and turns to look at me. “Trust me.” He holds out his hand.
I feel like I’m moving in slow motion as I put my hand in his, let him draw me out of the truck on his side.
It’s beautiful here. Green trees, aspens whispering, a view of the distant mountains.
I hadn’t expected it to be so beautiful.
Christian leads me off the road into the forest. We step around graves, most of them standard pieces of marble, nothing fancy, simple inscriptions with names and dates. Then we’re to a set of concrete stairs, stairs in the middle of the forest, with a long, painted black metal bar on one side. My heart jumps to my throat when I see them, a field of gray pressing in on the edges of my sight, something I used to feel last year right before I’d have the vision. I bite my lip so hard I taste a hint of blood. But I don’t go, don’t rocket away to the day of Mom’s funeral. I stay here. With Christian.
“This way,” he says, tugging gently on my hand. We walk, not up the hill this time, not toward the place where a hole will be dug in the ground, my mother lowered into it, but across the hillside to a small white marble bench, framed by aspens, a rosebush planted beside it, which bears a single, perfect white rose.
Christian sees that rose and laughs in this kind of choked-up way. He lets go of my hand.
“I thought you said this rosebush never blooms,” I say, staring at the inscription on the bench. LOVING MOTHER, DEVOTED SISTER, TRUEST FRIEND. There’s a plaque in the ground, too, a plain white rectangle bearing the words BONNIE ELIZABETH PRESCOTT. An etching of a rose. No birth or death dates, which strikes me as odd, but if Bonnie were even middle-aged as an angel-blood when she passed, her birth date would have definitely raised some eyebrows.
“It doesn’t bloom,” Christian answers. “Today’s the first time.” He takes a deep breath, reaches to touch the rose gently. Then he looks at me. There is so much emotion in him at the moment that I instinctively try to close the door between us; it’s too much, but I can still see it in his face. He has something he wants, no, he
“My mother had beautiful hair,” he says.
Okay, not exactly what I was expecting.
“It was this pale blond, like corn silk. I used to watch her brush it. She’d sit at her vanity in her bedroom and brush it until it shone. She had green eyes. And she liked to sing. She sang all the time. She couldn’t seem to help herself.”
He sits down on the bench. I stand there for a minute, watching him get lost in the memory of his mother.
“I think about her every day,” he says. “And I miss her. Every. Single. Day.”
“I know.”
He looks up at me earnestly. “I want you to know, I’m going to be there. When it happens to you. I will be by your side the whole time, if you’ll let me. I promise you that.” People are making a lot of promises to me lately. I nod. I sit down on the bench next to Christian and gaze at the mountains, where I can barely make out the white point of the Grand Teton. A breeze lifts my hair, blows it onto Christian’s shoulder.
This is the most beautiful place for a cemetery. It’s peaceful here, removed from life and all its worries, but also still connected to it. Overlooking the town. Watching over us. This is the perfect place for Mom’s body to rest, I think, and in this moment, when I imagine her here as something other than a recurring nightmare, it’s the first time I picture what will happen after she dies. Not the funeral or the graveside, or the stuff in my vision. After. We’re going to leave her here, and it’s all right. When it happens we will put her body to rest here, in this beautiful place, by Christian’s mother. I’ll come up here once in a while like he does, and lay flowers on her grave.
Christian slips his hand into mine again. “You’re crying.” I lift my free hand up to my cheek; he’s right. I’m crying. But it’s a good kind of crying, I think. Maybe it means I’m letting go.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” I say.
That’s when he says, “Clara, there’s something I need to tell you.” He stands up. He keeps hold of my hand and moves in front of me. The afternoon sun strikes his hair and makes a golden lining around him. I squint up at him, into his eyes.
“Your dad’s an angel, and your mom’s a Dimidius,” he says, “which makes you a Triplare.”
“How do you even know what that is?” I gasp. I thought it was some kind of super secret.
“My uncle. When I was ten years old he sat me down and told me all about the Triplare, how rare they are — he believes only seven Triplare ever walk the earth at the same time — how powerful they are. How they must be protected, at all costs.” Is that what he wants, I wonder, to protect me? Is that what the I’ll-always-be-here-for- you stuff is really about? Is his purpose to be a kind of guardian for me?
“I’ve been wanting to tell you for months,” he says. “I thought it was just going to burst out of me at times, like in
“Wait,” I say. “You’ve been wanting to tell me what? That I’m a Triplare?”
“I’ve known since that Angel Club with the glory.” He runs a hand through his hair, blows out a long breath. “But I suspected it since the fire.” I stare at him. How could he have known that I’m a Triplare even before I did?
“I’ve never told this to anybody,” he says. “My uncle has pounded it into my brain again and again: no one must know. No one. Not even the other angel-bloods. Especially the other angel-bloods, as a matter of fact. He says there isn’t anybody, not anybody, you understand, who we can trust.”
His hand tightens in mine.
“But he’s wrong,” he says fiercely. “Even though you say you’re bad with secrets. You didn’t tell Tucker, when you thought he was going to die. That took strength. You’re so strong, Clara, you don’t even know. You’re amazing. You’re beautiful and brave and sarcastic and hilarious and I think. .” He takes a breath. “My visions keep telling me, over and over and over again, that I can trust you. I can trust you.”
Something shifts in his face. He’s going to tell me. He’s going to throw caution to the wind and put it all out
