Unhooked(91)

Epilogue


IT’S A BLUSTERY WINTER DAY when we brave the drifting snow of a French cemetery. We find Rowan’s brother deep within a field of crosses as white as the snow that drifts around them, and at the sight of Michael’s name, Rowan crumples to his knees.

I follow him down more slowly, no longer feeling the blistering wind that bites at my cheeks, or the damp cold that creeps up my legs. I’m not sure he even knows I’m here.

He’s been practically silent for weeks, and he’s silent now as he stares at the barren stone, his face creased with regret and pain, his shoulders rising and falling with the effort not to cry out. His arm—the one that had once been so alive with Fey enchantment in Neverland—hangs stiff and heavy at his side.

We tried to talk him into wearing a different prosthetic, one that’s lighter and more useful, but he wouldn’t listen. Once we returned it to him, he refused anything but the heavy piece of dead metal that had been his constant companion for so long. It seems so unfair—with all he’d already lost—for him to lose the magic of that as well. I catch him looking down at the lifeless fist occasionally, but I never know what to do for him. Just as I don’t know what to do as we kneel before Michael’s grave.

But I want some closure or relief for him—some small thing that will help him knit himself back together and feel whole again. I want it so badly that my chest aches with it.

As we kneel there—he near tears and I wanting so much to help—neither of us notices at first what is happening. It’s only when one of his tears finally does break free and he reaches up to wipe it away with what should have been lifeless metal that we know anything has changed.

He looks at me, the wonder in his eyes pushing aside a bit of the grief.

“Did you . . . ?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper.

I lick my chapped lips and watch him open and close the metal fist. “I think I did.”

He blinks, raising his arm and testing it, opening and closing the delicately wrought fingers one at a time. “Well, then.” He looks over at me, the ghost of a grin twitching at the corners of his mouth, the bleakness in his eyes lifting just a bit.

He laces the fingers of his mechanical hand with mine, and then—his eyes never leaving mine—he raises both to place a gentle kiss on the inside of my wrist. I let him pull me to my feet then, and with the snow swirling around us and our fingers still intertwined, we start back to the warmth of the waiting car.

That’s when I think that, someday, it might just be okay. Here on the snow-swept field that holds the bodies of so many forgotten lives—a field that might have held his just as easily—I know he’ll heal. I believe I’ll find a way to forgive. And together we’ll remember the lost.





Acknowledgments


This story has been through a lot since it started back in 2011 as a NaNoWriMo project, so I have more than a few people to thank for it finally making its way into the world:

First and foremost, my heartfelt thanks to my agent, Kathleen Rushall. She loved this story from the beginning and has been its constant champion. I can’t imagine having a better partner in this crazy business, and I’m grateful every day that she’s in my corner.

My brilliant editor, Sara Sargent—thank you for loving this story enough to make it into a book. I’ve learned so much working with you, and this story is so much better for it. And many thanks to the entire team at Simon Pulse who got behind this book and made it everything that it is.

Along the way, many people read and gave comments on various versions of this book: Amanda Kin, Stephanie Foote, Hope Cook, and Danielle Ellison. Thank you for your keen insights and thoughtful critiques.

Thanks to all the writers that I’ve come to count as friends, and who have made this journey a little less lonely: Christina June, Olivia Hinebaugh, Helene Dunbar, Kristen Lippert-Martin, Joy Hensley, Jenny Adams Perinovic, Rachael Allen, Vivi Barnes, and the amazing writers who debuted with me as the Fall Fourteeners.

And I have to thank one writer in particular—Jennifer Echols was one of the first YA writers I met back in 2010 when I decided to try writing a book. At my first meeting of Birmingham’s chapter of RWA, she went out of her way to make me feel like I belonged there and to encourage me to keep going in the face of rejection. Four years later, she was assigned a new editor—one who had a pirate book on her wish list—and Jennifer remembered that I’d been writing this one. It’s because of her generosity that this book found the home it did. She’s the kind of writer—and person—I want to be when I grow up, and you should all go read her books right now.

And last, but never least, to my family—my boys who make every day an adventure, and to J, who makes it all worthwhile.