Fragile Darkness (14 page)

Something soft and warm whispered through me, but before I could say anything, the necklace slipped back against my chest, and Dylan turned from me, and then we were driving again, the blur of houses giving way to the sleepy mansions of the Garden District. In only a few minutes we'd reach the quirky galleries and shops of the Warehouse District, and I'd finally be home.

“W-what happened to her?” I whispered. “Your mom?”
His granddaughter.

His hands tightened against the steering wheel. “A car accident.”

“How old were you?”

“Eight.”

There was so much about him I didn't know. “I'm so sorry,” I said.

He slid a hand to the stereo and pressed the CD button. “It was a long time ago.”

“But you still miss her.” I knew he did. I could see it, feel it in the dark eddies swirling around him. That kind of loss didn't go away.

“I wonder what she'd be like,” he said, “what her voice would sound like.” Slowing, he eased into a right turn. “But sometimes I'd swear she's only a room away. I can feel her, see her in my dreams.”

I'd never thought about Dylan dreaming.

What else do you see in your dreams?
someplace inside me asked, but that question wouldn't come.

“Do you still hear the song?” I asked as we passed the World War II museum.

His shoulders rose, fell. “Not in a long time.” He pulled alongside my building, stopped, and turned to look at me. “Trinity.”

And I knew, I knew the second his voice tightened around my name, the conversation was turning, too, and I wasn't going to like where it was going.

“Just because Will knows things about Chase doesn't mean he is Chase, or that he's not dangerous.”

I stiffened. “I know that.”

“And if he calls you tomorrow? If he's ready to talk about what you're picking up from him?”

Then I would drop everything. “I'll be careful.”

Dylan's eyes hardened, that was the only warning I got. “Like you were last fall when you went back to my apartment with me?”

It was a low blow. I sat there, stunned, hurting in ways I'd never expected moments before.

“When you had absolutely no idea who I was?”

I stared straight ahead, feeling it all over again, the surprise of opening my eyes, all sprawled in his lap with the warmth of his mouth lingering against mine, the shock of realizing he'd gone into the river after me.

But, “I knew who your father was,” was all I let myself say.

“You knew who you
wanted
him to be. Who he told you he was. But you knew nothing for fact, and nothing about me.”

That wasn't true. I had known. Without logic or explanation, I'd known Dylan wouldn't hurt me, not physically.

“That was before,” I said simply. Before
a lot.
Before everything. “That Trinity doesn't exist anymore.”

“And yet you went to that party tonight and have no idea how you ended up in my dad's flower bed.”

Everything inside me tightened. There was no defense for that, other than the truth. “That won't happen again.”

For a long moment we sat in the dim glow of the streetlamp, looking at each other. Neither of us said anything. I think we both realized there was nothing left to say.

Once it had all been so easy. All he had to do was look at me, touch me, and everything inside me slipped quietly into place. From that very first night by the river, he'd been a forbidden whisper through my thoughts, a shadowy figure I tried to forget, but couldn't. It didn't matter if my eyes were open or closed, he was never too far away.

Then I woke up in a strange hotel room and discovered that what I'd mistaken for a dream was real. That Dylan was there and had been all along.

Longer.

Later, while the world around us burned, he'd put a hand to my face and kissed me with an intensity that seared through everything I knew about right and wrong. He'd been with me in the dark corners of LaSalle's mind, and those last moments at Six Flags.

But now those memories had sharp edges, and they sliced like broken glass against my soul. And it all came back, every word, every breath, and I was there again, between Dylan and Chase, in those final moments before the illusion shattered.

And I always would be.

“Tonight—” waking up in his bed, reaching for him, kissing him, “—should never have happened.” None of it even seemed real, like it had happened to someone else. How else could I explain the fact that for a few minutes there, I'd forgotten …
everything
?

But now I remembered, and all those hurting places inside me bled all over again.

“But I'm glad it did,” I said. “Because now I know it can never happen again.”

