Endless (Shadowlands 3)

“You should probably get used to it,” Sebastian said, a teasing lilt to his voice.

I stopped in my tracks and turned on him. “What? Why? What do you know?”

He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Nothing. Just with this storm coming and being on an island…there are usually a lot of casualties.”

I narrowed my eyes at him as his sister slunk along behind me until she was standing at his side.

“You sure are defensive,” she said. “Anything you want to tell us?”

“Yeah,” I said through my teeth. “Stay the hell away from me.”

I turned to stalk away, but my foot caught on the seam between the boardwalk and the asphalt sidewalk and I tripped. Sebastian’s hand shot out to catch me, and the second his fingers touched my arm, my head filled with visions of his life. His death.

Sebastian in a crib lying head to toe with his sister. Sebastian as a boy in a black-and-white school uniform, tormenting a smaller kid. Sebastian scoring a winning goal in a soccer game, then spitting at the feet of his opponent. Sebastian curled up on the floor in the back of a dark closet while his parents screamed at each other. Sebastian and his sister shouting at a rally, hoisting picket signs over their heads. Sebastian and Selma being mugged on a dark street. Sebastian fighting back. A shot going off. Sebastian watching his sister die before being shot himself.

I ripped my arm out of his grip and turned away from them, my eyes filling with tears. He’d died an awful death, watching his sister take her last breaths. But almost more overwhelming were the images of his life. The pain he’d been through, the pain he’d caused. It had been a short existence, but one full of hurt and confusion, anger and fear.

“Wow. Way to say thank you,” he spat.

I turned to look at him, water streaming down our faces. My jaw clenched. “Thanks.”

Then I turned and started up the hill as fast as I could go. At least now I had half an answer to Joaquin’s question. Sebastian was my charge, and one thing was certain—as soon as we set things right around here, he was the first person I was ushering off this island.

I kept my head down as we walked two by two, following the matching caskets down the hill. The service had been brief and cold, as if everyone here had forgotten what wakes and services were actually for—sharing fond memories of the deceased and honoring their lives. The mayor had said a few words in her living room, where the roughly hewn caskets had sat closed on the floor, surrounded by fake flowers, since every real bloom on the island had long since wilted, grown moldy, and died. No one else had volunteered to say a word. But as the caskets were lifted and the crowd parted to form a makeshift aisle down the center of the room, I had suddenly started crying, and I hadn’t been able to stop since.

I cried for Cori. I cried for Nadia. I cried over the fact that they had both walked around this island with the same confidence everyone else had—that nothing truly bad could ever happen to them again—until it did. I cried for my dad and Darcy and Aaron. And I cried for my mom, whose funeral was the last one I’d attended on Earth. The moment I let myself open that door, the memories crashed over me like the waves at high tide. The pain was as fresh as if she’d taken her last breath just yesterday.

I thought of the way Darcy had held it together so perfectly, her posture like a prima ballerina’s, her smiles so gracious and polite as she’d received the guests, until she’d stepped up to my mother’s open coffin and let out an awful wail. I thought of how my father had gotten up from his chair to say his eulogy, but fallen right to one knee, where he’d stayed for at least five minutes until my uncle Morris finally helped him up. I thought of how I’d reached out to hold her hand inside her coffin and stared at her overly made-up face, just willing her to wake up and smile. Wake up and tell me this was just a dream.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, I’d repeated silently, desperately. Please, Mommy. Please wake up.

That was the memory that truly caught me now, closed my throat, and made me buckle at the waist.

Please, Mommy. Please wake up.

I wished for the thousandth time that I could talk to her, if only for a second. Now I needed her more than ever. I needed her to tell me what to do. I needed her to tell me everything was going to be okay. And I needed Darcy, too. And my father. It wasn’t fair that I was alone here. It just wasn’t fair.

“Rory?”

I looked up into Joaquin’s eyes. I hadn’t even noticed that we’d stopped.

“Are you all right?” he asked me.

I shook my head, glancing past the other raincoats and umbrellas at the caskets, which now lay on the grass next to the open graves. The caskets were made of raw birch, the bright yellow grain the only warm spot in the world around us. There was no graveyard in Juniper Landing, of course, and we had decided to bury them near the trees on the lower of the two bluffs at the south end of the island. This was one of the flattest bits of terrain, and a beautiful spot with a view looking over the town to the east and the ocean to the south. From what I had heard, it had taken Fisher, Dorn, and Kevin over an hour to dig each hole because the earth was so saturated it kept collapsing in on itself. Now everyone waited for the caskets to be lowered. For this whole sorry episode to be over.

“I’m fine,” I said, shoving my balled-up hand under my nose. “Shouldn’t you be…over there?”

As one of the sixteen pallbearers, Joaquin was supposed to be helping to place the caskets into the ground.

“Yeah.” A pained expression passed over his face, and he held tight to my elbow. “I just wanted to check on you.”

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it.

I glanced around as I tried to catch my breath. Surrounding the caskets and the graves were dozens of black-clad Lifers, passing tissues, their heads bowed. But beyond them, a small crowd had started to gather. Curious visitors. And I felt a sharp stab of resentment at their presence.

This was a private moment, not a tourist attraction. Even Ray Wagner and Jack Lancet were there. They whispered to each other, their heads bent close. When Wagner caught me watching, he lifted his hand in a jaunty wave. He was enjoying this.

“I think w