I’m going to miss them, and it’s weird, kind of, that I find that comforting, but for so long, I haven’t really missed people. I missed my agents, but I was in such close contact with them that it wasn’t really missing them so much as wishing they were nearby. I missed Aimée, but missing her was caught up in everything else about the murders, tangled and complicated and really not fair to her.
We get the bags checked, and thankfully Mum gets to use the company card for the baggage fees because holy shit, and walk in a mass toward the security line. It’s insane, which isn’t surprising for Reagan midmorning.
“All right, you three,” Eddison says, pulling out his phone and using it to point at me, Inara, and Bliss. “Stand together, give me fuel for my nightmares for years to come.”
Snickering, Inara and Bliss lean into me on either side, our arms wrapped around each other, and smile for the camera. Eddison actually shudders.
“Three of the most dangerous human beings on the planet,” he mutters.
“What am I?” asks Mum.
“Their demonic leader.” But he kisses her cheek.
“We’ll write,” Inara tells me. “We’ll definitely let you know when this one’s parents wear her down.”
“Door’s always open.”
“So’s ours,” Bliss says. “You ever want to come on a holiday, we’ve got a bed for you. We’ll take New York by storm.”
“But will it ever recover?” Mercedes asks with a laugh, wrapping me in a hug from behind.
Goodbyes haven’t been this hard since Boston, but I’m grateful. God, I’m so, so grateful to have people who mean this much to me. Mercedes passes me back to Inara and Bliss for hugs, and they hand me off to Vic. He holds me close for a long moment.
“I am so glad you’re safe,” he whispers, “and that you’re starting to be happy again. You’re one of my own girls, Priya, you know that.”
“I do,” I whisper back, giving him a squeeze. “You’re not rid of us that easy.”
Eddison pulls me a little ways away as Mum gives her round of goodbyes. Inara and Bliss are a little in awe of her, I think, less in the you-make-me-speechless way than “I want to be you when I grow up.” When there’s a good bit of distance between us and the group, he pulls me into a hug. “So this thing that I’ve been very carefully not asking,” he says quietly. “Can you live with it?”
I’ve been thinking about that for weeks, even before my birthday. “Yes, I think I can,” I answer. “Not easily, perhaps, but that might be for the best. And you told the rest of the families; no one has to wonder anymore. I can live with that.” I rest my head against his shoulder, smelling the spicy cologne he uses when he can’t be bothered with aftershave. Or shaving. “Mum and I talked it over, and we’re going to spread Chavi’s ashes. We’re thinking a lavender field, with one of the castles and the river in the background? That should appeal to Chavi. We’re going to make this a good move.”
“Okay.”
I look up at him, and his stubbly cheek scrapes against my forehead as he drops a kiss between my eyes, just above the bindi. It’s only in the past week I’ve started wearing it again, the skin fully healed. “I’m going to miss you, you know?”
“Nonsense,” he says gruffly. “I fully expect Special Agent Ken to be giving regular reports. And, ah . . . you know, I keep accumulating a ridiculous amount of paid time off. Maybe I’ll finally dust some of that off one of these days.”
“There’ll be a room. Always.”
He kisses me again, then releases me with a slight push back to the group. Another round of hugs and goodbyes, and then Mum and I are in the security line. I clutch the folded blanket to my chest, and after fighting with myself for a moment, I look back over my shoulder at them. Inara and Bliss are leaning against Vic, comfortable and casual, and Mercedes is poking a blushing Eddison in the shoulder, the girls egging her on and Vic grinning like a loon as he pretends to be the adult.
The line shuffles forward and I follow, and Mum wraps her arm around my shoulders to bring me in for a kiss on the cheek. “Ready for this, my love?”
“Yeah.” I face forward and take a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
Your name was Jameson Carmichael, and Darla Jean was your everything.
You were just waiting for her to grow up, weren’t you? Old enough to leave your tiny Texas town and never come back, go with you somewhere no one knew you were related so you could start your proper life together. You never told her that, of course. You never thought you needed to.
Darla Jean loved you as her brother but that could never be enough for you.
You’ve punished us all for it over the years, for her perceived sins. So many lives you’ve destroyed, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, cousins and friends, the pain spiraling out to all those touched by us.
My mother gardens, but then, you know that, don’t you? Because you watched us back then, in Boston, and again in San Diego. She plans her gardens, sketching out the beds so she knows what she wants to plant where, and they’re always balanced. Here are the annuals, planted fresh every year. Here are the perennials, blooming and resting and blooming again. With the proper care, they keep living, keep thriving, as others die around them.
I’ve been alive the last five years, resting or hiding or whatever we want to call it. Grieving. Now, I think, finally, I’ll know what it is to bloom again.
And all it took was your blood, warm and heavy and sticky on my hands.
Do you like that, Joshua? That in your own, special way, you might finally be the thing that helps me heal from what you’ve been doing for so long?
The knife tore and ripped each time I pulled it out of you, and I think I understand why you always sliced and slit, never stabbed. Such a terrible sound, and the feeling of the flesh catching on those points. I hope you felt each one. Your favored ones, your good girls, you studied the body to make their deaths as painless as you could, but anatomy was never really my thing. If it had been, maybe I would have realized how easy it is to slam against ribs, the strength it takes to try to drive a knife through bone. Maybe I would have learned how tough muscle is, but how easily the lung gives way to a blade, with a wet, sucking gasp that announces its weakness. Maybe I would have read somewhere that blood is darker closer to the heart, or maybe it only seems that way.
But strangely—or not—I find myself thinking of the roses. You brought so many with you, filling your car. I didn’t realize until I was outside that you had so many more you hadn’t carried in with you. You would have made me a rose bower inside the chapel.
But the roses didn’t fall around me. I bled, true enough, but not enough to fall, to pool. That was you. It was your life painting the white petals, your own little Wonderland garden, and you never expected that your rules could change, be overthrown.
There were things I wanted to ask you, but even at the end, didn’t dare. You could have woken up, after all, could have said something that made it obvious—more obvious—that I knew who you were.
That’s okay, though, because you know what I realized, Joshua, there in the cold and the falling snow and the blood warm and wet and heavy on my clothes just like that long-ago morning with Chavi?
I realized your answers couldn’t matter. It doesn’t really matter why you did it, why you chose them, chose us, chose me. It doesn’t matter how you justify it, because the answers were never going to make sense to anyone else anyway. They were yours. And they were wrong.
They were always, always wrong.
You were one of the sick, terrible things in the world, Joshua, but no more.
My name is Priya Sravasti, and I am no one’s victim.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS