Graveminder

Chapter 4

WILLIAM STOOD IN THE QUIET OF THE PREPARATION ROOM. MAYLENE WAS silent on the table in front of him. She was gone. He knew that. The body wasn’t her, wasn’t the woman he’d loved for most of his life.

“Even now, I want to ask your opinion. I hate taking the next step without you.” He stood beside the cold steel table where they’d stood together over the years more times than he could rightly count.

“Do you ever regret it?” She didn’t look up as she asked the question. Her hand rested on her son’s chest. Jimmy hadn’t coped well with the loss of his family. Unlike his parents, he was made of softer stuff. Maylene and James were strong-willed. They had to be in order to raise a family and make a life.

“No, not what we do.”

Maylene lifted her gaze from her son. “You regret what we didn’t do?”

“Mae ... you know that’s not a conversation that’s going to help either one of us.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “We were who we were when we got called. You were already spoken for. I found Annie. I loved her. Still do.”

“Sometimes I wonder ... if I hadn’t tried to build a life so different from what we could’ve had—”

“Don’t. You and James had a good life; Annie and I did, too.” He didn’t pull Maylene closer. After several decades as her partner, he knew to wait until she was ready to be comforted.

“My husband’s dead, my granddaughter’s dead, now my son.” The tears slipped over the lines in her face. “My Cissy and both my blood-granddaughters are angry at the world. Beks isn’t Jimmy’s daughter by blood, but she’s family now. She’s mine. She’s all I’ve got left.”

“And me. I’m with you till the end,” he reminded her as he had so many times before.

Maylene turned away from her son’s body and let William fold her into his embrace. “I can’t have her hate me, Liam. I can’t. She can’t know yet. She wasn’t even born here.”

“Mae, we’re getting too old to keep this up. The kids are more than old enough—”

“No.” She pushed away. “I’ve got one daughter who hates me, two granddaughters who can’t handle being this, and Beks. She’s only lived in Claysville a few years. I’m going to let her go for now. Byron wants to stay away from here, live a little. You know he does. Let them both have some time away.”

And William did what he’d always done when Maylene needed anything: he agreed. “A few more years.”

Now he was standing in the same spot—only this time they had no more choices. Byron needed to know; Rebekkah needed to know. In the years since Jimmy’s death, William had suggested it often enough, but Maylene had refused every time.

“No more choices, Mae.” He looked down at her lifeless body. “I wish I could protect them longer. I wish I could’ve protected you.”

That was the crux of it, though: he hadn’t. After half a lifetime of being by her side, they’d both gotten complacent. She’d handled so much that he’d almost forgotten what could happen.

Almost.

Every month the chance was there, and until he introduced his son to Mr. D, the town was unprotected. He loathed what Byron and Rebekkah were being asked to handle, but it was past time.

“They’re strong enough.” William brushed his fingers over Maylene’s cheek. “And she’ll forgive you, Mae, just as we forgave those before us.”