Part Seven: The Pendant, Made Whole
Marcus took both halves from his pocket.
He held them out to Lily — the two pieces together, the wolf complete, the break between them visible but no longer a separation.
“Your mother gave you this to keep?” he asked.
“She said it was mine,” Lily said. “Half of something that belonged together.”
“She was right.”
He placed both pieces in Lily’s hand, which surprised her — he saw it in her face, the small recalibration. She looked down at them, then up at him.
“Don’t you want yours back?” she asked.
“I carried it for nineteen years,” he said. “I think it’s done what it needed to do.”
Lily looked at the pendant for a long moment. Then, with the careful deliberateness of someone making a decision they plan to keep, she closed her fingers around it.
“Okay,” she said.
Sarah had been watching this exchange. Her eyes were bright with the specific brightness of someone who is not allowing themselves to cry, not yet, not here on the shoulder of a highway at nine-thirty at night. She had the look of a person who has been tightly wound for a very long time and is only beginning, cautiously, to let the tension ease.
“I don’t know what happens next,” she said to Marcus. “I’m not asking you for anything. I found you because she deserved to know you existed. Because I was tired of carrying the story alone.”
Marcus was quiet for a moment. Inside the diner across the street, visible through the window, the ordinary night continued — the griddle, the television, the twenty people in their separate worlds. Kowalski was no longer visible. He had gone, the way people like that go when the situation has moved beyond what they can manage.
“Where are you living?” Marcus asked.
“Currently — nowhere specific,” Sarah admitted. “We’ve been moving while I verified things. Martin found us a place, a temporary one, but I haven’t decided — I’m not sure where—” She stopped. Looked at him. “I didn’t plan this part,” she said. “I planned up to finding you. After that I—” A pause. “I stopped being able to imagine it.”
“I’ve been in Sedona for three years,” Marcus said. “I have a house. It’s not large, but it’s mine and it’s quiet.” He paused. “There’s a room that I’ve been using as storage. It has a window that looks out toward the canyon.”
Lily’s head turned toward him with an alertness that reminded him, suddenly and with startling force, of himself at that age — the quality of attention when something important is about to be decided.
“Are you—” Sarah started.
“I’m not asking for anything either,” Marcus said. “I’m saying there’s a room. I’m saying Sedona is as good a place as any to figure out the next part.” He looked at Lily. “And I’m saying that I would like to know this person, if she’ll let me.”
Lily considered him with great seriousness.
“You should know,” she said finally, “that I have a lot of questions.”
“Good,” Marcus said. “So do I.”
