I KNOW THEY’RE coming before I see their silhouetted forms among the trees, groping their way through the night toward where we wait. Zoya’s expression is precariously balanced between relief that she’s no longer alone with me and anxiety at what comes next. Eden frets for her; with a wild grin, I wait to meet my beloved.
She steps out of the trees, into the moonlight. Red hair, pale face, a wide, serious mouth. For a moment I can’t remember which of them I’m seeing, Delphine or Grace, can’t remember which one is dead and which is the living girl. Both souls inside of me are wracked with love and longing.
Del walks forward, steps tentatively. She hasn’t been beneath the sky and the stars in so long. Her body has forgotten how to move in wide-open spaces.
“Eden?” she says. Veronica has kept her word, hasn’t told her. She draws close to me as the others hang back, their anxiety like a mosquito’s buzzing.
“There you are,” I say, my voice choked with wonder.
“What happened last night?” she asks.
I step toward her. “Don’t you remember?” I ask. Eden’s voice is lighter than my own, more sweetness than smoke, and the words tumble strangely from my lips.
Confusion sketches a line between her brows. “What do you mean? You were going to see Maeve.”
I halt. Last night. Eden’s last night, not mine. The timelines are all tangled. “I’m sorry. It’s hard to keep things straight. When you said last night, I thought you meant . . .”
“It worked,” she breathes. “You’re . . .”
“Me,” I tell her, a quicksilver smile breaking fleetingly across my lips. “It’s me.”
“And Eden?” she asks, still uncertain, and something snakes through my gut, slimy as an eel. I am standing in front of her, flesh and blood, and it’s another girl’s name on her pretty lips.
“She’s here,” I allow. “But right now, it’s me.”
“Maeve,” she says, and there it is at last.
I sink through the air between us and come to rest only when my fingertips find the soft skin of her throat, her pulse trembling beneath the surface.
“It’s me,” I say again, and tears streak down my cheeks. “I found you, Grace.”
She lets out a quiet sound, neither joy nor sorrow, and I press my brow to hers. Our breath stirs the air between us. Alive, alive, both of us alive and here in the bright tomorrow we never got to claim.
“I missed you,” she whispers, eyes shut.
“I couldn’t find you. I searched and searched, but you weren’t there,” I say.
Her lip quivers. “I remember you,” she whispers. “But only in bits and pieces. I know that I loved you. But I’m not that same girl. I’m someone else. Someone new. I don’t want to go back there. Even for you. There has to be a way to help you, without . . . without that.” Her eyes are full of feeling and sorrow. And she’s right. She’s not Grace, not really. Grace has been subsumed in this stranger.
This stranger who is standing outside, standing by the river, bearing my touch without drowning. She’s not dying. She’s whole. Or close to it, at least. “How are you not drowning?” I ask her.
“Once I knew what I was, I almost drowned again, but I found my way out. By being Del,” she says. “The water pulls at me, but now that I know why, now that I know who I am—both parts of me—I can keep myself here.”
I see it: the long road stretching out ahead of her. Not as Grace, not as Delphine, but as this new girl. Del. She has a future. She can survive this.
I can’t.
“You could do the same,” Del says. “It’s what Eden wanted. But you have to surrender to each other.”
“I can’t,” I say. I won’t give myself up to cling pathetically to a life that isn’t mine. Even if I tried, it wouldn’t work. I don’t have Grace’s compassion. Her ability to yield. I would always be fighting for space within Eden.
So she will have life. And Eden. And I will have the Narrow.
Eternity, without her. Anger and panic fill me.
“We will find a way to help you,” Grace is saying. Del is saying. Her hand on my cheek.
“No. You’re going to leave. You’re going to forget me,” I say. “You’re going to leave me down there to choke and drown, and I won’t have you. Eden will.”
She blanches. “What’s the alternative, Maeve? Both of us go back and suffer?” She takes a step back. Veronica and the others inch forward, protective.
“If you let Eden go, we promise we’ll find a way to help you . . . move on,” Veronica says.
I hiss, baring my teeth. “Move on? You want to destroy me. Send me off into oblivion where you don’t have to worry about me.”
“Wouldn’t it be better than this?” Zoya asks softly.
“I know how much you and Grace loved each other,” Veronica says imploringly, the past tense like a slap in the face. “Let her go, Maeve. She doesn’t deserve to suffer down there.”
“And I do?” I snap. I stalk forward, putting myself between Grace and the other girls. Veronica is the only one who holds her ground, rooted in place.
“That’s not what I said.”
