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A month later, Everly flew to Alaska.
It took quite a few hours more than when she’d taken the direct Alaska Force jet with Blue, but a lot less time than it had taken to drive. Plus, she’d had a layover in Seattle, which allowed her to drink good coffee while asking herself if she was really, truly doing this.
The answer was yes, she really was.
She landed in Juneau on a crisp evening that felt much further into fall than the date suggested, and stayed the night in a comfortable hotel nearby. In the morning, she looked out on a world that appeared to be half in the clouds, which lingered, puffy and low, over the green hills that flirted with the gleaming water in all directions.
There was time for coffee and a shower to wake herself up, and then she boarded the ferry for Grizzly Harbor.
And for a long time she lost herself in the simplicity of the big boat cutting through the water. Seals and whales made appearances, some close and some in the distance, while glaciers beckoned from afar and islands stretched across the horizon, bulky with mountains and evergreens. She bundled herself up and sat outside, letting the cold, clear Alaskan air and the salt from the sea scrub her clean as the ferry made its way through the many islands of the famed Inside Passage toward Grizzly Harbor.
She stood on the bow as the ferry docked, surprised that the rugged little fishing village looked as good to her now as she remembered it.
Just like the postcard she’d been carrying around in her head.
Because she’d spent a lot of time this past month telling herself that it had all been an exaggeration. That Alaska and Blue and everything in between had all been crisis and panic, fear and terror. She’d tried to convince herself that Blue had been right and she’d had on blinders to get her through her ordeal. That no matter what she might have felt in the thick of it, it had been impossible for her to see things around her as they really were.
She’d tried to believe it. She really had.
When she’d woken up that morning in her parents’ house, she’d known Blue was gone. Before she’d come fully awake, she’d known he wasn’t there in the pink bedroom her parents used for guests these days.
But she’d still looked for him. Or... a note, maybe. A voice mail message she could access through one of her parents’ computers, since she didn’t have a phone. Even a text.
There was nothing. He was just... gone.
She’d walked over to his parents’ house and snuck around the side like a crazy person on her way to boil a bunny, but the only thing left to show he’d been there was the marks his tires had made in the grass out back.
Everly didn’t need to knock on the door or talk to his mother to know the truth.
Blue was gone. Just as he’d said he would go, way back when.
That time, Everly didn’t cry. She’d felt sick. Hurt, she could admit it. But she didn’t cry. She’d gotten it all out in the shower, she told herself fiercely. Or all she planned to let out, anyway.
And besides, there was too much to do. Her parents had come back on the next flight from Europe, horrified at what had happened to their daughter and deeply upset that she hadn’t told them about it sooner.
“I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me,” she confessed to her mother the night they’d arrived. They’d all been sitting around the kitchen table together, her parents growing more and more agitated with every part of the story Everly had shared. “I thought I could solve it and you’d never have to know that I’d somehow gotten myself into this situation....”
“I don’t know where you get this idea that you’re a great disappointment,” her mother said fiercely, and then had reached over to grab Everly’s hands. “It was as if the minute you decided following in my footsteps wasn’t what you wanted, you stopped trying to push yourself to do anything.”
“But Jason...”
“Your brother knew what he wanted to be since he was three years old,” her father had said brusquely, hiseyes suspiciously glassy. “That has its own pitfalls, I assure you.”
“If I’ve ever been disappointed in you, Everly, it’s not because you didn’t live up to some fantasy daughter you imagine I have in my head,” her mother had said, holding her gaze so there could be no escape. “I don’t need you to be a doctor. I need you to be happy. Whatever that looks like for you, that’s what I want.”
“And maybe,” her father had added gruffly, “no more roommates.”
Everly had spent the rest of the month thinking about what happiness was. Real happiness. Not occasional bursts of joy here and there, but the kind of happiness that was sustainable. The kind of happiness that mattered.
First there’d been her apartment to deal with, which was never going to rank at the top of any list of happy activities. It had been a long, depressing week of sorting through the damage and saving what she could. There were memories that were lost forever and a few items of personal significance that could never be replaced. But the truth was that Everly had lost nothing that she couldn’t live without.
From her apartment, anyway.
It was an interesting thing to know as a fact instead of a philosophical exercise. Missing something wasn’t the same as being wrecked without it. And as much as she still felt violated and still dreamed of flames crackling up the walls, she wasn’t wrecked.
The things in her apartment had just beenthings.
Rebecca was the only loss that mattered. She was the only thing that really couldn’t be replaced. And the onlything Everly could give the roommate she should have been a better friend to was justice.