Page 67 of The Dearly Departed

I hadn't heard the door open, hadn’t heard the footsteps of someone approaching.

I turned quickly, blocking her view of my face as I muttered with a lie, "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

I shook my head, casting her concerns away. "Really, I'm okay. I … I had too much to drink," I lied again. "It’s been a long night."

"I wasn’t even aware anyone was still here. I thought the festivities ended a while ago," she murmured, her tone leaning toward sardonic. "Can I get you something for your stomach? Pepto maybe?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, before adding, “Thank you though.”

She hummed a slight acknowledging noise, then said, “You were upset about that old man before. The one in the library."

I took a few deep breaths, quelling the brutal contractions of my stomach a bit, and I managed to stand, pulling the sweatshirt's hood up to cover my hair, but I didn't turn to face her.

"Yes."

"Did you know him?"

I didn't say yes or no. I couldn’t. If she learned his name, if she already knew it, she could easily track him back to the funeral home and then find me.

I couldn’t leave such a risk up to chance, so instead, I replied, "He had no place being here."

Why were you here?

I wished I could go home and ask him. I wished I could bang on his bedroom door angrily until he opened it and gave me the answers I needed in order to put my mind at ease. But what was the point in wishing for something that could never be?

It was as pointless as hoping there could be something more between me and this rare, exquisite gem of a woman, who, for some reason, couldn’t leave me to purge in peace.

"And what about you?" she asked, her voice light and gentle, the sound resting weightlessly against my heavy soul, like a soothing balm.

"What about me?" I replied, longing for a life in which I could allow her or anyone to heal me.

"Do you have a place here?"

I swallowed against another bout of nausea, knowing damn well there was unlikely a chance for me to be healed in this life or any hereafter, then quickly answered, "I didn't think so."

In that moment, I decided I wouldn’t give her the opportunity to continue this conversation, and I wouldn’t give myself the opportunity to believe I was worthy of being in her presence.

I opened the driver's door to find the keys sitting on the seat.

Dean is certainly efficient, I thought as I snatched my mask from off the stone driveway, tossed it into the car, and climbed in behind the wheel.

Then, before I closed the door, before I could drive away and put an end to this hellish night, I murmured, "Goodbye, Analise."

And I didn't dare look back as I sped away from Seint Manor in Hollow Cove, hoping I'd never have to venture between its walls again, while knowing damn well how dangerous hope could be.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

How can everything look the same when everything in my life, as I know it, is different?

It was all I could think about as I drove back to the funeral home in the five-a.m. gloom, in that hour right before the world began to wake up, and the thought filled me with such an overflowing cocktail of rage and sadness that I could barely concentrate on the road ahead.

I longed for the drive to go by quicker. I considered stepping on the gas and speeding my way home, but that would also mean facing what awaited me beyond the door that much faster.

The hollowness of knowing Leonard would never return alive.

The faces of my brothers when I eventually told them what had happened.