Page 108 of Dark Roads

Pressure built in Beth’s chest, a sob escaping in a strangled breath that she couldn’t hold back.

Someone had placed a photo of Amber in a plastic sheet and pinned it to the top. Beth didn’t recognize the picture. Amber was sitting on a tailgate with some guys, her mouth open in a big smile as she held out a beer, cigarette in her other hand. It was a bad photo. It made her look like a party girl. Like someone who would end up dead in a ditch. Beth reached to rip it off, then stopped. Amber washappythat night. Someone wanted to remember her that way.

Beth sank to her knees, grass soft around her, vines scratching and grabbing at her skin. The base of the cross was crowded with flowers, some in vases. Plastic ones and real ones that had dried. She picked up a fallen teddy bear, rubbed the moss and dirt away, and put him back upright. Letters and cards were left in plastic bags or pinned to Amber’s cross. Beth pulled one free and read the poem inside about a life gone too soon. Her eyes burned with dripping mascara and suntan lotion. She pulled another one free. A letter from someone who knew Amber through the diner, who’d loved her cheerful smile. Beth read them all. From people who’d never met Amber and peoplewho had. Words of regret and sorrow. Prayers, and Beth didn’t feel the anger she had expected. She felt comforted that they remembered her sister. She looked back at the photo of Amber sitting on the tailgate, her smile. Their shared crooked tooth.

“I’ll never forget you.” She stopped and cleared her throat. It felt strange to be speaking out loud to the silent woods, the empty air, but she had to hope that, somehow, Amber would hear her. “You loved nectarines, and you ate them until they gave you stomachaches. You painted your toenails pink in the summer and red in the winter. You liked Taylor Swift and knew the words to all her songs. You wanted to write a book about traveling and the people you would meet. You thought that unicorns must have been real at one time and you were angry that they were gone. You believed in heaven and you said death was only sad for the people left behind.” Beth stopped again and took a few breaths. “I’m going to choose to believe the same, okay? I’m going to believe that you’re at peace and I’ll see you again.”

Beth’s vision slowly came back into focus as she stared at one of the bushes growing in the ditch. She frowned when she noticed the thorns, the red berries. She plucked one of the berries so she could see it closer, rolled the oval shape between her fingers, breathed in the sweet scent. She looked around. The bushes were everywhere, covering where Amber’s body had rested. The vines tangled in the trees, sprawled through the ditch like rolling smoke.

Wild roses.

EPILOGUE

I followed her out of the ditch to her car, my steps drifting over hers. I settled in the passenger seat beside her. I hoped she would keep the window down. It made her hair blow across her face and she would brush it away with that quick flip of her hand, the air pushing against me. The closest we could touch. Her eyes were softer now, still glassy from tears, but with that look that the lake got after a bad storm. All rippled and then nothing. Flat. Calm. I’d heard everything she’d said, of course.

We were able to do that, dip in and out. Not always by choice. I’d been with her at the diner, the motel, and when she was in his garage. I’d wanted to help, wanted to scream in his ear and claw at him, but he could never hear us—we had tried before. The most I could do was try to hold her soul’s light when I saw it leaking from her body as she twisted from the rope, spinning in circles, the colors fading with her breath. I’d cupped my hand around her light, kept it warm, then she made that small gasp, and it came back to her, all soft yellow with blue tinges.

Once, Hailey almost saw me in the forest. She’d looked so pretty, her hands quietly slicing into the river and scooping up water to drink. Her soul’s light was pink, but she’d be furious to know that. She’d want it to be black or red.

Usually I stayed away from Hailey. Her memories of me still had the sharp focus of first love. She had been mine too. I would cry, but I couldn’t do much more than make a sound that was somewhere between a breathy gust of wind and an eagle’s call, and if I got too close, she felt me like a razor running across her skin. That day at the river, I came up beside her, needing to be in that small space thatexisted between us and the living. Sometimes, if we were lucky, and we timed it right, we could send them a scent, the words of a song, or a little thought to bring them comfort. In this moment, though, she was bending over, and I was bending over, and then for a startling second my shadow was mirroring hers in the water. We shimmered together for a beautiful heartbeat, and then I rushed backward, and my wind blew the surface of the water clear.

She sat there for the longest time, staring into those depths. What I wouldn’t give to tell her that I was with her. Wolf saw me, that much I know for sure. His head lifted, his ears turning, and he’d looked straight into my eyes. It wasn’t the first time. Wolf and I had walked together in the woods before, watched over Hailey while she slept. He liked it when I made the grass move so he could pounce at imaginary rabbits.

As Beth drove on, clouds blew over the sun, and a light drizzle turned the faded pavement to charcoal. The air through the window was tinged with the scent of ozone, a summer thunderstorm. Violent and unpredictable. She would need to leave town soon to beat the weather.

The car passed through a shape standing in the middle of the road. Beth didn’t see it, but she shivered and turned up the radio, a frown flickering across her face as though she were trying to figure out where the strange sensation had come from. I turned and watched the woman with the backpack on her shoulder, a hoodie over her bent head, and shorts with cowboy boots.

She stuck her thumb out. A blue truck appeared from the shadows and slowed beside her, the chrome grille like shark’s teeth, headlights bleeding through Beth’s rain-streaked rear window. The passenger door opened, and the girl jogged toward the truck. She was stepping in, long legs climbing up. Then the road went dark. Their journey had ended years ago.

We had reached the end of the highway. A First Nations girl was crouched on the side of the road near the billboard, her arms aroundher legs, her face ravaged with tears. Black straight hair, dark eyes, and a red dress. More women came and stood behind her.

Beth was talking on her cell. Her voice was gentler, less angry, as she spoke to our mother, but I felt the fear tingling under her skin. She was wondering if she could do it, if she could get through without me, but she would, and she had our parents now. They were waiting at the other end of town. Once they connected, she’d follow them to Vancouver.

I looked behind me at the women and watched as, one by one, they stopped whispering, stepped back into their stories, and disappeared. Those women had grieved with me, had been the ones to cradle me when I was lost, torn from my body, cast into the nothing land, but they knew I didn’t need them anymore. Not like I had. That’s how it goes sometimes. People move on, even those whose lives on earth had ended.

I turned back to Beth. We had only a short time left. I could feel myself wavering, changing. My hand flickered over hers. Did she feel my love? Did she know that for me there was no more pain? No more sorrow or anger? I hoped so. She’d done it. She’d set me free.

In front of me, the road turned white, expanded to a beautiful light. The most beautiful light I’d ever seen, drawing me forward. I was there, then I wasn’t.