Jack found Erik at the town hall late Monday afternoon. Erik was doing the window and door trim of the downstairs meeting room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jack come in.
He laid his brush across the open can of paint and straightened to his full height. “Well?”
“A couple of things. First, we’ve dusted the postcard for prints.”
“And?”
“The only usable ones we found were a thumb and a forefinger. Both were my father’s.”
“I see. Anything else?”
“Yeah. We called Faith and got a description of Gideon, so the report we put out now says to look for Evie in company with a man matching her father’s description.”
“Good. What about the DMV checks?”
“We ran them. Came up with zero.”
Erik felt hollow inside at that news. “I see.”
“And as far as dusting the store for prints…”
“What?”
“I can’t get Pangborn to give me an okay on that right now.” Pangborn was the sheriff.
“Why not?”
“We got nothing on Gideon. We ran a check to see if he’d ever been arrested. Nothing at all. We couldn’t find him anywhere. If he’s ever been fingerprinted, it wasn’t under the name Gideon Jones. There are bound to be prints from a lot of people in that store. To try to run a check on every print we got would cost major bucks. Pangborn’s not willing to authorize an expense like that at this point, when we have no prints of Gideon’s to follow up on anyway.”
Erik wondered if the news could possibly get any grimmer. With a sigh, he pulled off his cap and gave it a slap against his paint-spattered white overalls.
“Look,” Jack said. “Why don’t you lock up the store? Don’t let anyone in there for a few days. Maybe some new piece of evidence will turn up, and I can talk Pangborn into dusting for prints in there after all.”
Erik thought of the store, so empty now that Evie wasn’t there to make it come alive. Locking it up and forgetting about it for a while would be just fine with him. “Sure.”
“Erik, I…”
He put his cap back on. “Thanks, Jack. You’ve done all you could. And I…I should get back to work now.”
Jack opened his mouth, and then closed it. “Yeah. I suppose so.” He turned and went out the way he had come.
Erik picked up his brush again and doggedly returned to his task. All he wanted to do was get through the day somehow. Then he could go home, go through the motions of the evening—dinner, and a little time with the kids.
At last, he could retreat to his studio. He could lie down on the couch.
And maybe, just maybe, he could be with Evie in his dreams.
The week crawled past.
On Tuesday, Jack took the keys to Wishbook from Erik. He spent several hours in the store alone, going over every inch of the place. He found nothing useful at all, though he did formulate a theory of the motions Gideon might have gone through, had he really kidnapped Evie Saturday afternoon.
Jack proposed that Gideon had parked his vehicle on Rambling Lane, across that overgrown field from Main and the back of Evie’s store. He’d gone in the rear door, overpowered Evie and rendered her unconscious. He’d stopped to turn the Open sign around, lock the front door and take her purse, so it would look as if she’d left on her own steam. Then he’d carried her out the back way, flipping the light switch at the back door—which would have turned off the hall lights but not the ones inside the store. No doubt, he’d decided time was too precious to go back and take care of those lights. He’d left them burning, as he’d left the back open, unwilling, probably, to fumble around trying to lock it with an unconscious woman slung over his shoulder. Luck had been with him, enough that he’d made it across the field carrying Evie and stowed her safely in his vehicle without anyone seeing him.
Coincidentally, Angie Leslie called Jack at the station late that afternoon. She said she had noticed a black van she’d never seen before, parked over on Rambling Lane last Saturday. Jack went to Angie’s place, where he interviewed her in-depth as to what she’d seen. But all she remembered was that the van had been there. She’d seen no one get in or out of it and she’d paid no attention at all to the license plate.
So Jack’s theory reached a dead end right there.
Erik tried his best to keep going through the motions of living his life. On Wednesday, Pete had a soccer match in Nevada City. Erik took a little time off and the whole family went, with only Tawny staying at his place to watch the phone just in case. Pete played without much enthusiasm and his team lost.
Thursday was Thanksgiving. Erik went to dinner at his mother’s. Darla outdid herself with a huge turkey and enough side dishes to make the table legs wobble supporting their weight. When they all bowed their heads to say grace, Erik found it damn hard to drum up any thankfulness.
Each night, Erik retreated to his studio a little earlier. He made no pretense of painting anything in there. He stretched out on the couch and looked at the painting of the mountain meadow and waited for sleep.
Friday night, after Nellie put the kids to bed, he and his former mother-in-law sat at the kitchen table over twin cups of hot chocolate, something that had become a sort of nightly ritual with them the past few days. Erik was counting the minutes, thinking that very soon Nellie would go home and he could go up to the studio.
