Gravel crunches under the tires of my car.

I’ve gone over this same patch hundreds of times throughout the years. I have the same anxiety when I make the turn. The same nettle in each breath. The familiar, ever-present ache that no amount of time we have with those we love will ever be enough.

Only this time it feels different from all the other times before it.

My lungs feel slightly less constricted. My heart a little less heavy. I feel, I don’t know, lighter, I suppose.

I ended up staying at Randi’s until early morning, talking mostly about Violet. It was cathartic for both of us. And eye-opening. Randi knew a whole different side to my sister, and it was nice to reminisce with someone who misses her as much as I do.

I haven’t talked about Violet—truly talked about Violet—since she died. It was a taboo subject under my mother’s roof. It wasn’t a much better one with my father because it caused him pain, too, and while I know Sierra would have listened, it’s not a burden you want to saddle your friends with either.

With each story Randi and I traded, the fog of grief that’s kept me trapped since I was twelve was driven further and further away. By the time I dropped into bed at five o’clock this morning, exhausted, an entire lifetime seemed to have been lifted from my shoulders.

And with all that weight gone I found something within myself only I ever had the ability to find: peace.

I thought I’d spent all these years searching for me, but what I’ve actually been desperate to find is the hush that comes with accepting we’re just along for the ride.

The truth is we control very little in this life. And accepting that, finding peace within after we’ve mourned and closed ourselves off for a while so we can heal is the only control we do have.

We all love and lose. It’s a sad fact of life. But we can choose to hold on to the loss itself or to the love that came before it. All this time I’ve chosen wrong.

I realized something about myself yesterday at Randi’s. My entire family would be disappointed with how I’ve lived my life up to this point. Or not lived it as the case may be. And I want them to be proud.

As I arrive at the eternal place my sister and father rest, I notice a black Jeep parked in my usual spot. Not giving it a second thought, I slow to a stop and push the gearshift into park before exiting the car, careful to leave enough space between our vehicles.

I scoop fresh flowers from the passenger seat and step out into the chilly November day. Tugging the edges of my coat against my chin with my free hand, I’m almost to the willow tree when I see her.

My feet freeze, along with my breath.

She’s kneeling, her back to me. Long raven hair, streaked turquoise in spots, blows in the cold breeze as she traces my father’s name carved in gray limestone. She draws a finger down the last “l” before she starts over again.

My eyes instantly water.

I don’t know how Annabelle found my father’s grave and it doesn’t matter, I guess. Watching the reverent way she goes over his name for the third time since I walked up breaks something loose.

I knew I needed to talk to Annabelle, only I didn’t know how, or when, or what I was going to say. What does one do in a situation like this?

But her being here today, at the same time I am, is not simply divine intervention. My father brought me here at this very moment for this very reason. I’m convinced of it.

If this had happened yesterday morning, before I talked to Randi, I would have turned and left, hoping she didn’t see me. But you don’t look divinity in the face and walk away from it.

Nervously, I command my feet to move, each step deliberately quiet. When I come closer, I realize she’s talking. A word or two caught by the breeze floats my way, and although my sheer presence is an intrusion into an incredibly private moment, I continue forward until I’m within a few feet.

As if she feels me, she snaps her arm to her side like the rock suddenly shocked her. Her shoulders square and her back stiffens, though she doesn’t turn.

“I can go.”

She starts to rise but I set my palm on her shoulder. “No. Stay.” I notice she’s shivering. She must have been here awhile.

She hovers in indecision but eventually sinks back to where she was. We stay like this, her kneeling, me standing behind her until she breaks the awkward silence.

“I remember events about that night I’m desperate to forget but I’m desperate to remember the ones I can’t. Why is that?” Her voice is small, childlike, and horribly torn.

Three shuffles and I’m next to her. I bend down over my sister’s tomb, the cold from the ground sucking the warmth from my shins. Noticing a fresh bouquet of flowers in the holder that she must have brought, I set my own bundle beside me.

I wish I had something philosophical and insightful to say that would ease her personal hell. But to some degree, she’s got to come to terms with this on her own, as I have. Instead, I try to channel my father’s wisdom and what he would want me to say.

“I think the mind works in mysterious ways.”

She bows her head until her chin burrows inside her jacket. “I need to remember. I need to.” Her voice cracks. A single drop of water drips down her cheek.

That’s the last thing she needs, but I don’t say it. Remembering that night would be the worst form of torture. Truthfully, I’m glad she doesn’t remember because I would beg her to recount it second by second and those are details I don’t want stuck in my head either.

