River’s End

tears.
    “Don’t! Don’t cry. I’ll send him away. He won’t come back.” Already on her knees, Olivia wrapped her arms around Val’s waist. “I won’t see him again.”
    “He was right.” Eyes drenched, Val framed Olivia’s pale face. “I wanted to throw it back in his face, but he was right. You’d turn away from him. from your own heart if you thought it was what I needed. I wanted him to be the selfish one, but I’m the one who’s been selfish.”
    “No. Never.”
    “I’ve hoarded you, Livvy.” With an unsteady hand, Val brushed at Olivia’s hair. “As much for your sake as mine in the beginning, but ... As time passed, just for me. I lost my Julie, and I promised myself nothing would ever happen to you.”
    “You took care of me.”
    “Yes, I took care of you.” Tears streaming still, Val pressed a kiss to Olivia’s forehead. “I loved you, and, Livvy, I needed you. I needed you so desperately. So I never let you go, not really.”
    “Don’t cry, Gran.” It ripped her to shreds to see the tears.
    “I have to face it. We both do. I never let either of us face it, Livvy. Every time your grandfather would try to talk to me about it, to make me see. I closed off. Even just a few days ago, I wouldn’t listen to him. I knew he was right, but I wouldn’t listen. Now it’s taken an outsider to make me face it.”
    “Everything I have, everything I am, I owe to you.”
    “‘It’s not a debt.” Anger with herself made Val’s voice sharp. “I’m ashamed to know I let you think it was or should be. I’m ashamed that I pulled back from you when you chose to cooperate with this book. I could see it was something you needed, but I pulled back, deliberately, and made you suffer for it. I put a wedge between us. and I was too proud, too afraid to pull it out again.”
    “I have to know why it happened.”
    “And I’ve never let you. I’ve never let any of us.” Val drew Olivia closer, rested her cheek on the soft cap of hair. “I still don’t know if I can Face it all. But I do know I want you to be happy. Not just safe. Being safe isn’t enough to live on.”
    Steadier. Val eased back, rubbed the tears away. “It’s best if your young man stays here.”
    “I don’t want him to upset you.”
    Val took what she hoped was the next step and managed a smile. “I’d rather he stay here where I can keep an eye on him and see if he’s good enough for you. If I decide he’s not, I’ll see that your grandfather whips him into shape.”
    Olivia turned her cheek into Val’s hand. “He claims he can charm you in less than an hour.”
    “Well, we’ll just see about that.” Rising, Val plucked out a tissue, blew her nose. “It takes more than a pretty face to charm me. I’ll make up my own mind in my own time.” Her head felt a little hollow from the emotional ride. “I suppose I’d better go up and see that the guest room’s in order.”
    “I’ll do it. I’ll just take my pack up.” She hefted it. “I should run over to the Center, check on things. It won’t take me long.”
    “Take your time. It’ll give me a chance to interrogate your young man. You never brought one home with you before for me to make squirm.”
    “He’s slippery.”
    “I’m quick.”
    “Gran, I love you so much.”
    “Yes, I know you do. Go on. I need to make myself presentable. We’ll talk more, Livvy,” she murmured after Olivia started up the stairs. “It’s long past time we talked.”
    Her step was light as she crossed the upstairs hall to her room. She was in love, and it didn’t hurt a bit. The gaps that had widened between her and her grandmother over the past months were closing.
    The future was a wide, wonderful space overflowing with possibilities. Wanting to hurry, she flung open the door of her room. And the joy that had just begun to fill her soul fell away.
    There, on the pillow of her bed, bathed in a quiet stream of sunlight, lay a single white rose.

Thirty
    She couldn’t breathe. Her head rang, wild, frantic bells that vibrated down from her skull, pealed down her spine, beat along her numbed legs until she simply collapsed forward on her hands and knees and began to suck for air like a woman drowning. There was a terrible urge to crawl away.
    Into the closet, into the dark.
    She fought it and the ice-pick jabs of panic in her chest. She pressed her hand to her shirt, then stared down it, surprised it wasn’t covered with blood. The monster was here.
    In the