But then someone pounded on the front door.
“Who’s that?” Nellie asked.
Erik shrugged.
“I’ll see.” Nellie stood.
Erik watched her leave the room. Outside, the wind was up. He listened to it whooshing around under the eaves, making the panes rattle in the windows, as he waited without much interest for Nellie to find out who was there.
After a few minutes, when she didn’t return, he decided he’d probably better see what was going on.
He found Nellie at the front door, blocking Oggie Jones from entering the house.
“I gotta see him, woman. Now,” Oggie said.
Nellie stood firm. “Ogden, I asked you why.”
“It ain’t none of your business.”
“The man is very tired. You know the kind of stress he’s been under. And yet you refuse, as you always do, to explain what you’re up to. And as long as you refuse to explain, I see no reason why poor Erik should have to converse with the likes of you in the middle of the night.”
Oggie caught sight of Erik. “It’s freezin’ out here, boy. Tell this old bat to let me in.”
Nellie puffed up her flat chest. “Well, I never…”
“It’s all right, Nellie,” Erik said gently. “I’ll talk to him. Let him in.”
Disapproval evident in every line of her gaunt form, Nellie stepped aside. Oggie stumped in on his cane and Nellie shut the door, closing out the biting wind.
Erik said, “Thanks for everything, Nellie. Why don’t you go ahead and go home now?”
Nellie looked as if she’d just sucked a lemon. “Very well. If that’s your wish.” She softened a little. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
The two men waited as Nellie put on her coat and hat and went out into the blustery cold.
Once she was gone, Erik said, “Let’s go upstairs, to my studio. We can talk there.”
Upstairs, Oggie took the couch as he had that other time, when he and Jack were there. “This won’t take long,” he declared in a bleak voice.
“Okay. What can I do for you?”
Oggie grunted. “For me? That ain’t the question. The question is, what can you do for Evie, gone missin’ nigh on a week now.”
Erik had started to sit, but instead he drew himself stiffly erect. “What are you getting at?”
“You know I was the one who talked Evie into stayin’ put?”
“No, I—”
“I got that postcard from Giddy and I went and showed it to her. And then I told her that here, she would be safe. Here, she’d have her people all around her. And that it was time she learned that an old man like Giddy had no power over her that she didn’t give him of her own free will.”
“So? You were wrong.”
“Yeah.” There was bottomless self-disgust in the old man’s voice. “In the end, her people didn’t protect her. We didn’t protect her. And I’m gonna live with that knowledge for the rest of my days.”
Erik didn’t know what to say. “Look, I—”
Oggie threw up a hand. “Wait. Let me say my piece here.”
“All right.”
“I’m gonna talk from my heart. And I’m sorry if it hurts you to hear what I got to say.”
“Say it.”
“I got me a hunch, a strong, awful feelin’, that if we don’t find Evie soon, we ain’t never gonna see her alive again.”
Erik stared at the old man. What he’d said was only what Erik himself secretly feared. But to hear it out loud that way stole the breath from his body.
Oggie tapped his cane on the floor. “Time’s wastin’, boy.”
Erik found his voice. “I know that.”
“And you done gone numb on us.”
Erik frowned, not quite following.
Oggie elaborated. “You gotta face what you can do about this here situation.”
“What can I do?”
“I don’t know. Only you know.”
“You’re talking in riddles.”
“I’m talkin’ as clear as I know how, about somethin’ no one can explain.”
Erik turned from Oggie then, and found himself staring at the painting of the high mountain meadow.
“Evie ain’t Carolyn, boy,” Oggie said from behind him.
The words struck a chord deep inside Erik. He turned on the old man. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Oggie didn’t flinch. His beady eyes met Erik’s eyes, straight and true.
“Carolyn got lost, lost inside her mind,” Oggie said. “And maybe she never found a way to really get back to you before she died. Maybe you feel that she abandoned you. But Evie is different than that. Stronger. More determined. She didn’t go away. She was taken. And I personally believe that there was more to all those people she found in the old days than a bag of con artist’s tricks.”
“So?”
“So I believe Evie’s got somethin’. Somethin’ special. And I believe if you love her enough, you can reach out to that somethin’ and bring her home safe.”
Erik stared at the old man, torn between desperate belief and absolute denial. Then he sank to the stool and stared at the floor between his shoes. The logical, down-to-earth part of him completely rejected what Oggie said. His rational mind told him that the old man was babbling, at his wit’s end from worry over Evie.