“I am not going back into the water alone,” I remind them. “If it’s Eden who’s going to join me—”
“No,” Grace says quickly. She looks at the others. “Give us a moment. Please.” She gestures, imploring them to give us space. Veronica stays stubbornly in place, but Ruth puts a hand on her arm, drawing her back and whispering something in her ear. They retreat a dozen paces, and Grace turns back to me.
I look at her, shaking my head incredulously. “They think you’re an innocent in all of this,” I say. “They don’t know what you did.”
“What are you talking about?” Grace asks, sounding fearful.
“You don’t remember what happened the night we died,” I say.
She wraps her arms around herself, shaking her head.
“Then let me remind you,” I say. I walk to the edge of the water, looking down for a moment as I summon the memory. I turn toward the trees. “Oster stood there,” I say, pointing. “He’d always hated me. He was trying to convince you that I was no good for you. He told me you weren’t coming, and he left.”
“But I did come,” Grace says. Her gaze tracks from the edge of the trees to where I stand, and I know she’s remembering.
“I was so happy, that moment when you stepped into the moonlight.” My throat tightens at the memory. I reach out my hand, and tentatively, she takes it, her fingers cool in mine.
“I love you, Grace.”
“And I love you. But we’re no good for each other. You’re no good for me.”
“Why? Because one time I made a mistake—it was an accident.”
“An accident is something you didn’t mean to do. You wanted to hit me and so you did.”
“And then I told you I wasn’t going with you,” Grace whispers.
I close my hand around hers, holding her tight. She doesn’t pull away.
“I’d lost my temper a few days before. I hurt you. I didn’t mean to,” I say, drawing her close to me.
“It wasn’t just that, though, was it?” Grace asks. Her brow wrinkles, as if she is summoning memories from far away. “You hated when I spent any time with my friends. You were always convinced I was cheating on you. Flirting with other people if I even smiled at them. You called me names and screamed at me and told me that I was worthless, that no one else would love me. And then you hit me, and I couldn’t even tell anyone. I couldn’t ask for help, because you were my secret.” She looks up at me, tears shining in her eyes. “Oster was the only one I could talk to.”
“I made mistakes. You were so good for me, though. You were going to save me. Fix me.” I run a gentle hand over her hair. She swallows hard. A thin trickle of water escapes the corner of her mouth.
It’s not my fault you drive me crazy, Grace Carpenter.
I wrap her shirt around my fist, against the small of her back, crushing her against me, our faces only inches apart. “I told you that you were wrong. That I was never going to let you go, no matter what. I said I would tell your family everything you’d been doing, and then you would see what their love was worth. You wouldn’t have anyone left but me, and then you’d understand how much you needed me.”
“Let her go,” Veronica calls warningly, forcing me to remember that they’re there. Like they can do anything about what’s happening. This is older and bigger than them. They’re nothing next to us.
“It’s all right,” Grace says, but her voice shakes.
I put a finger to her chin, directing her gaze back to mine. “That night,” I say, searching her eyes for signs of recognition. “Do you remember how clear it was, until suddenly the wind rose up, and the clouds rolled over the sky? Do you remember how it started to rain all at once, soaking us through to the bone? Do you remember what I said to you?”
Remember, I will her. Remember what I hid from Eden.
What happened after I turned away from Oster and he left me there.
Do you remember, Grace? You, emerging from the trees. The rain pummeling us. Me, trying to find the perfect combination of words to make you see how much I love you, how much we need each other. They spill out of my mouth in an endless torrent, all meaning and meaninglessness. I am begging you, pleading, making a thousand impossible promises, and my fear becomes rage, and my hands that hold you grip too tight, and I’m hurting you—
And I realize it, and I let you go. More words bubble up. I’m sorry. And another word repeats and repeats in my mind. Forever and forever and forever.
And I say, with all my being—I will never let you go.
Your face goes slack, empty. You nod, and I think you finally understand. Let’s go, I say, and you nod again. I turn. Our future is on the other side. I stretch out my hand to take yours.
You shove me hard in the back. Here at the edge of the Narrow, in the pouring rain with the moss and rocks turned slick and treacherous. You aren’t strong, but it’s enough, and I fall
forever
and I twist and reach out for you
can’t let you go
and my hand closes around your arm, I pull you with me, because
forever and forever and forever
we are destined for each other. We are infinite.
We hit the water, and I wrap my arms around you. I hold you as the river drags us down. As our lungs burn. As the cold steals the life from our limbs. As the current dashes us against the rocks, once, then twice, then three times. The water pins us against a snag of rock and holds us there together. My hand in your hair, your empty eyes staring into mine.