“When I was little I used to have nightmares. Bad ones. Nightly for a while. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, screaming and shaking and Daddy would hold me until I calmed down. But every time he asked me what they were about, I couldn’t remember. The only thing left was the feeling of panic and being powerless.”

“Sounds familiar,” she murmurs.

I stop to bite my lip and steady my voice.

“One night after a particularly bad nightmare, I asked him why I couldn’t remember.”

I see her head turn, sense her staring at me but I’m staring ahead, lost in the feel of my father’s strong, comforting arms. I swear they’re wrapped around me now.

“He said because bad memories take up too much space and you need that space for good memories.”

Why didn’t I remember that until now? He was trying to placate his scared little girl but what he said was so profound. And so true. Bad always overshadows the good if we let it. And I’ve let it.

“I need more space,” she says on a hush.

“Me too,” I reply the same way.

The soothing rustle of leaves is the only sound for a while. I watch Annabelle, wondering what kinds of horrors could possibly be buried in her young psyche already.

She bends her knees, drawing them up to her chin. Her usually bright eyes are dull and lidded. Her porcelain skin carries an unhealthy hue. She reminds me of me when my sister died, crawling into herself for protection. She looks as if she could splinter into the earth below her and be fine with it.

Guilt eats me up. If she ends up like Violet, I’ll never forgive myself. But I don’t know how to help her either.

“Your sister was a Metallica fan, huh?”

My gaze falls to the musical notes on Violet’s headstone. I brush off a couple of dried leaves sitting on top. “My sister was a music fan, period. Metallica, Blink 182, Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor.” I chuckle to myself, recalling the inside joke I shared with my father. “You name it, she loved it.” I turn to her now. “Like you, I imagine.”

Her eyes dart to Vi’s memorial and back to me. “She died young.”

“Yes, she did,” I agree. It doesn’t hurt quite as much this time when I say it.

“That’s…I’m sorry.”

I swallow and nod.

“How?”

A bold question but I’d expect nothing less from Annabelle.

“She overdosed on cocaine.”

Her head jerks in shock as her mouth flies open as if either the idea is preposterous or it hits a little too close to home.

For days I’ve questioned my ability to put this entire tragedy into some sort of perspective that makes sense, but something my father said once pushes its way to the front of my mind, almost as if he’s whispering it in my ear now.

“Our lives unfold a certain way for reasons that aren’t always apparent to us until the time is right.”

Quite frankly at the time, I thought it was bullshit he made up to make me feel better about my sister dying but now that I understand it, I realize the burden I’ve carried about Violet’s death, or his death for that matter, weren’t actually burdens at all. The gifts of empathy and compassion simply can’t be understood through anything other than life experience.

I was set straight on a path to love Shaw Mercer for more than one reason and she’s currently staring at me as if I’m possibly the only one in the world who can throw her a lifeline.

“It’s uncanny how like you she was. In every way.”

She presses her plum lips together, drawing in air through her nose. “You mean the drugs?”

“I mean everything,” I reply, straightforward, taking Sierra’s approach for once. While Annabelle looks precious and breakable, through her shadows I see grit and tenacity and a belligerent spirit she’ll need now more than ever. “How are you handling all”—I wave around—“this?”

She slides her heels to the ground, angling her legs to the side. She turns her attention back to my sister’s grave, fingers absently plucking the dead grass beneath us.

“I want to numb myself against it all, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It’s what I’m asking. Have you?”

She half laughs, half huffs, throwing the blades in her hand to the wind. “I’m under house arrest. Not a lot of drug deliveries to the gated mansions on Yarrow Bay.”

So she’s still staying with Shaw. I want to ask her about him. How he is. If he got the new fancy treadmill he was researching for his home gym or if he’s been up in the middle of the night eating Eleanor specials like he does when he’s stressed.

Instead, “That’s probably a good thing.”

A noncommittal humming noise leaves her throat. I shift to push my legs out in front of me when my knees start to ache.

“So how are you here, unguarded?”

The smile she gives me is droll and mocking. She quickly looks behind us as if she’s confirming she wasn’t followed, but we’re all alone. Suddenly I’m checking her more closely. Are her eyes glassy? Is she extra fidgety? Do I even know what I’m looking for? I decide she seems perfectly fine. Sad, lost, but physically okay.

“You escaped yet you came here instead of a drug dealer. That’s a good step.”

She starts twisting the ends of her hair around her finger.

“Don’t let them win, Annabelle,” I say. “The drugs. The monsters inside. Fight them with everything in you. Don’t let them win.”

