“So he’s—I mean, is he…” I can’t say the word. It’s too final.
Augustus seems to hear it anyway. “Death may not be the right word for what he has become. The wood will have embraced him. His life force will have seeped into it, becoming a part of it. He is the wood, now. He is all around you when you are in here, just not as you remember him. But he can never be returned to you. He is gone, my dear.”
I inhale, and it feels like the first breath I have truly taken in twenty months. It isn’t the answer I was hoping for, and I know a part of me will always be looking for Dad to appear outside our threshold through the kitchen windows, but to not have to wonder all the time about what happened to him, where he is, if he needs me to find him, is freeing in its own horrible way.
“Thank you,” I say. “I know I can’t get him back but … it helps. To know he’s still out here, in some way. Maybe even watching over me.”
Augustus squeezes my shoulder. “He is; I guarantee that.”
Henry wraps me in his arms. Whispers, “I wanted to find him for you.”
“I know.” I stand there a moment longer, breathing him in, memorizing his scent, the feeling of his shirt against my cheek. Then I force myself to take a step back, because if I don’t do it now, I may never be able to. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
“And you, as well.”
I nod. I begin to turn away from him, but he takes my face in his hands and kisses me. It’s a soft kiss, and I want to melt into it, to keep him here, but his father clears his throat and Henry pulls away from me. We stare at each other a moment longer, hoping this moment will last us a lifetime.
Turning away from him is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Walking away from him would be even worse, except I see Mom on the back porch. She gives me the strength to step forward.
My toes hesitate on the edge of the threshold. I glance over my shoulder. “Are you sure you’ll make it—”
But they’re already gone, and now that the Old Ones are working on ridding the wood of dragon’s bane once more, I have to believe they’ll be safe from anything still lurking in the darkness. And yet …
Dad?
Deep inside my heart, I hear him say, Yeah, munchkin? And I don’t know if it’s real, but I want to believe it is.
Watch over them, I think. Keep them safe.
XLV
I tell Mom everything, not that she gives me much choice. I tell her about Henry, and his parents, and that I think I heard Dad’s voice telling me to hold on while the Sentinels tried to kill me. But telling her about Joe is the hardest part. How do you tell someone that the man who was like a brother to her is the one responsible for killing her husband, and almost killing her daughter? How do you lessen the pain of that? The betrayal?
I wish I had the answers to those questions. Wish I could make this easier on her, so she doesn’t have to feel the utter devastation and hopelessness choking my heart. But, in the end, all I can do is tell her every last truth. That the man we thought we knew changed right in front of our eyes, and we trusted him too much to see it. That he made us, our family, collateral damage in his downward spiral.
I don’t doubt that Uncle Joe loved us. I felt that love in his last, dying moments. But he chose the darkness, let it corrupt his soul until nothing else mattered. Not us, the family he once cared for so much. Not the fate of the world. Nothing but his own selfishness and ego and dark sense of entitlement.
I wish I could say that the fact that he started out with good intentions makes it better somehow, but it doesn’t. Joe destroyed every last piece of my life. Nothing will ever be the same, because of him.
And all I feel for him now is hate.
I expect Mom to have a meltdown, to tell me I’m never going into the wood again and this time she means it. I expect her to ground me for going after Joe on my own.
Instead, she’s very quiet. Flames crackle in the fireplace, and she’s been holding her cup of coffee for so long without taking a sip that it has to be ice cold.
When I can’t take it anymore, I blurt, “Mom, say something. Please.”
“He’s really gone,” Mom murmurs. “That man, Henry’s father…”
“Augustus?”
She nods. “He confirmed it.” She sucks in a shaky breath. “All this time, I thought maybe he was still out there. Maybe one day you would find him, and you’d both appear on the path next to that rock. It’s stupid, but—” The tears come fast now. She chokes on them. “It’s like losing him all over again.”
I wrap my arms around her and we stay like that, tangled up in our loss, for hours.
*
The next morning, I wake on the couch, sunlight streaming across my face and catching on the sparkly threads of one of Grandma’s knitted blankets. The whole house smells like bacon and melted butter and biscuits baking in the oven.
I sit up, rub the sleep from my eyes. Mom brings out a pitcher of orange juice and sets it on the dining room table.
“Good morning,” she says.
“G’morning,” I croak.
“Breakfast will be another ten minutes, if you want to get ready for school.”
I stare at her. It takes me a moment to remember it’s Monday. Back to school. Back to business as usual. As if my whole life didn’t change over the span of a weekend.
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “Sure thing.”
I head upstairs. Brush my teeth and change into a long-sleeve T and a pair of jeans. I grab my backpack off the floor and reach for the books on my desk.
I freeze.
A black composition book taken from the stack in my closet—one of about a dozen Mom picked up during a back-to-school sale—sits on top of my other books. Across the white space is my name written in calligraphy. My breath catches at the beauty of it, the delicate whorls and swirls. A lump the size of a baseball lodges in my throat as I crack open the spine.
The best guardian deserves the best journal. Unfortunately, this pathetic excuse was all I could find, and so it is given in the hope you will someday replace it with one far superior. Until then, I pray you find it useful. Eternally Yours, Henry.
He must have done this the night I helped Meredith study. Before our first kiss. Before our fight. Before good-bye. I trail my fingers over his name, smiling even as tears prick my eyes. I hug the composition book to my chest, then slip it inside my backpack along with the rest of my books. Later, I’ll put it in the study, where I will sit night after night, recording the day’s events, but, right now, with the ghost of Henry’s good-bye still on my lips, I can’t quite bring myself to leave it behind.
I head back downstairs, making a beeline for the kitchen, and pull up short.
The dining table is set for two.
It breaks my heart and repairs it somehow, all in the same breath. I help Mom bring the dishes to the table—enough bacon for two, a couple links of sausage, a small fruit salad. Mom places two over easy eggs on each plate and sets them on the table.