Page 64 of Of Sinners & Salvation
“I just want to make sure everyone got off the island.”
“They did.”
“I just want to make sure,” she says. “Plus, I have a job here, a life. I have some things going on that I can’t just walk out on. Just give me a few months to sort things out. It won’t be forever, Heath. I promise.”
“Really?” I ask. “You’ll come home? You promise?”
She shrugs. “I mean… It’s home.”
I throw my arms around her, and she laughs into my shoulder, and then I’m laughing too, though my eyes are wet suddenly. “You better,” I say. “You’re too young to be the town witch living alone on the seashore.”
“We both know that’s not true,” she says. “You remember Mom’s stories from when we were little.”
I laugh through my tears. “I’m never letting you go again.”
“You gotta let go sometime,” she says. “I have to go back to work.”
“Nope, sorry.”
She laughs and wrestles free of me. “Come with me,” she says, climbing to her feet and holding out a hand to pull me up. “We can catch up more while I close. I have to mop and shit.”
“Sounds thrilling,” I say, shaking my head.
“I’ll let you sample every flavor,” she offers, like she has to convince me to go with her.
“I do like all the flavors.”
Eternity throws back her head and lets out that bawdy, throaty laugh I never thought I’d hear again, and my eyes blur with tears. As I blink them away, I wonder if I died in that hospital bed and this is all a dream on my way to hell. There’s no way a heathen like me is getting into heaven. But if my little reward on the way to eternal damnation is getting to hear my sister laugh again, I’ll take it.
twenty-one
The Saint
“I can’t believe she’s here,” Mercy says, as we hurry down the windswept beach toward a rock jutting up in the distance. A lone figure sits perched on it. My throat goes dry at the thought of who it is, sitting out there so exposed, so vulnerable. “Why didn’t she want to see us?”
“She does want to see you,” Heath says. “That’s why we’re all going. But she’s not coming back right away, and she didn’t want everyone giving her shit about it. Plus, she’s a little skittish. I think it was overwhelming for her to think about seeing us all at once. So don’t be all weird and freak her out. And don’t ask her about what happened. If she wants to talk about it, let her do it when she’s ready.”
My footsteps slow as we get close, but Mercy breaks into a run, closing the short distance across the packed, wet sand to the black, barnacled rock where Eternity sits, hair blowing in the wind like a mythical siren.
“Eternity,” Mercy cries, launching herself at the rock. She scrambles up, throwing her arms around our childhood friend. Eternity loses her precarious perch, and they go tumbling off the rock onto the sand in a tangle.
“Uh, okay,” Eternity says, picking herself up and brushing sand off her leather jacket with a scowl. “Glad to see some of you haven’t changed.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Mercy stammers, jumping to her feet, her cheeks red with embarrassment. “I just—I can’t believe we finally found you.”
“Great job not being weird,” I mutter to her before I bend to swipe Eternity’s phone from where she dropped it, the news article about a serial killer in Tennessee that she was reading still open on the screen.
Angel steps in to hug E, much more reservedly, and I hand back her phone back when they’re done with the greeting.
“I didn’t find her,” Heath says to Mercy. “She found me. That’s what happens when you’re famous. People see you on TV.”
“Okay, asshole,” Angel says cheerfully, throwing an arm around our heathen. “You’re lucky you had such a good excuse for being out last night, or Dante would have kicked your ass when you got home.”
“I wasn’t aware we have a curfew,” Heath says, turning to Father Salvatore. “Sorry, Daddy.”
The priest just shakes his head. Then he holds out a hand and introduces himself to Eternity.
“I guess you’re all still friends,” she says, looking a little wistful as she surveys us, her gaze coming to land on me last. I’m reminded of the last encounter we had, how awkward it was afterwards. So awkward we left her alone to deal with it on her own.