Because nothing was the same anymore, and there was no way to go back. No way to
breathe.
Sometimes you had to touch fire,
to hold your hand in the flame to feel the burn sear through you,
to know that you could never make that mistake again.

I'm not sure what I expected, what I wanted. Maybe for Dylan to say something soft and gentle and healing, like he had so many other times. Or maybe for his eyes to flash, or for him to reach for me and tell me that no, I wasn't wrong. I wasn't wrong to open my eyes and reach for him. He was my safe place, the sanctuary I could always count on.

But he didn't say anything, didn't move, just sat watching me as if I were telling him about my chemistry test.

“I can't be with you anymore,” I said, reaching for the door.

“I know.”

I should have stopped there. I should have stopped right there and gotten out of the car, walked away, and not looked back.

But I wasn't as good at walking away as he was.

“Is that why you stayed away?” I asked.

Finally I saw it, the slightest movement in his body, and his eyes met mine. And with one word, everything inside me stilled.

“No.”

 

FOURTEEN

It shouldn't have mattered.

Whatever Dylan's reason for staying away, it didn't change anything. What was done was done. Days gone by could not be erased.

But I didn't know how to leave that word dangling between us and walk away. That was what he did.

“Then why?” I asked as a yellow blur whizzed by, driving home the fact we weren't moving anymore, that we were stopped, and had been for a long time.

“Trinity.” Weeks had passed, but I would have sworn smoke from the fire at the gallery still roughened his voice. “Don't do this.”

“Don't do what? Ask questions? Try to understand why the last time I saw you, you promised me everything would be okay, but now you're looking at me like you can't wait for me to get out of the car?”

A rough breath ripped from him. “Don't try to hold onto things that aren't there.”

“I'm not.”

“Then let it go.”

It was hard to believe five minutes before we'd been talking about soul journeys. “Answer my question.”

The way he stared straight ahead shouted that we'd reached a stalemate. The car was idling. Air whispered from the little vents. A song drifted from the radio, Arcade Fire, I think. But the tight web of stillness stamped all that out like a blanket to a campfire.

I was reaching for the door when two quiet words shot across the seat. “It's over.”

I told myself not to turn back, but even as I issued the command, I knew I wasn't going to pay attention to it. It was that whole putting my hand in fire thing. I had to look, to see his eyes.

Except what I found didn't burn. It chilled.

He twisted toward me, that curtain of hair again cutting against his face. Darkness fell around us, the only light coming from the dashboard and the glow of the streetlamp. But it was enough to see the point-blank look in his eyes.

“That's why I stayed away.” The words were matter-of-fact, without any emotion. “LaSalle is dead. No one's trying to hurt you.”

Absorbing that, I knew he was right. I'd known it all along.

“I guess this is good-bye.” Mechanically I pushed at the door and stepped into the mugginess coming off the river. “Thanks for the ride.”

Maybe he said something else, maybe he didn't. I don't know. All I could think about was crossing to the three concrete stairs leading to the door to the building, and not looking back.

*   *   *

Green. That was the first thing I noticed when I walked inside. While I'd been gone, Aunt Sara had painted the main room a soothing tone of green, like that of a fern. Instead of the funky, exposed brick that I'd always thought a perfect match to her personality, we now had arboretum mellow.

Sage,
I remembered Victoria telling me. Julian claimed the color had mystical, cleansing properties.

Swooping up Delphi, I glanced over at the paint-splattered tarps covering every piece of furniture except the sofa. There the plastic had been pulled back, and Aunt Sara lay curled into herself, sleeping.

I walked closer, careful not to make any noise, and smiled at the green smudge against her cheek. She didn't have on any makeup. Her clothes were old and ratty, her hair soft and loose against the dark purple of the cushion.

It was the most natural and relaxed I'd seen her in four weeks.

I really missed that Aunt Sara.

