Chapter 56

CHAPTER 56

S o it was over.

Marley and Poppy and Luke and Max watched the car burn, and Marley said, "Too much fuel," and Luke said, "He must have been carrying extra for the getaway," and Max just watched me.

I had sunk down on the curb, holding the patch that had Ozzie's blue-checked shirt fabric. He'd loved that shirt. I'd found it for him on sale, such soft wool, and he had groused at me for buying it—"You don't have the money for that, Malone"—and then he'd worn it to shreds. I don't think he'd gotten a lot of gifts, and that shirt was a great one. We never said "I love you," we just showed it and that had been enough, but now I wanted to tell him, tell him how grateful I was, how much I respected him and loved him, and Geoffrey had stolen his life away from him and away from me before I could tell him.

I hated Geoffrey Nice.

Max was great. He kept his arm around me and let me cry all over him until I was cried out. I tried to look for Poppy, but Max said she was with Marley, and that was good. I think Max ordered pizza for dinner; I think I ate, but it was hard, I couldn't stop crying, and Max finally just took me up to bed and held me until I fell asleep.

In the morning, I woke up exhausted and stumbled out into our living room to see Marley coming out of Poppy's bedroom.

He held up his hands and said, "She just didn't want to be alone. Nothing happened."

"Thank you for staying with her," I said and went into her bedroom and sat on the side of her bed and watched her wake up, the same sorrow on her face that I knew was on mine. "Are you all right?" I asked her when she could focus.

"I didn't have any nightmares last night," she said. "I slept straight through. That's the first night since Serena . . . I just dreamed about Ozzie, that he was still here, opening the boxes we found and showing me things and laughing and it was so good . . . " Her face crumpled then, and we both cried.

Max came to check on us, and I told him we were fine or at least getting there, so he went out to meet Luke to do whatever they had to do to clean up the mess that Geoffrey had left.

Poppy went downstairs to work on the shop, determined to make it all work, and I thought about what I wanted, which was a quiet place to think.

I was beating myself up for having just accepted that Ozzie had died because he was seventy-eight. He deserved better. I should have done better. Max said that was illogical, but Max doesn't attach to people. And I was just beginning to realize that I'd cried at the funeral, but I'd never really thought about Ozzie, about what he'd meant to me. I thought I could just think about him fondly and I'd be fine.

But fucking Geoffrey Nice had stolen him from me; we could have had Ozzie in our lives for years more and now I was so angry . So sad, so grieving, so angry. I couldn't seem to get away from it; it consumed me now.

I needed a quiet place.

So I went to the cottage, my quiet place, to try to forget about Rocky Start and Geoffrey Nice killing a man I loved and then bursting into flames, to wipe away all the horror of the past month and the dread of tomorrow because Max will be leaving soon.

I should have done better. Somehow.

Fucking Geoffrey Nice.

Max knew I was having trouble and had decided he could put off hitting the Trail for a few days. There were still loose ends, mainly Rowan Masters. Max had asked to meet with him, so I decided to walk to the cottage, and he said he'd catch up with me later.

Poppy was immersed in fixing up Oddities, Marley by her side. She was still rocked by the knowledge that Ozzie had been murdered, but Marley was a steadying influence, so I told him he should come by often, that he was good for Poppy. He got a wary look in his eye, but he was in the shop all the time now, anyway, so I dropped it.

Maggs and I walked down the path, listening to the river, and that was comforting. We went up the steps and nobody screamed, "Oh my God, there's a big black wolf!" so we were alone. I unlocked the cottage door and went in, leaving Maggs outside to run around. The air smelled fresher with all the old furniture cleared out.

I'd brought a comforter— not a quilt—to put on the old camp bed. There had been over sixty squares in those quilts. It was hard to grasp the scope of what Geoffrey had done. Even Max and Luke had been stunned. It also meant Geoffrey had been much more prolific than Rowan's estimate of three kills a year for the Director.

The odd thing was that with him gone, Rocky Start felt different. Lighter, freer. I think the assumption had been all the retired players had cast a pall over the town, but now I think it was Geoffrey. We hadn't been aware of what he was doing, but over the years it had seeped over the town like a fog in a Stephen King novel. Max had said that evil that deep is often palpable.

I didn't want to know how he knew that.

Maggs came in and growled, her hackles raised.

"What?" I said.

Which is when Geoffrey Nice dropped down from the upper floor and said, "Hello, Rose."