But a deeper part of him, the heart of him, wasn’t so sure. He looked up. “What do I have to do?”
Oggie stood once more and leaned on his cane. “I believe you know. Just follow your heart, boy. Just follow your heart. That’s all I gotta say. I can see myself out.”
Feeling lost and a little bit dazed, Erik trailed the old man to the door anyway. Then he returned to his studio and sat for a time, staring at the painting of the high mountain meadow.
Soon enough, he rose and took the painting from the easel, replacing it with a blank canvas. Then he went to his worktable and got a pallet and a clean brush.
He stood before the easel for a long time, but nothing came to him. So he set down the pallet and lay on the couch.
Erik woke at dawn, his eyes turning immediately to the canvas he’d set up last night in place of the mountain meadow. It was just as he’d left it. Blank.
He felt like a fool. He didn’t know what he’d expected.
He went to his bathroom and showered and changed. Then he headed downstairs to make coffee. Darla showed up soon after that. She cooked a big breakfast for everyone.
It was Saturday, exactly a week since the day Evie had disappeared. Erik decided to take the day off. Yesterday, he’d finished the interior of the new town hall. He had another job lined up, painting Cathy Quail’s newly remodeled kitchen and bathrooms. But Cathy wasn’t expecting him to start until Monday, so that could wait until then.
He spent the morning with the kids. Since the windy night had turned to rain overnight, they stayed indoors, playing Monopoly and computer games. He made the family’s lunch himself, slapping sandwiches together and heating up canned soup. Everyone looked relieved when they came to the table and saw he hadn’t attempted to cook anything more complicated.
All morning, his mind had kept returning to what Oggie had said the night before. Right after lunch, he asked his mother if she’d mind if he went upstairs for a little nap.
She shooed him off, just as if he were one of the kids, promising that she’d see to it he wasn’t disturbed for as long as he wanted to rest.
He returned to his studio and the blank canvas that waited there. Again, he had no urge to paint anything. He felt that his mind was circling. Circling a certain impossible idea.
He lay down on the couch. Outside, the rain beat against the panes, as it had done on the day he and Evie were married.
He closed his eyes.
Evie was ill. Far gone in it now.
The dark place was alive with phantoms of her confused mind’s creating. She lay in a shadowland between dream and waking. Occasionally some small object would pick itself up from the bureau or the bed stand and hurl itself through the air.
Telekinesis. Her psychic energy out of control.
Her father, grown kinder now that she seemed to truly be fading from the world, came to her with more tenderness than she ever remembered receiving from him before.
He bathed her hot face and begged her to come out of this, to do his will and all would be well. He talked of the old days, of all the incredible things she’d done then. And sometimes he would shake his head, mumble how she shouldn’t hold it against him, that once in a while he’d made her lie.
“The lies were necessary, Evangeline. We had to tell them. We had to get what we could, while the money was there.”
It seemed to her, as she listened to his disjointed babbling, that he had suffered guilt, too, for the deceptions he had orchestrated.
He took to sitting in a chair at the foot of the narrow bed, just being there with her, bringing a magazine to study, or the piles of junk mail he received, which he would read through completely, as if each form letter were a special message from someone he loved.
His sitting there was a vigil, really, and Evie knew it.
Once in a while, she’d ask for water or a cool cloth against her skin. Gideon always gave them, tenderly. He dosed her with aspirin and cold remedies. But he wouldn’t go out and hunt down the antibiotics she really needed. In the end, he either refused to admit to himself how ill she was—or his fear of discovery was stronger than his desire to save her life.
Evie forgave him. Who was she to judge him? And who could know the agonies he’d suffered in his life, who could say what had been done to him, to make him the lonely, twisted man he had become?
And, also, within this darkness and suffering, there was great beauty. Sometimes, when her father left her alone, she would go to meet Erik, in the meadow with the mountains all around. Of course, she knew that she was only dreaming. But the dreams felt so real, so comforting.
And ever since she’d told Erik the painful old truths of the way she’d once abused her gifts, they could touch in the dreams. He would hold her and love her among the wildflowers. And for a time, she would forget all the pain.
Like now. She could see him right now.
With a glad cry, Evie reached out her arms. “I’ve been waiting for you. Where have you been?”
“Trying to get back to you.” Erik moved out of the swirling shadows, whole and real. He came down onto the tiny bed with her, and enfolded her in his strong arms.
