I watched Kennick Carter scatter Laini’s ashes via live streaming on Facebook. He did it in Santa Ana, not Spain — either the life insurance money hadn’t come through yet, or the lure of the nearby Santa Anita racetrack was too strong — but at least there were olive trees and sunshine. And Kennick told me Laini had never been to California, so I reckoned she would have approved of being in a new place.
It would have been lovely if the four winds lifted her ashes up into the air, but it was a still day there, so the gray dust merely fell where it was strewn — on grass and earth and the reaching roots of gnarled tree trunks. The winds would come, though, sooner or later, and the rains. And then Laini would be everywhere and nowhere, as perhaps she’d always wanted.
Kennick had tears streaming down his face as he said goodbye to his sister. So did I. My mother, who’d watched with me, was surprisingly dry-eyed.
“Laini’s in the arms of the Goddess, now,” she said. “You did good, Garnet.”
“I guess.”
I’d helped to find a murderer, and I had to believe it mattered that justice would be served, but it didn’t change the fact that the bright spot of beauty and color that was Laini was still gone from the world. And there was the undeniable fact that I’d also inadvertently done damage — to Ryan’s reputation, Jim’s bones and Bethany’s neck. It wasn’t clear what would happen to the Sweet ‘n Smoky syrup business, though I guessed Bethany would try to sell it as a going concern — she could hardly run it from behind bars. I could only hope that the people who worked there would get to keep their jobs.
“You did,” my mother insisted. “You cracked the case.”
“I guess,” I said again.
I thought I might, just might, have cracked something more personal, too. From the time I died, I’d been confused about who I was. The pendulum of my identity had swung from my old rational, logical self to this new intuitive, risky me, and I’d struggled to integrate the two sides. I still didn’t know how to do that, or whether it was even possible, but maybe it was enough for now that the two sides coexisted within me. Like my eyes did. I had one brown and one blue eye — they didn’t match, they shouldn’t occur in the same face, but they did. And although they were unusual and freaked people out a little, they still worked.
I no longer wanted to be rid of my psychic abilities. There was no doubt that without them, I wouldn’t have solved Laini’s murder. Heck, I wouldn’t even have suspected that it was a murder. My gift — as unpredictable and exasperating as it was — had value. If I could learn how to use it better, then I could, just maybe, use it to help people.
“What will you do now, dear?” Mom asked, brushing my fingers away from my mouth. Some aspects of me, unfortunately, hadn’t changed.
“I’m back to Boston next week.” I’d finally finished and submitted my thesis. “Any day now I should get feedback and suggestions back from Professor Perry, and then I’ll get stuck into revisions.”
“And after you graduate? What will you keep yourself busy with then?”
I tickled Lizzie’s fuzzy stomach with my foot, thinking about my future. My phone pinged, and I checked to see who’d sent me a message. Skeptical Singh. G-Man.
“Buttons,” I said, opening the text and reading it.
“What’s that, dear?” my mother asked.
“Buttons. And button men.”