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Back When the Stars Go Dark Save as PDF
Chapters (83)
  1. Epigraph
  2. Maps
  3. (prologue)
  4. Part 1: Signs and Vapors
  5. (one)
  6. (two)
  7. (three)
  8. (four)
  9. (five)
  10. (six)
  11. (seven)
  12. (eight)
  13. (nine)
  14. (ten)
  15. (eleven)
  16. (twelve)
  17. Part 2: Secret Things
  18. (thirteen)
  19. (fourteen)
  20. (fifteen)
  21. (sixteen)
  22. (seventeen)
  23. (eighteen)
  24. (nineteen)
  25. (twenty)
  26. (twenty-one)
  27. (twenty-two)
  28. (twenty-three)
  29. (twenty-four)
  30. (twenty-five)
  31. (twenty-six)
  32. (twenty-seven)
  33. (twenty-eight)
  34. (twenty-nine)
  35. (thirty)
  36. (thirty-one)
  37. (thirty-two)
  38. (thirty-three)
  39. (thirty-four)
  40. (thirty-five)
  41. (thirty-six)
  42. (thirty-seven)
  43. (thirty-eight)
  44. (thirty-nine)
  45. Part 3: Time and the Maiden
  46. (forty)
  47. (forty-one)
  48. (forty-two)
  49. (forty-three)
  50. (forty-four)
  51. (forty-five)
  52. (forty-six)
  53. (forty-seven)
  54. (forty-eight)
  55. (forty-nine)
  56. (fifty)
  57. (fifty-one)
  58. (fifty-two)
  59. (fifty-three)
  60. Part 4: The Bent Grove
  61. (fifty-four)
  62. (fifty-five)
  63. (fifty-six)
  64. (fifty-seven)
  65. (fifty-eight)
  66. (fifty-nine)
  67. (sixty)
  68. (sixty-one)
  69. (sixty-two)
  70. (sixty-three)
  71. (sixty-four)
  72. (sixty-five)
  73. (sixty-six)
  74. (sixty-seven)
  75. (sixty-eight)
  76. (sixty-nine)
  77. (seventy)
  78. Dedication
  79. (acknowledgments)
  80. (author’s note)
  81. BY PAULA MCLAIN
  82. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  83. What’s next onyour reading list?

I knew ravens could be as smart as parrots, but Lenore was more than smart. She seemed to read our moods easily, and to smell fear. I looked back and forth between Hap and Eden, wishing I could sense what was happening in Eden’s body, or that she could. That for once she could appear in her own dreams.

“I’ll go back in,” Eden promised Hap. “I’ll make him give me something.”

“I’ll go with you,” he said, not remotely mollified. “We’ll see if that doctor has the nerve to ladle out that same vague horseshit when I’m in the room.”

But he had.

—

It was a full year later before we knew Eden had endometrial cancer. On her last good day, we went to Point Cabrillo, and looked for whales. We brought lawn chairs, hot coffee, and blankets for our laps. It was fiercely windy that afternoon, with wind hammering a million divots in the surface of the bay.

“If I were any kind of water,” Eden said, staring out and out, “I’d want to be this ocean.”

You already are, I wanted to tell her. You’re everything I can see.

Those hours together seemed to last for ages. We counted six humpbacks.

“Six is the number for spirit,” Eden said.

We saw wind flap over the kelp beds, flags of green and gold. And then the sunset, and the first evening star flickering awake. And then the moon rose like a pearled shard of beach glass, fractured and whole all at once.

Three weeks later, Eden died in her sleep under a pink afghan, small as a child by then, and incoherent from morphine. When Hap came to tell me she was gone, his face buckled. I’d never seen him cry, and he didn’t then, just hovered on the edge of what he couldn’t bear, but had to somehow. One day I would know this exact state with horrifying intimacy. In that moment, I could only stand by numbly while he went back to the bedroom they shared and closed himself in to be alone with her. No one was going to rush him to call the coroner. Not for this woman, his life for more than thirty years. Not until he was good and ready.

—

My own goodbye seemed impossible. I wasn’t ready to lose Eden. I couldn’t. In a kind of trance I made for the woods, barely feeling the hike. Miles from town, trekking straight down Little Lake Road, I reached the Mendocino National Forest and left the trail almost immediately, plunging up the side of a steep ravine and down again, forcing my way through wet ferns and spongy undergrowth. There were signs of fire damage, the hearts of trees burned black and gutted.