They kissed, a long, searching kiss. His skin felt cool and good, against her own fevered heat. His scent was a clean scent, his breath sweet with health.
He smoothed back her lank hair. “Your eyes are burning. You’re like an oven, so dry, so hot.”
“I know, I know. Hold me. Pretend you won’t have to let me go.”
In answer, he cradled her closer. She nuzzled his chest, feeling cherished, loved as she had never been loved until he came into her life.
She felt his lips in her hair. “So,” he whispered. “This is it, this dark place?”
She burrowed her head against his shoulder. “Yes. I liked the meadow better.”
“The meadow was a dream.”
“Yes. But so is this. How are the children?”
“They’re getting through it, somehow.”
“Pete really loves the computer, huh?”
“Yeah. Where are we, Evie?”
“Huh?”
“I said, where are we?”
She pulled back a little and looked around, wondering if the dream had taken them to someplace she’d never seen before. But it hadn’t. She explained patiently, “We’re in the room where my father keeps me.”
“No.” There was an urgency in his voice, now. “What state? What town?”
She burrowed close to him again and shook her head against his chest. “He won’t tell me. I’ve asked a thousand times.”
“Have you tried…looking into his mind?”
She closed her eyes, a little ashamed to confess that she’d used the abilities she’d sworn never to use again, even in a desperate circumstance such as this one.
Erik wouldn’t let it go. “Did you?”
She sighed. “Yes, I did—at first, when I wasn’t so weak.”
“And?”
“I got nothing. It’s always been like that with him. A blank wall.”
“But there must be something, some clue, something he’s said…”
“There isn’t. I swear. If there had been, I’d remember.” At the thought of the total hopelessness of her situation, despair rolled through Evie, like a big black train through a dark tunnel, thundering, with frightening speed.
She would never get back to them. Erik would suffer terribly. Losing Carolyn had nearly destroyed his belief in love. But then he’d met Evie, and he’d learned to love again. How would he bear it, to lose her, too?
And the children. What of the children? Jenny and Becca, who were so glad she had married their dad. And Petey, just beginning to trust her. Little by little, one day at a time, Evie had been building faith with the children. And now that she had disappeared, where would that faith go? How would they pick up the pieces, after first losing their mother—and then losing the woman who’d presumed to try to fill the void their mother had left?
“Evie, you can’t give up,” Erik said.
But she didn’t want to talk anymore. Words meant nothing now. She reached up with hungry arms. “Love me, Erik. Love me, now. This is all I have, these dreams of you…”
“Evie…”
She pressed her lips to his in a desperate caress.
He froze for a moment, and she feared he would pull away. But then he groaned. His mouth went soft on hers. His big hands, so cool and good, caressed her.
He laid her down on the wrinkled sheets and touched her everywhere, so she forgot the black walls that surrounded them, the illness that was taking her down to oblivion, the sad old man who kept her here—everything, all of it, except for Erik and his loving touch.
He came into her, murmuring love words. She clutched him close. Together, they left that dark place. They soared among the stars.
And when it was over, when they lay intertwined, he whispered, “Don’t give in, Evie. Don’t give up.”
“Oh, Erik.” She tried to hide her head against his shoulder.
He wouldn’t let her. He captured her face in his hands and made her look at him. “No. I mean it. We need you, Evie.”
“But there’s nothing I can do now.”
“Yes, there is. There has to be. Help me find the way to bring you back to me. The kids need you. I need you. More than I even know how to say.”
She felt a single hot tear slide out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t know…” she strove to explain, though it hurt so much to talk of her shame “…if I deserve to live…”
He brushed the tear away with a tender thumb. “No. Don’t say that. You’re brave. And good. Let the past go now. Forgive yourself.”
“I don’t know…if I can.”
“You can. You have to. You will.”
He seemed so sure. She could almost believe him. Another tear fell. He kissed the place where it trailed down her cheek.
“Don’t give up…”
“Don’t give up…” She repeated the words, feverishly, over and over, as Erik seemed to fade from her arms.
She was alone again.
She closed her eyes. The hot tears kept coming, burning her skin as they trailed down her cheeks.
When she looked again, her father was bending over her. “Evangeline, Evangeline. What will I do with you?”
She realized, in a far-off way, that somehow she had fallen off the bed onto the cold concrete floor.
Gideon had bound her with long chains, two of them, attached to manacles at her wrists and bolted to the blackpainted brick walls above the bed. They were very light chains, but also very strong. And now, they were all tangled around her, hurting her.
