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CHAPTER SIX *JULIAN*

It's the nicest day we've had since summer began. Summer, with it sweltering heat and oppressive cover. Hot and stormy and long. Suffocating. Not only because of the weather. But today there is a breeze with a hint of sweetness, a promise that Autumn is near.

        I am sitting on a blanket with Noah. He's almost a year old now and the changes he's gone through, how he's grown, is amazing to me. He crawls, laughs, babbles, pulls to a stand with confidence. I am Dada. He reaches for me whenever I'm in the room. Right now he's headed for the orange chrysanthemums at the base of the smoke gray headstone. Because I know he'll ruin them and try to eat them, I divert him in the other direction. He heads for the rolling grass instead.

        He has my sky blue eyes, but her golden hair having lost the dark fuzz he'd had at birth. He has her smile. I miss seeing her with him, miss sharing this with his mother.

        I lift my head and gaze at the headstone where the sun glints off of it and makes me squint. The name of my hero is etched there, the dates of too brief a life. My father, who died when an actual grenade was flung at us from the treeline on St Patrick's Day, died trying to protect the mother of my child. The woman I love. The woman we all love.

        But we lost her anyway. By the time I came to, having been knocked out by the blast, she was gone. My father was dead. And I am unmoored once again.

        I don't know if Everly is alive or dead. I don't know if she somehow was able to rise and run of her own free will or if someone has taken her. All I know is that once more she has vanished into thin air and I have no idea where else to look.

        I have searched every school district in Pennsylvania for her name and have come up empty. The police have put out alerts for her in the Northeast to no avail. It would take us years, even working together, to search everywhere she could be. If she's run, I'm sure she's not close by this time. If she's taken-

        I shake my head at the thought.

        I believed her when she promised not to leave again. And I believe she meant it when she said it. But all bets would have been off for her the moment the first shot aimed at someone besides herself went off. And the death of my dad... Everly would see this- all of it- as her fault.

        The shooter had sent me a message. I had just seen Everly off, thrown on my flannel for the walk back to the big house, when my phone alerted me to a text.

        I opened it.

        It was a picture of Everly, in her white jacket with the little fur trimmed hood. In the field. The text accompanying it read simply, "3...2...1."

        My heart seized up, air trapped in my lungs. I have never moved so fast in my life. I called to dad and Cole as I burst through the back door and screamed at her. She stopped and turned and as my eyes flit to the trees the first shot rang out.

        I did my best. I swear my legs carried me as fast as I'd ever run. But I couldn't beat that bullet. I was so focused on her beautiful face that I didn't even realize she'd been hit until she told me.

        So much blood. It just ran and ran despite the pressure I put on that wound.

        And then my father, my retired Army father, shouting the word, "Grenade!"

    It seemed impossible, but there was no mistaking the urgency in his voice. And then I remembered the text of five grenades that had been sent to Everly so many months ago. I covered her, felt the heat, the push as the device exploded. The force of it, clearly nearby, tearing her out of my grip, the slam of it knocking both air and consciousness from me.