Forever

“Thanks, Cole,” I said. “That was incredibly subtle.”

“That,” replied Cole, “is one of my finest traits.”

Sam was still frowning out the window. “I wonder if she —”

The phone rang from the kitchen island, interrupting him, and Cole retrieved it. He made a face and then handed the handset to me without answering it.

The caller ID was Isabel’s number. I said, “Hello?”

“Grace.” I waited for some comment on my humanness, something offhand and sarcastic. But she only said that: Grace.

“Isabel,” I said back, just to say something. I glanced at Sam, who appeared puzzled, reflecting my expression.

“Is Sam still there with you?”

“Yeah. Do you … want to talk to him?”

“No. I just wanted to make sure that you —” Isabel stopped. There was a lot of noise behind her. “Grace, did Sam tell you they’d found a dead girl in the woods? Killed by wolves?”

I looked at Sam, but he couldn’t hear what Isabel had said.

“No,” I said, uneasy.

“Grace. They know who she was.”

Everything inside me was very quiet.

Isabel said, “It was Olivia.”

Olivia.

Olivia.

Olivia.

I saw everything around me with perfect precision. There was a photograph on the fridge of a man standing beside a kayak and giving a peace sign. There was also a dingy magnet in the shape of a tooth with a dental office’s name and number on it. Next to the fridge was a counter that had a few small nicks all the way down to some colorless surface. On it was an old glass Coca-Cola bottle that had a pencil and one of those pens that looked like a flower stuck in it. The kitchen tap dripped every eleven seconds, the drop of water running clockwise around the lip of the faucet before working up enough nerve to fall into the sink below. I’d never noticed how everything in this kitchen was a warm color. Browns and reds and oranges, all worked through the counters and cabinets and tiles and faded photographs stuck into the doors of the cabinets.

“What did you say?” Sam demanded. “What did you say to her?”

I couldn’t figure out why he would ask me that when I hadn’t said anything. I frowned at him and saw that he was holding the phone, which I didn’t remember giving to him.

I thought, I am a terrible friend because I don’t hurt at all. I’m just here looking at the kitchen and thinking that if it were mine, I’d find a rug for it so my feet wouldn’t be so cold on the bare floor. I must not have loved Olivia, then, because I don’t even feel like crying. I am thinking about rugs and not about how she’s dead.

“Grace,” Sam said. In the background, I saw Cole move off, holding the phone, talking into it. “What do you need from me?”

I thought it was a very strange question to ask. I just looked at him. “I’m okay,” I said.

Sam said, “You’re not.”

“I am,” I said. “I’m not crying. I don’t even feel like crying.”

He smoothed my hair back from my ears, pulling it behind my head like he was making a ponytail, holding it in his fist. Into my ear, he said, “But you will.”

I leaned my head on his shoulder; it seemed incredibly heavy just then, impossible to hold up. “I want to call people and find out if they’re okay. I want to call Rachel,” I said. “I want to call John. I want to call Olivia.” Too late, I realized what I’d said, and I opened my mouth as if I could somehow take it back and insert something more logical.

“Oh, Grace,” Sam said, touching my chin, but his pity was a distant thing.

On the phone, I heard Cole say, in a completely different voice than I’d ever heard him use before, “Well, there’s not much we can do about it now, is there?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

SAM

That night, Grace was the wakeful one. I felt like an empty cup, bobbing and tipping to admit rivulets of slumber; it was only a matter of time before it filled up enough to pull me under entirely.

My room was dark except for the Christmas lights strung around the ceiling, tiny constellations in a claustrophobic sky. I kept meaning to pull out the cord beside the bed and put us in darkness, but fatigue whispered in my ear and distracted me. I couldn’t understand how I could be so tired after I’d finally slept the night before. It was like my body had reacquired its taste for sleep now that I had Grace back, and it couldn’t get enough.

Grace sat next to me, her back leaned up against the wall, legs tangled in bedsheets, and ran the flat of her hand up and down my chest, which wasn’t helping me feel any more awake.

“Hey,” I murmured, reaching up toward her with my hand, my fingertips just barely able to brush her shoulder. “Come down here with me and sleep.”

She stretched out her fingers and rested them on my mouth; her face was wistful and not like her, a mask of Grace worn by another girl in this half-light. “I can’t stop thinking.” It was a familiar enough sentiment that I pushed up onto my elbows; her fingers slipped off my lips, back to my chest.

“You should be lying down,” I said. “That will help.”

Grace’s expression was doleful and unsure; she was a little girl. I sat up the rest of the way and pulled her toward me. Together we lay back against my headboard, her head lying on my chest where her hand had been before. She smelled like my shampoo.

“I can’t stop thinking about her,” Grace whispered, braver now that we weren’t looking at each other. “And then I start thinking about how I’m supposed to be at home right now, and, Sam, I don’t want to go back.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I didn’t want her to go back, either, but I knew she wasn’t supposed to be here. If she were human, cured, I would’ve told her that we had to go back and talk to her parents. We would’ve made it work; we would’ve made them understand that we were serious, and then I would have lived without her in my bed until she moved in on the proper terms. I would’ve hated it, but I’d have lived with it. I’d told her I wanted to do it right with her, and I still did.

But now there was no right. Now Grace was a girl who was also a wolf, and as long as she said that she didn’t want to go back, and as long as I remained unsure of how her parents would react, this was where I wanted her. One day soon there would be hell to pay for these stolen moments together, but I didn’t think we were wrong to have them. I ran my fingers through her hair until I hit a tiny knot and had to pull them out to start again. “I won’t make you.”