She watched, semiconscious, as Gideon pulled a little key from a back pocket. He unlocked the manacles, untangled the chains, and threw them off to either side of the bed. Then he scooped her up and put her back on the mattress.
Dazed, she held up her unbound wrists. They were red where the manacles had chafed them.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I guess we don’t need those anymore.”
He didn’t say why. He didn’t have to. She was too ill to plot an escape now, and too weak to carry it out. She knew that—and he did, too.
“You’ll be more comfortable now, I’m sure of it.” His voice was sad and gentle. She turned her head and saw the envelopes. His junk mail, on the bed stand where he’d tossed it when he saw her on the floor. He put a hand on her forehead, a cold hand. He must have been outside, getting the mail.
“There, now,” he said. “You rest while I go through my letters.”
Don’t give up, Erik’s voice whispered in her mind.
Gideon reached across her, to scoop up the envelopes once more. She only got one glimpse, but it was enough. In her mind, she captured the address on the top envelope.
Her father smiled at her. “Rest, now. Just rest.” He carried the mail to the chair by the door and began to sort through it, humming.
Evangeline pressed her eyes closed. She pictured that envelope. Every detail of it. She let it fill her mind.
Erik swam to consciousness to find himself standing in front of a painting he had never seen before.
Outside, the rain still beat against the windowpanes. But Erik hardly heard it. He stared at the painting for a long time, planning how to use what he knew without being called a lunatic.
When the plan was solid in his mind, he went to his bedroom, closed the door and called Nevada. He’d chosen her over Faith because, since Evie’s disappearance, Jack had been in contact with Faith. The deputy would be less suspicious if Nevada came forward with new information at this point.
Nevada didn’t hesitate. She said she’d back Erik one hundred percent. They spoke for a while longer, going over her story in detail, so it would sound convincing when she told it.
Next Erik called Jack. He explained how he’d just hung up from talking with Nevada, how Nevada had been going through some old correspondence of hers, searching for anything that might lead to the whereabouts of her father, and possibly Evie.
“She’s found an address for him, in Oregon,” Erik said. “She scribbled it on the back of an envelope a few years ago. Apparently Gideon had called her, to try to harass her into revealing Evie’s whereabouts. And she’d managed to get his address out of him before he hung up.”
Jack said nothing for a moment. Then he sighed. “That stinks, Erik.”
“I mean, it doesn’t fit what we know about Gideon. That man wouldn’t give his address to anyone, especially not one of his daughters. He’d be too afraid they might use it to track him down, turn the tables on him and make him stop bothering Evie. And why would a bright woman like Nevada have mislaid such an important piece of information for all this time?”
“Look. I only know what she told me.”
Jack was silent again. Then he grudgingly agreed, “All right. Have you got the address—and Nevada’s phone number?”
Erik gave them to him.
“I’ll call Nevada right now and talk to her about her story. And if it checks out, I’ll contact the Oregon authorities and have them look into it.”
“And how long is that going to take?” Erik made no attempt to hide his impatience.
“Erik, look—”
“No, Jack. You look. I’m going there. Myself. Right away.”
“Erik—”
“Come on. What do we have, really? We have nothing, no shred of evidence that Gideon Jones is the one responsible for Evie’s disappearance. From what you’ve been able to dig up, Gideon has no record anywhere of trouble with the law. There’s nothing for the Oregon authorities to go on. The most they’re going to do is stroll on over to the address Nevada gave me and have a talk with Gideon—if he’s there and when they get around to it.”
“Erik—”
“I’m not through. The point is, I can do that. I can get myself to that address in Oregon in, say, eight hours tops. And I can have a little talk with my father-in-law. And that is exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Erik.”
“What?”
“I see your point.”
“Damn right you do. You’re a smart man, Jack.”
“One thing.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m going with you.”
For the first time in a week, Erik felt himself smile. “That’s what I hoped you’d say.”
Since Erik couldn’t find a flight that would get them there faster than driving, they took Evie’s van.
They left North Magdalene at 2:00 p.m. and crossed the border into Oregon at eight that night. It took them three more hours to find the house. It was fairly isolated, as they’d expected, on a narrow road several miles from a town called Prineville.
The mailbox with the address painted on it stood on a wood pole by the road, and a dirt driveway led between a gap in a barbed wire fence up to a run-down-looking clapboard house. In the bare yard stood a single scraggly leafless elm and an ancient black van very much like the one Angie Leslie had described to Jack.
