His shoulders sagged and he let out an apologetic sigh. “Michelis won’t talk to anyone but Reeve.”
“And Petros?”
“Knows nothing. I’m sorry.”
Reeve called as well, every two hours, to give me updates and make sure I was all right. He and his men came back to the house when it got dark but went back out with flashlights after they’d refilled their water and food.
I managed to doze for a couple of hours during the night with her pillow clutched tightly in my arms and the feeling of loneliness in my bones.
It was just after dawn when they found her.
Reeve woke me, waited for me to sit up and wipe the sleep from my eyes, then delivered the news, straight-faced and even.
She’d washed up onshore with the tide, her body bloated, her face so swollen and deformed she was hardly recognizable. The damage to her bones suggested she’d hit the rocks, either because she’d fallen from the cliffs above or because the ocean had slammed her against them. Her arm had been scratched or cut, deep enough that she’d bled and not long enough before her death that she’d scabbed over. Despite how deteriorated her remains were in just one day in the water, the message was clearly legible – Not Yours.
Not Reeve’s, I supposed it meant. Not mine either. Not anyone’s. Not anymore.
When the tears began, silent torrents that flooded down my face, Reeve reached for me, put his arms around me, and held me as I drowned his shoulder in grief.
CHAPTER 25
I’d mourned Amber’s death once before, in private, mostly, with no one aware of my pain except for Joe. It had been nearly impossible to put on a happy face when my insides had felt like they’d been ripped to shreds.
This time, I had full support in my heartache. I had a shoulder to cry on. I had someone to grieve with me. And all I wanted was to be alone.
We went back to the mainland the day after she’d been found. My new apartment was ready, but I had a feeling Reeve would protest if I told him I wanted to be there, and I didn’t feel like arguing. So I stayed with him in his LA house. I slept with him in his bed. I spoke as little as possible, in one-word sentences and grunts and nods. I did nothing but try to survive.
The funeral was held four days later. Reeve arranged everything with austere strength, encouraging as much or as little input as I felt up to. Numbly I picked out flowers and an urn and selected a charity for guests to donate to in her name. There were more people at the service than I’d expected. People I didn’t know. Friends and acquaintances of Reeve who had met her when they’d been together. Besides a few men from the ranch and Reeve’s staff, the only people I knew in attendance were Reeve, Joe, and my mother.
Her mother was invited but didn’t show. I guessed it was easier for her to pretend that Amber had died long before, or maybe that she hadn’t ever existed at all. I didn’t mind Mrs. Pries’s absence. I liked being the sole representative of Amber’s family. We hadn’t shared DNA, but as far as I was concerned, we were as close to family as it gets.
“She called me,” my mother whispered during the service. She patted my hand, a gesture I supposed she thought was comforting. “The other day. She left a message on my machine. I saved it for you.”
“I know, Mom. I heard it, remember?” It was the message that had brought Amber back into my life. It had been left on my mother’s old answering machine late the previous summer. Months passed before she even mentioned it to me. Now it was May and it was both frustrating and upsetting that her dementia made her think that Thanksgiving was “the other day.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion, an expression she wore often these days. “I don’t know where the machine is since the move. It was important, I think. We need to find it.” She began to stand, and though I pulled her back down, she seemed on the verge of a public tantrum.
Reeve put a hand on my knee, silently asking if he could help. It was Joe that managed to calm her. “I think I know exactly which box it’s in, Ms. Barnes. Let’s watch the rest of this beautiful service. I’ll help Emily find it later.”
I mouthed a thank you to Joe and spent the rest of the hour thinking about that message, the one where she’d said Blue Raincoat, and I changed my world to come to her rescue. I wondered what would have been different if I’d never heard it. Then I wondered what would have been different if I’d heard it earlier or if I’d not gone after her or if I’d never met her in the first place. I wondered if I’d ever actually known her like I thought I had. I wondered if I could have fixed her if I’d been less broken myself.
But I could spend hours and days and years on what-ifs, and whatever better scenarios I created in my head, it wouldn’t change anything, and I’d still be without her now.
There was no reception when the service was over. The guests left and I sat by myself in the room with her ashes while Reeve settled up with the funeral home. Just her and I alone together for the last time. I didn’t know what to say to her. We said so much to each other the last time I saw her. So much and yet not enough. All those years apart she’d been alive in my head, always present even when she wasn’t there physically. Her voice had been as clear as my own when I’d gone about courting Reeve, and there had been many times that I’d wondered if she weren’t already dead, wondered if it were her ghost speaking to me.
But now she was really gone, and her voice was silent and I’d never felt so lost or alone.
It was a sign of what needed to happen next in my life. It was finally time to move on.