Not wanting to disturb her, I tiptoed back to my room and slipped inside. The clock read 1:53, but I knew sleep was not going to happen. I'm not sure how long I stood there staring at the blown-glass dragonfly, but when the walls started pushing in, I knew I couldn't stay there, not with the enormity of all that had happened buzzing through me: someone had drugged me and dumped me in a flower bed, a guy I'd never met had narrated my memories, the white almost-vision had flashed again, and Dylan and I finally said good-bye.

No way could I sit in that room or crawl into bed and try to go to sleep, not when I could barely breathe.

After grabbing my journal, I hurried to the front door, letting myself out as quietly as possible. I knew where I needed to go, who I needed to see. The elevator brought me down to the parking garage. All I could think about was getting into my grandmother's old Buick and driving.

Halfway there, I stopped dead in my tracks, even as my heart started to slam. Because I wasn't going anywhere, I realized abruptly, not with Jim Fourcade's truck blocking my car.

Dylan hadn't gone home.

The front door pushed open, and he stepped into the yellowish lighting.

I didn't move, not at first. I just looked at him, the burn in my throat so hot I wanted to scream. But that wouldn't change anything. I could tell that by the stillness to him.

It was no accident he'd positioned himself between me and where I wanted to go.

“Come on,” he said, as if we'd planned this. “I'll take you.”

My throat tightened. I probably should have turned and gone back inside, but I didn't want to be upstairs any more than I wanted to be back in the truck with Dylan. All I could think about was going somewhere quiet, where no one watched and no one waited, where I could exhale, and let go. Where I could sort through all that had happened, and think.

I wasn't about to give Dylan the power to send me where I didn't want to be.

Lifting my chin, as if this was all quite ordinary, I walked past him and climbed inside. He followed and shifted the car into drive, not saying a word as we left the parking garage. Within seconds we were on Canal Street, like I'd been planning, and he kept driving, kept looking straight ahead without saying anything, exactly like I was doing. We both knew there was nothing left to say.

Once or twice I thought about telling him where I wanted him to take me. I'm not sure what held me quiet—curiosity, I think. I wanted to see where he was going.

And then we were there, where I'd intended all along, pulling off the road beside the ornate iron fence. The gate was locked, but that didn't mean anything. The fence was easy to climb.

Wordlessly I got out of the truck and made my way along the shadows of the sidewalk, toward a few big oaks. There, shielded from view, I made my way to the other side.

I didn't need to turn around to know that Dylan followed. But he didn't say anything, and he didn't try to stop me. He simply walked behind me.

It was no secret New Orleans cemeteries weren't the safest places at night.

A cool breeze swirled among the moonlit tombs. I made my way along the grassy path, past row after row until I reached a crypt surrounded by a second iron fence, this one equally ornate. There, I let myself in.

“Hey.”
I went down to my knees and lifted a hand to the cool, smooth marble, dragging my finger along the letters of his name.

CHASE MICHAEL BONAVENTURE

The tears didn't come as freely now, not in the big gulping sobs like they had at first, when they'd ripped up from deep inside. Now it was more of a slow swell of pressure pushing to get out.

I closed my eyes for a long moment, opening them to the shadow-draped statue of the Virgin Mary, where Jessica had kneeled long after the burial ended.

Seventeen candles sat in a series of circles with a marble vase in the middle, smooth and curved, perfect for the fresh white tulips that were always there. Nearby, amid a scatter of leaves, parade cups full of doubloons sat among water-logged envelopes with smeared ink across the front, all except the one secured in the plastic bag, with the perfect, beautiful handwriting.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered for the thousandth time.
“I'm so sorry.”
For everything.

The wind swirled closer.

“It's happening again,” I murmured, “but maybe you know that. It's the first time since—” But he would know that, too. “You were there, weren't you?” I said, fingering the leather bracelet. It was the only way Will could have said the things he said. “I'm trying. I
want
to help.” I had to. “But I can't see anything.”