By the end, the rims of my eyes had gone faintly red.
"He's dead."
The moment you chose to fake your death, you died in my heart too.
I didn't say it out loud.
But I knew he understood.
I looked at him. My gaze was flat and still, like dead water without a single ripple.
He couldn't say anything after that.
Guilt crept over him, inch by inch, until it swallowed him whole. He stood abruptly, as if he couldn't bear to face me a second longer.
"I'm going to check on Adrian Winslow."
He was practically fleeing when he walked out of the room.
I followed the doctor's orders and rested quietly in the hospital for a few days.
The day I was discharged, Don Hale called all of us before him.
He beckoned to me and had me sit beside him. The amber rosary bead between his thumb and forefinger turned once, then stopped.
"Adrian. Today is All Souls' Day. Go see Julian Frost one last time."
When he said it, his eyes held a sorrow and a guilt he couldn't hide.
He gave Julian and Adrian Winslow a few instructions after that, and then let us go.
The compound staff loaded the memorial offerings into the car.
We were about to get in when Adrian Winslow suddenly said she'd forgotten something and turned back toward the estate.
I reached for the car door and was about to climb in when a hand closed around my wrist.
"What did the Don mean by 'one last time'? Are you keeping something from us?"
I looked down at the hand. Calmly, I pulled my wrist free.
"Nothing." My voice was flat. "The Don just doesn't want me dwelling in the past. That's all he meant."
I got in the car and shut the door.
Clean. Final. I didn't look at him again.
He stood there, staring at his own hand where my wrist had been. His fingers hung empty. His brow tightened without him meaning it to, and his signet ring pressed hard against his knuckle, unmoving.
He sensed it, dimly, that something was slipping out of his grasp. But the feeling was too shapeless to hold, too faint to name.
He wanted to press further.
But Adrian Winslow was already jogging back, threading her arm through his.
"Let's go, darling."
He swallowed the words he'd been about to say.
At the cemetery, we hadn't been out of the car long before his phone rang. He glanced at the screen, gestured for us to go ahead, and stepped away.
I carried the flowers to the grave and set them down gently.
The photograph on the headstone was identical to Julian Moretti's face.