And there we stay.
Forever.
“I killed you,” Grace says, her voice so soft only the two of us can hear. Tremors run up and down those limbs that aren’t hers. There are tears on her cheeks. No, not tears. River water, streaked with silt. Memory rises up like the river around her, and she is not so whole as she supposes. “I killed you to get away from you. Why would you want to be together after that?”
“Because I love you. I forgive you. It was one mistake, that’s all,” I tell her, smiling. “If I can forgive you for that, you can forgive me for what I did, can’t you? We love each other too much to let it stand in our way.”
“But I don’t love you,” she says softly.
I stumble back as if struck.
“Grace did,” she says. “Up until the very end, she loved you, and I remember that love. I thought I still felt it, but it’s only a memory. I’m someone else now.”
“That’s only because of the girl. You’re not you, but you can be again. When you come with me,” I say, but she’s shaking her head.
“I wanted to leave you. Grace did. It was never going to be forever, Maeve. We were never infinite. Not really.” She pulls free of me, stepping away. The others have obediently held back, but now the balance shifts. They move forward, closing the distance between us.
Grace is wrong. Confused by her muddled existence, by the childish mind she’s been forced to inhabit. She loved me even as she pushed me into that river. I loved her as I dragged her down into it with me.
She will understand. I will make her. When she is Grace again, she will love me again. And if she doesn’t—
We will have eternity either way.
“I won’t let you go. Not ever,” I say.
“Seems like she’s made her decision,” Ruth says, approaching. “Breakups suck, I get it. Time to move on.” She crosses her arms, and it takes all of my control not to fling myself at her, tear her face with my nails. Zoya puts an arm around Grace’s shoulders. Veronica steps in front of her, wedging herself into the scant space between us.
“Del made her decision. If you really love her, you’ll accept that,” Veronica says.
“You don’t know what love is,” I say. “Love is not patient. Love is not kind. Love is hunger. It’s a knife in your guts and your skin on fire. It should feel like you’re drowning. That’s how you know it’s real. I will never let anything come between us again. Never.”
I fix my eyes on Grace, whose shoulders are slumped in Zoya’s embrace.
“Leave the girl and come with me. Back where you belong. Or Eden drowns with me instead.”
Grace gives a shuddering, startled gasp. She straightens up. “No.”
“You know me. You know that there is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you,” I tell her. I love her too much to let her walk away. “There’s nothing you can do to make me spare her, except coming with me. You know me.”
Veronica looks back at Grace. A muscle in her jaw twitches. I can read her perfectly—because Eden can. She believes me. And however sympathetic she might be to Grace, she isn’t going to let Eden be sacrificed to her stubbornness.
“You already died, Grace,” Veronica says haltingly. “This way at least Eden and Del get to live.”
Grace looks at her with hollow eyes. “Eden would. And another girl would. But Del? I’m Del. Whoever is here when Grace is gone, it won’t be me.” She shuts her eyes.
I take a step back. Toward the edge. “Time to choose. I’m not going into the river alone,” I warn her. “With you or with Eden. Choose.”
“Don’t hurt her,” Grace says, voice ragged.
Exultation and anger twine through me. She’s going to agree. She’s going to come with me.
For Eden. Not for me.
“I’ll go with you. But only if you let me say goodbye.” Her chin tilts up, a sliver of defiance. She’s never had more than that. Not in this life or the last. Thin, vanishing moments when she made an impulsive demand, struck out. She ended both our lives with such a foolish split-second act. But I’ll give her this.
“Don’t. This isn’t right,” Zoya says.
“Isn’t it? The living live. The dead keep on being dead,” Ruth says, but she sounds disturbed. They will each have a hundred stories they tell themselves about tonight. The stories that say it isn’t their fault—or it is—or they could have done something differently—or it was always going to end like this.
“Let her go,” Veronica says. It isn’t an order. Her voice trembles. But the other two girls act like it is. They absolve themselves of the decision. They peel away from Grace, falling back with gratitude they dress up like reluctance. Veronica, too, retreats, and once again it’s just me and Grace and the river softly gleaming.
“Well?” I ask as Grace approaches. “Say goodbye.”
“Not to you. To Eden,” she says, fingers curling into fists. “Let me talk to her.”
She doesn’t realize how cruel the request is—that her last request before returning to me is to talk to the girl she loved in my place. But I can forgive her. I can forgive her anything as long as she comes back to me.
“Only a minute,” I tell her.
I shut my eyes and plunge back below the surface of Eden’s mind.