rose garden had once been.
After removing his crossbow, he stabbed that shovel into the earth. Ash erupted, swirling in the winds.
As he dug deeper, he railed at me in French, telling me that I was more trouble than I was worth, that we didn’t have the luxury of burying loved ones, that if I didn’t get stronger I wouldn’t survive out there.
Feeling as disconnected from reality as I had during those last days of school, I sank down, nodding vacantly while he cursed me and shoveled.
Soon his forehead was beading with sweat, dripping down to wet the cloth over his face. Just as I wondered if his hands were getting blistered from the gritty shovel handle, he adjusted his grip.
Bloody palm prints now stained the wood. Had his new blisters given way?
“This is the stupidest coo-yôn move I’ve ever made.” He seemed driven, crazed to get this done. He increased his pace until blood ran freely down the handle.
Yet then . . . the winds died down.
“What’s so special about it?”
“It’ll take a ladder to reach the inside, and there’s only one way in or out. Safe as a drum. Good money says there’ll be canned food in the galley.”
In minutes, we’d found a ladder and were climbing to the ship. He grabbed my arm, hauling me aboard, then dragged the ladder up behind us.
As we stole across the deck, old shrimp, crab, and oyster shells crackled beneath our boots, but the sound seemed to please Jackson.
Inside, there was a spacious captain’s cabin, and three smaller cabins with bunk beds already made up. At least we wouldn’t have to sleep in the same room.