Pain and grief tears through me. “You’re going in the ambulance with your aunt. I’ll get my brother. I’ll find you—”

“No,” Whitney says, wrapping a hand around my arm. “I’m not leaving without you. Not now. Not ever.”

Asa returns and drops to a knee next to his sister. “We gotta go now. You heard what they said. One road out; that’s it. We need to move fast. Let’s get your brother’s body and get the fuck out of here.”

Fifty-Three

Whitney

Two weeks later

There’s been too much death. Too much loss. The wildfire consumed Commodore and Magnus’s cabins, then jumped the river to destroy half the town of Gable before rain poured down in a deluge and helped put it out. Asa, Lincoln, and I were lucky to make it out alive with Harrison’s body. The road was completely blocked by the time we tried to leave, but Lincoln’s chopper pilot managed to come back for one last pickup.

If not for that, we all would have died that day. Instead, we escaped with nothing more than bruises that are already healing.

Now we stand on the charred grass of the cemetery, in front of headstones scorched by the flames, while we lay Sylvia, Jackie, and Harrison to their final rest.

One funeral. Two families. Something no one would have ever believed could happen.

Magnus and Commodore sit side by side, and we all watch as our family members are interred. Sylvia’s ashes and Harrison’s casket in the Riscoff mausoleum, even though he wasn’t a Riscoff by blood, and Jackie in the plot beside my parents—who she left in the river that night.

Everything my aunt said to me in the hospital has haunted me for the last two weeks. I still can’t make sense of it. Can’t process it.

How could she have done all of it?

Jackie passed away a week and a half ago after slipping into a coma on the ambulance ride to Rock Hollow. They said it was a bleed in her brain. She never woke up again. Now we’ll never know the rest of what happened, because she can’t answer any more of our questions.

Karma sits beside Cricket with her girls, who we now know are definitely Hunter’s. Karma was actually the one who insisted on the paternity test, and the results came back positive a few days ago. Hunter sits on Cricket’s other side, holding her hand. He’s been a rock for her and the girls as they navigate this new reality.

Karma’s surgery was largely a success, despite its hasty completion. She’s going through chemo now, but the doctors seem confident she’ll recover. The Riscoff Memorial Hospital didn’t survive the fire, but Lincoln has arranged for her to be treated in Rock Hollow by a team of specialists.

Her attitude has changed so much in the last two weeks that I barely recognize her anymore. There’s humility and sorrow, where before there was bitterness and anger. Telling her and Cricket everything Jackie had told me was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.