“Well, what do you know?” Jack muttered.
“What now?” asked Erik.
“Hell,” Jack said, reaching over the seat and grabbing his police-issue revolver, all snug in its holster. “Park. Let’s go knock on the door.” Jack strapped on the gun as soon as he got down from the van. “Just hang tight here for a minute, all right? I’ll check things out around back.”
Erik nodded and Jack disappeared around the side of the house. He returned shortly thereafter. “Everything looks sealed up tight. There is a back door. I tried it.”
“And?”
“Locked. But I probably should keep an eye on it, in case he tries to get out that way.” He touched the handle of the revolver. “You want this?”
“No, thanks.”
“Okay, then. Give me a minute to get in position on the side of the house, where I can see how you’re doing and keep an eye on the back door. See that pine over there?” He pointed to a tree several yards to their left. “I’ll get behind that. Then you go for it.” Jack moved away.
Erik counted to sixty, then started for the porch.
The old boards creaked as he tread on them. And then he was standing at the door. He glanced to the left and then right. All the windows had dark curtains on them. Sealed tight, as Jack had said.
Feeling strange, as if this whole thing wasn’t really happening, Erik lifted his hand and knocked on the door. Then he waited. He heard no movement inside the house. Just the hoot of an owl, far off somewhere.
He knocked again. Still nothing.
There was a small diamond-shaped window at the top of the door. He peered into it. All he saw was darkness.
He tried the door and found it locked.
He was just thinking he was going to have to put his shoulder to it, see if he could break it in, when Jack materialized at his side.
“Looks like no one’s going out the back way,” Jack said.
“No one’s answering, period,” Erik said.
The two men looked at each other. Then Jack said, “I know what you’re thinking. It’s called breaking and entering.”
“Jack. I know she’s in there. I can feel it.” He turned his shoulder to the door.
Jack put his hand on Erik’s arm. “Hold on.”
“What?”
“I used to be a private investigator, you know?”
“I heard.”
“Got me all kinds of questionable skills doing that kind of work.”
Erik watched in amazement as Jack pulled a couple of wires from his pocket and set to work picking the lock on the door. Within thirty seconds, there was a click. Jack’s white teeth flashed in the darkness.
But there was still the dead bolt to deal with. Jack handled that, too, with a some kind of plastic card.
And then at last, the door swung back onto a dark foyer. Erik stepped inside and felt for a light switch. He found it within seconds. He flipped it on.
Light bathed the small space. And just beyond it, on the floor of the barren living room, a woman lay, her back to them, her body tucked tight in a fetal curl.
“Evie,” Erik breathed, hardly aware that, beside him, Jack had drawn his gun.
“Careful, easy,” Jack was saying.
But Erik paid him little heed. Five steps and he was standing over her. He dropped to his knees at her back. “Evie. Sweetheart…”
She didn’t move.
“I’ll look around,” Jack said.
Erik waved him away. Nothing mattered but the thin, curled-up body before him.
“Evie. I’m here.” He touched her shoulder. She neither moved toward his hand nor pulled tighter into herself.
He gave a tug. She fell back against his knees, like a husk of herself, an empty shell.
“Oh. Evie…” He didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to know.
But he had to. He put two fingers against her throat, seeking a pulse.
There was nothing.
She was gone.
A keening cry came from him then, a cry that should have shamed him, it was so desperate and full of pain. He grabbed at her empty, lifeless body, gathering her into his arms and rocking her, his mind screaming, crying out, over and over, in a litany of lost hope.
Too late, too late, too late, too late…
He hated himself, for all those nights in the meadow, those nights of his numbness, when he didn’t believe. When they talked of the past, and then when they just clung together, doing nothing to find out where her father had brought her.
Precious time, wasted. That’s what it had been. And he would never forgive himself for this. Never, in a hundred thousand years.
“Evie, oh Evie,” he moaned as he rocked her. The words came out of him of their own accord. “Evie, don’t leave now. Evie, please. Come back. We need you, Evie. The kids. Me. We love you and need you. Please. Stay with us…”
And above him, looking down, someone heard. And answered.
And that was when he felt her lips move against his neck.
He pulled back, smoothed her filthy hair off her forehead. “Evie…?”
Her lips moved again, forming his name. “Erik.” She tried a smile, a ghastly thing, her face was so pale.
But to him, she had never looked more beautiful. He pulled her, tenderly, against him once again. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “All right now. We’ll get you to a hospital, right away.”