As long as they were here, the woods would be a safer place for me. But that didn’t make me feel any better right now.

Trudging heavily into the woods, I remembered Patrick’s reply to me before I left, after I’d told him I couldn’t do it without him.

You can. You always could.

Maybe Zeus’s death had cleared the way for Cassius to grow up.

Maybe it was time for me to grow up, too.

Remembering our run-in with the migrant workers, I gave Jack Kaner’s farm a wide berth, slicing north across a wooded ridge. The trees drifted by, an endless scroll. My legs ached. The night air grew thick, streamers of fog floating by. Visibility got so low that I nearly collided with the wrought-iron bars.

Leaning back, I took in the curved sign over the entrance: CREEK’S CAUSE CEMETERY.

Cutting through would save me a good twenty minutes, so I walked beneath the arch. The fog made the air so wet I felt like I was breathing the white wisps themselves. Staying alert, minding each step, I moved past gravestones and plots and a few mausoleums from richer families like the Blantons.

I was so focused on peering through the fog that I didn’t notice where my legs were carrying me until I had arrived.

My parents’ graves.

Two humble little plots, side by side, with white markers. It had been all we could afford.

It’d been a while since I’d visited. I’d carried anger at them since their car crash, anger that they hadn’t been more responsible, that they hadn’t thought more about their kids at home before drinking that extra glass of wine. Over the years that anger had loosened from a hard knot in my gut. But I realized now that it had never left entirely. It had just spread out through my body, less obvious, sure, but just as heavy a burden to carry.

I thought about all the ways the world had come undone and everything I had to face now. The loss of my parents, awful as it was, had prepared me for this. I pictured the view over the revolver, Chet’s face wobbling in and out of the sights, my finger on the trigger, refusing to pull it. I’d made a mistake, and Zeus had died. I was human and imperfect and doing the best I could minute to minute.

My parents had been, too.

I owed it to them to forgive them. But even more, I owed it to myself.

I crouched before their graves and patted the green, green grass blanketing them. Closing my eyes, I sent them all the warmth from my body, from myself.

When I opened my eyes, the fog had started to thin. Even as I watched, it lifted, billowing up into the treetops and away into the crisp night air.