“I don’t want to,” she replies softly, her eyes filling to the brim with water. “But I don’t know how I’m supposed to live with what I’ve done.”

Knife straight through the heart.

I reach out and smooth stray hairs stuck to her cheek back behind her ears and tell her the same thing I told Randi, meaning it. “It’s not your fault, Annabelle. It was an accident.”

Her gaze, which had fallen to my lap, slices to mine. “Accident? How can you say that?” She shoves herself to her feet. I follow, worried she’ll bolt. “I killed your father, Willow. I killed him. If I hadn’t been a fucked-up mess that night, he would still be alive. You would still be with my brother. I wouldn’t be shaking with the need to do a line like my next breath right now so I could drown out the guilt that feels suffocating. Even if for a little while.”

I don’t tell her I’d never have been with Shaw if my father hadn’t died and she lived. I’d be married to Reid. “No. My father saved your life. You didn’t kill him.”

“Same thing.”

I take a step toward her. She takes a half step back. I lower my voice and will her to hear what I’m saying.

“It’s not the same thing at all, Annabelle. I know what happened earlier that night. You were distraught.” Her face blanches. Another dance. Me forward, her backward.

“You don’t know anything.” Her voice is quiet torment on a wisp of air.

A bad feeling swarms me. Call it woman’s intuition. Could more have happened that night than she told Shaw?

“Then tell me.”

More shuffling. Her head moves left to right. She’s not ready. She may never be ready.

“I know you have your family, but if you want to talk, I have a good ear. And I don’t judge.”

She nods once, kicking her right foot back and forth over the top of the grass.

“I don’t blame you, Annabelle. For anything,” I tell her sincerely.

“You should.”

“I don’t. In fact, I think we’re standing here together for a reason.”

“And what would that be?” She’s brusque but I don’t let it get to me.

“I don’t know yet,” I tell her truthfully. “But I know there is one.” I reach out and take her hand. “If you don’t hear anything else I’m saying, please hear this: I don’t feel I have anything to forgive you for, but if you need it know that I do. I forgive you.”

Her head bobs up and down. She swallows hard.

“Then why aren’t you with Shaw?”

“I needed time. This is…” I blow out a long stream of air until my lungs are completely empty. “Hard. For all of us.”

Her gaze doesn’t waver. “You told me you would love him no matter what.”

It’s not that easy, I want to say. I’m fucked up. This is what I do. But there’s a part of me that knows that’s an out-and-out lie. A cop-out. My usual, tired MO. I want to be with Shaw more than anything. Be part of his life and their crazy, imperfect family. I want to help his sister heal. Really heal, from the inside out because, with the little I’ve been exposed to Annabelle, I already know she’s taking my well-treaded path to keep to herself.

“I do love him, Annabelle. That hasn’t changed. That will never change.”

“Then why did you run off at my father’s party? Why have you been M-I-A for the last two weeks? Why is he behaving like a fucking asshole, running around biting off the dicks of every man, woman, and child he comes into contact with?”

I can’t help it. It’s so inappropriate in this situation but the picture she’s conjured is too realistic. And damn funny since I can see Shaw doing exactly that.

I try to bite it back but I lose.

I smile.

She’s confused at first, then the corners of her mouth begin to curl, too.

A giggle escapes my closed lips. One escapes hers.

And pretty soon, we’re both full-on laughing with tears of joy and sorrow streaming down our faces.

“Biting off dicks, huh?” I squeal through hiccups.

“Yeah,” she agrees, her tone shrill.

We laugh until we’re all laughed out, but our tears don’t stop. They don’t stop when my arms come around her shoulders or when hers wind tentatively around my waist. They don’t stop when she buries her head in my overcoat or when we hear a car roll by.

In fact, they don’t stop for a long, long while.

Together we grieve a man who was honorable and selfless.

Together we thank the man who gave her another chance at life.

Together we begin a healing process that wouldn’t have been possible without the other.

And sometime later, when she walks away after we’re talked and cried out, I call after her, “Annabelle.” She turns around and I tell her what my father would say. “Don’t squander the gift Charles Blackwell gave you. Make my father proud.”

Face red and eyes swollen, she lifts her trembling lips and whispers, “I’m trying.”

It’s not until I head back to the gravesite to say my private good-bye that I notice them.

Thin, red-hued branches sprinkled throughout the pure white arrangement.

They’re willows.

Red catkin willows.

My heart gets so big I think it’s going to bust clean through my ribs.

There’s no way Annabelle brought these flowers.

Shaw did.