Melissa Darnell - Covet

I tried again to memorize Tristan’s face…to see every line across his forehead, the full curves of his lips, now flattened and thinned by anger and guilt and panic, the raindrops dripping from those curls, darkened like antique gold, around his face and clinging to the back of his neck. At the edges of my vision, all around us were reminders of the moments we’d experienced in our shared dreams of this place…so many kisses while lying together on a picnic blanket as we’d talked for hours. The pine trees with their heavy boughs swaying in the storm’s retreat, the way they had swayed around us as Tristan and I had danced together barefoot on the mossy ground. Those same trees had been lit with thousands of tiny Christmas lights for my birthday last November as I’d kissed imaginary red velvet cake from Tristan’s lips.

And now here we were. We’d finally come to the real clearing in the real woods to create another memory. A memory I would never be able to erase, no matter how much I would want to.

He stood as if frozen as I closed the final inches between us. “Sav, I’m so sorry. I never meant for this—”

“I know,” I murmured. “I’m sorry, too. But the council and the Clann are right to want us to stay away from each other. It’s better that way. Safer.”

“No, Sav—”

I pressed cold fingertips to his warm lips, the water sliding down his face and around my fingers like tiny streams flowing around rocks. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see his face when I said the next words. If I did, I might not be able to say what had to be said.

Standing on tiptoe, I kissed his cheek, tasting the raindrops on his skin, lingering so I could inhale his faint cologne mixed with the ozone scent of the rain and feel his warmth against my skin one last time. Then I stepped back, my eyes still closed, holding on to it all as tightly as I could even as I made myself let him go.

“We have to end this. Please don’t try to see me anymore. This is the right thing to do. Someday you’ll understand.”

Before he could say anything to change my mind, I turned and walked out of our woods for the last time. Somehow I kept myself from looking back.

But I already knew I would be spending the rest of my life looking back on today, on the last few months, on every choice I had made, and wondering. What if I had been stronger? If I had only managed to resist the way I felt about him… If I had only followed the rules…

Nanna would still be alive.

CHAPTER 3

The next few minutes while I waited in Dad’s rental car were a blur as the pain finally had its chance to claw through me. At some point an ambulance arrived. It turned around in the driveway then backed up in the yard behind the Coleman home. Two emergency workers got out and unloaded a metal gurney, carrying it into the woods between them. Eventually they came back, slower this time, the gurney between them supporting a bulky black bag.

I looked away then, burying my face against my forearm on the dashboard.

Eventually Dad came back to the car and got in. He sat there for a few seconds in silence. Then he awkwardly patted my back. The attempted comfort from him was so unfamiliar that it was like a little mental shake, reminding me I couldn’t fall apart, not yet. We had to tell Mom first.

Dad started the car and followed the circle drive back to the road. Then we headed for my home.

Nanna’s home.

“Have you called Mom?” I asked, my croaky voice forcing me to clear my throat.

“No.”

“Then don’t, not yet. I don’t want her to hear while she’s driving.”

He checked his watch. “She should be home in half an hour or so.”

Neither of us spoke again until we reached the house.

Every window of my home was dark when we pulled up onto the short, pine needle-blanketed driveway. The descendants had closed the front door but not locked it behind them after taking Nanna against her will. As we entered the house, I cringed, sure the place would be wrecked by a magical fight. But they must have snuck up on her and knocked her out before she had a chance to react. Everything was just as I’d last seen it.

I turned on the living room lamp, grabbed a handful of towels from the linen closet in the hallway and gave Dad a couple so we could dry off. I would change later, after Mom came home. I was afraid to go to my bedroom before we talked; I might give in to the urge to fall apart again.

I sank down onto the piano bench, the only furniture in the room that wasn’t upholstered and wouldn’t get wet from my clothes. Then I toed off my soggy sneakers and peeled off my soaked socks, trying to find any mental distraction that I could.

The house was so silent. It was hardly ever this quiet around here. Usually Nanna would have the TV on in the dining area so she could listen to it while cooking in the kitchen or crocheting in her rocking chair. Or she would be in the living room on the piano, filling the house with hymns as she practiced for church.

I turned to face the upright piano, laying my hands over the keys, feeling their cold, smooth surfaces, so like my skin right now. I’d never noticed before, but the keys in the center around middle C had rougher spots on them from being played more often than the ones at the far ends. I touched the surfaces where Nanna’s fingertips had worn off the finish. Nanna had tried to teach me to play, but I’d never managed to read music well.

There was a cracked, leather-bound hymnal still open on the sheet music ledge. The last thing Nanna had played was “Amazing Grace.” One line seemed to jump off the page at me….

I was blind, but now I see.

I had to get up, get away.

A truck engine rumbled up to the house and died, quickly followed by the slam of a door. Dad and I shared a look.

Mom was home.

I wasn’t ready for this.

My fingers knotted and unknotted, twisting around each other countless times in the few seconds it took her to reach the front door and open it.

Mom blew in like a tiny tornado. “Savannah! Good grief, you’re soaking wet. Did you shower with your clothes on?” Stepping over the threshold, Mom closed her hot-pink-and-brown polka-dotted umbrella, gave it a quick shake over the cement stoop, then rested it against the fake-wood-paneled wall.

She turned to face me, arms open wide for her usual welcome-home hug. But I couldn’t move. My legs seemed locked into place. Her gaze darted to the right, and her smile faded. A tanned hand drifted up to fluff her frizzy bottle-blond hair. “Oh. Hello, Michael. I thought you would just drop Savannah off.”

He nodded his greeting.

Frowning, Mom shut the heavy oak door behind her. “So where’s Nanna? You didn’t call, so I assumed—”

“Mom, you should come sit down,” I interrupted, dreading her reaction and yet needing to get this over with.

She blinked a few times and then eased into the upholstered rocking chair, making its sagging springs creak in protest. Kneeling at her feet on the worn-out green-gold carpeting we’d tried a million times to convince Nanna to let us replace, I held Mom’s hands and tried to figure out how to tell my mom I’d caused her mother’s death.

“Mom, Nanna’s…”

“Oh no,” Mom whispered, her hazel eyes rounding. “They killed her, didn’t they? Didn’t they?” Her voice rose to a shriek. “I knew it! I knew they would murder her someday. Those hateful, spiteful… Oh sweet God. I should have been here, helped protect her. I shouldn’t have been on the road so much. I was gone all the time, I made it so easy for them….”

“No, Mom. It’s my fault,” I blurted out.

“Wh-what?” she whispered.

I couldn’t look at her. I stared at the carpet, and I confessed it all…dating Tristan and hiding it from everyone, the fight Friday night between Dylan and Tristan after dance team practice, the vamp council’s watchers at my school. And then the council’s test in Paris, and getting Tristan home again only to discover we were too late. I couldn’t make my voice any louder than a whisper as I told her how Nanna had died in my arms despite everything Mr. Coleman and Dr. Faulkner had tried, and how the doctor thought Nanna must have had a heart condition for years. And finally, how I had promised both the council and the Clann never to see Tristan again, and then I’d kept that promise and broken up with him.