Page 83 of The Lovely and the Lost
“It means something,” I told Free, rubbing NATO’s ears as he laid his head down in my lap, “that you stayed so I could go.”
“I’ve never been as good as you are at search and rescue.” Free shrugged that statement off like it didn’t matter. “But I like to think that when push comes to shove, I’m good at taking care of people.”
NATO seemed to appreciate being included in “people.”
“Extreme Hide-and-Seek?” Free asked me. She’d mourned. She’d let me thank her. That was about all the sitting around she could take.
“I don’t know,” I replied slowly. “I was thinking…it’s an awfully lovely day for mischief. Think we could get a littlecreativein town?”
“Do I even want to know what that means?” Gabriel appeared to have even fewer qualms about eavesdropping than I did. Saskia walked beside him. He gave no signs of treating her like a danger or a liability, and I would have sworn she wasn’t so much as evenentertainingthe idea of eating his face.
“I hear you jumped the gun,” Free commented, shielding her eyes from the sun and giving Gabriel an assessing look. “Literally. As in, you literally jumped on top of an old lady holding a gun.”
“Not actually what the idiom refers to,” Gabriel countered. “But who am I to quibble?”
A loud and unmistakable sound—followed by an equally unmistakable smell—permeated the air.
“You’ll have to excuse Duchess,” Free said primly. “Cocky teenage boys make Her Ladyship gassy.”
“Her Ladyship?” Gabriel asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Duchess,” I explained, nodding to the dog. “Also known as Her Ladyship.”
“I hesitate to point this out,” Gabriel said, “but the proper address for a duchess isHer Grace.”
Free and I stared at him.
“What?” Gabriel muttered. “A former juvenile delinquent can’t enjoy the occasional historical romance novel?”
Free recovered before I did. “Pretty sure that makes it official,” she told me. “He’s definitely Miscreant material.”
* * *
An hour later, when Cady joined us at Silver’s grave, Gabriel made his exit. Cady watched him go.
“I believe Ness was telling the truth about Gabriel’s brother,” Cady told me after a moment. “He wasn’t one of her lost ones.”
I wondered if Gabriel believed that. I wondered if he was headed back to his place to stare at the maps on the wall.
“Still think he’s toovolatilefor us to be around?” Free asked, conveniently forgetting that Cady had only cautionedmeto stay away from Gabriel.
Cady brushed a stray strand of blond hair out of Free’s face. “I’ll make you a deal,” she told Free. “You agree to ask for makeup finals, and I’ll forget about the hitchhiking.”
“Or,” Free countered, “I agree not to hitchhike again, and you forget about finals.”
Free enjoyed having the last word enough that I wasn’t surprised when she tossed Cady a triumphant grin and sauntered off.
I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be alone with Cady yet. She knelt and laid her hand gently against the freshly turned dirt of Silver’s grave. I stood, staring down at Cady, down at the place I’d buried Silver.
“She was a mess of a puppy.” Cady closed her eyes, her fingers curling downward into the dirt. “Chewed everything, cried if you left her alone at night, spent the first two years of her life convinced she was a lapdog instead of a German shepherd.”
“She saved me.” My voice was every bit as hoarse as Cady’s. “Yousaved me.”
“Did you ever think,” Cady said, still looking down, “even once, Kira, that maybe you saved us? Me. Jude. Silver.”
My throat stung. “You should have told me the truth.” I struggled to find the words. My lips felt clumsy forming them. “Maybe not at first, but later, when I was older…” I swallowed. “I could have handled it. If you’d been the one who told me, I could have been strong.”
Cady turned to look at me, incredulous. “You’ve always been strong, Kira.” When I didn’t reply, she stood. “Do you think Saskia’s weak? Because of her scars, because of what she’s survived?”