Page 78 of Kiss of Death
“Dad.”
I turned to the line of trees where the forest began and saw Tiberius standing there, my youngest boy, a small bow slung over his shoulder, one I’d made for his birthday. With midnight-black hair and skin as fair as sand, he looked at me impatiently.
“Dad, come on. The deer will get away.” He turned and beelined into the forest.
I took off after him, sprinting at full speed like there was a chance my six-year-old boy would get away. But when I entered the forest, he wasn’t there. I sprinted down the path and saw him as a dot in the shadow of the trees, but no matter how hard I pushed myself, I couldn’t catch up to my son.
I eventually came to a stop, physically exhausted and unable to breathe.
“Dad.”
I didn’t recognize the voice. It was much older than Tiberius’s was, and it belonged to a man.
I slowly turned around to see Darius standing there, a handsome young man, maybe seventeen or eighteen. He had my dark hair and eyes, looking more like me as a man than he did as a boy.
“Dad, the deer have been gone a long time. They left this forest many years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I missed it.”
“Dad.”
I heard another voice behind me, different from the other two I’d heard, but this time, I knew what to expect. I slowly turned around and looked at Tiberius again, but he was older than his brother now, holding a little girl who seemed to be three or four in one of his arms, her hair auburn.
I recognized her from my visits, my first granddaughter. “She’s beautiful.”
“I’ll teach her to hunt for deer,” Tiberius said. “Whenever they come back.”
“If they come back,” Darius said from behind me.
The setting suddenly changed, and I was outside my old home, the little house I’d built in a rush when we found out Anya was pregnant. The gate that hung on the fence was crooked and about to fall off because I’d always been too busy to fix it. Smoke came out of the chimney like someone was home.
The front door suddenly opened, and Anya emerged, a one-year-old girl on her hip, a daughter who looked like us both, even though she wasn’t mine. Anya’s eyes were unkind as she looked at me, like I was a stranger who had trespassed on her property. “You shouldn’t be here. You’re a liar. You’re a traitor.”
I finally had my chance to defend my character, but instead, I just let my eyes fill with tears that didn’t fall.
She gave one final look of loathing before she turned back toward the house and stepped inside. She kicked the door shut hard with her foot. Smoke continued to rise from the chimney in the living room.
“It’s okay, Callum.”
I paused when I heard her voice, a voice I’d recognize anywhere.
“Let them rest.”
I didn’t turn to look at her right away, afraid to meet her gaze.
“Callum.”
Her hypnotic voice was impossible to ignore forever, not when it was both strong and serene, not when it made my heart dance in the gentlest way. I turned away from my home and locked eyes with her.
She stood in a black dress with one strap over her shoulder, a high slit up the opposite leg, her hair down and gently moving in the breeze that came through the valley. A vision, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and she looked at me with only love.
Then she moved her hand to her stomach, and that was the moment I realized how her body had changed.
That she glowed in the most beautiful light.
“Never forget the past, but don’t live in it, Callum Riverside.”
I stepped toward her, the beautiful flower that I’d nurtured in my garden, the only one I watered and cared for. All the others had died and turned to weeds because nothing mattered except for this single pink rose.
