Part 37 (1/2)

Sam.

The mouth was parted open, the tongue laying over teeth. Not like a dog would pant, but in a strange, unnatural way. The angle of the tongue made me think that the body must be stiff. Just like a dog hit by a car, really, just another dead body.

sam say his eyes, though something it had his eyes sam and I had so much left to say to him you're scaring me I would be fine. I was fine. It was like I had known all along that he would die. Be dead. That we would find his body like this, ruined and undone, that he would be gone from me and we would never fix what had been broken. I would not cry, because this was just the way it would be. He would be gone, but he had been gone before, and this wouldn't feel any different, this absolute gone, this forever gone, this gone without hope of spring and warm weather bringing him back to me.

I would feel nothing, because there was nothing to feel. I felt I'd lived this moment a thousand times, so many times that I had no energy or emotion left to bring to the scene. I tried out the idea in my head, Beck is dead, Beck is dead, Beck is dead, waiting for tears, for feeling, for anything.

The air smelled like spring around us, but it felt like winter.

* GRACE *

Sam just stood there, shaking, hands beside him, silent and staring down at the body at our feet. Something terrible in his face made tear after noiseless tear slide down my cheek.

”Sam,” I begged. ”Please.”

Sam said, ”I'm fine.”

And then he just crumpled gently to the ground. He was a curled form, hands up behind his head, pulling his face down to his knees, so far beyond crying that I didn't know what to do.

I crouched beside him and wrapped my arms around him. He shook and shook, but no tears came.

”Grace,” he whispered, and in that one word, I heard agony. He was running a hand through his hair again and again, knotting and releasing fistfuls of it in his palm, ceaseless. ”Grace, help me. Help me.”

But I didn't know what to do.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX.

* GRACE *

I used Koenig's phone to call Isabel.

Sam, Koenig, and I had spent an hour picking our way over the scrub, performing the morbid job of counting the wolf bodies and seeing if Sam recognized them. Seven wolves dead, including Beck. We hadn't gotten to Shelby's or Cole's bodies yet.

Sam stood a few feet away, looking out into the woods, his hands linked behind his head. As always, it was a gesture that was at once intensely Sam but also Beck. I didn't remember if I'd ever told Sam that. I didn't know if it would help or hurt to tell him now.

”Isabel,” I said.

Isabel just sighed.

”I know. What is it like for you there?”

Isabel's voice was unfamiliar. I thought maybe she'd been crying. ”Oh, the usual. I'm grounded for the rest of my life, which is, like, until next week, because after that, they'll kill me. I'm in my room right now because I'm tired of screaming.”

That explained her voice.

”I'm sorry,” I said.

”Don't be. I got there a little late, didn't I?”

”Don't beat yourself up, Isabel. I know that's what you like to do, but you didn't owe the wolves anything, and you came anyway.”

She didn't say anything for a long time, and I wondered if she believed me. Finally, she said, ”And they're sending me to California to live with Nanna until they can sell the house.”

”What?”

I spoke so sharply that Sam looked over to me, frowning.

Isabel's voice had no intonation at all. ”Yeah. I'm taking my finals and then I'm on a plane with my stuff. Isabel Culpeper. This is her n.o.ble end. Back to California with her tail between her legs. Do you think I'm weak for not just taking off?”

Now it was my turn to sigh. ”If you can keep your parents, I think you ought to. Your parents love you, even if your dad is a jerk. It doesn't mean I don't want you to go.” Isabel in California? ”I can't believe it. Are you sure they won't change their minds?”

She scoffed. It was a raw sound, a new wound.

”Tell her thank you,” Sam said.

”Sam says to tell you thank you.”