PART THREE: AFTER

Miss American Dream, how dare you leave within sayin' goodbye? – "Miss American Dream" by Dylan Reynolds

Claire

Six thousand, one hundred seventy-eight dollars and twenty-four cents.

I count it once in Quil's truck and three more times in the bathroom between the Alaska Air ticket counter and a Starbucks.

I tried to do the math on the drive. Five dollars times two curses a week on average, times fifty-two weeks a year, times the thirteen or so years we've been doing this. Either I miscalculated, or Quil skipped out on paying up. More than once.

This is all the money I have to my name. It's also, apparently, useless. You can't buy plane tickets with cash. I knew that, of course, but in my haste this morning I'd pushed the thought aside. I told myself I'd figure it out later.

It's later now, and the only thing I've figured out is that Starbucks doesn't even open for another ten minutes. It's that early.

But I need something to keep my mind busy. Otherwise, The Black steals my breath, my vision, my heartbeats. The weight of my decision rests heavily on my shoulders, but the weight of her absence rests heavier on my soul.

How am I supposed to be in a house she's not in? One that's haunted with her laughter, her light. I don't know how to exist in a world where she doesn't, where every breath I take is one she won't.

I look out the window now, the first hints of dawn starting to show themselves. A few Starbucks employees amble around behind the counter, cleaning machines, whispering about the girl with puffy eyes and six thousand dollars loose in her backpack and a smell of desperation wafting off her like cheap perfume.

I wonder if Quil's awake yet, and the space between my legs pulses again with the beat of my heart. It's a different rhythm today. Mistake, mistake, mistake.

Not him—never him. But the leaving.

Knowing you'll regret something and doing it anyway has to be a sign of something. Immaturity? Idiocy? Avoidance?

Fear?

Fear sounds right.

Through watery eyes I look back to the counter, where a worker is expectant, waiting, a little fearful herself. What must I look like to them. I stand and grab the first bill I land on from the innards of my backpack—a twenty. I look over the bakery items the other worker is unloading, and then my eye snags on the cards by the register.

"Can you buy plane tickets with those?" I ask, nodding my head at the Visa cards next to the store-brand ones that scream Happy Birthday and ConGRADulations!

Her bushy brows furrow before she tracks my gaze. "Oh! Uh, yeah, I guess? Libby, can you buy plane tickets with the prepaid Visas?"

Libby, I assume, looks up, then studies me harshly. I don't back down.

"Depends where you're going," she says. "There's a thousand-dollar limit."

Quil

There's a funny feeling in my chest when I begin waking up, different than the overwhelming grief that's been living there for the last week or so.

I'm in Claire's room, which is one part of it. But another is that I'm naked.

God, last night was… Everything.

It's a cliché to say it was better than my best dreams, but here we are. Me in Claire's bed, the memory of her coming beneath me waking up my body better than any caffeine. So good, she'd said, over and over, and it was. Perfect, she'd gasped, and it was that too. Always, I told her, and I meant it.

In more ways than one.

I reach for her, ready to touch and comfort and love and kiss her, before I remember she's probably sore as hell. Maybe I'll just use my mouth if she's up for it. Oh, I know. I'll draw her a bath.

But I find nothing. No one.

I jolt further into consciousness, opening my eyes to find the other half of the bed empty. Well, it's more like the remaining quarter. I'm hogging almost the whole mattress. Maybe Claire went and slept in Callie's bed.

I reach for my phone, still buried in the back pocket of my pants. In the corner of my eye, something flutters in the breeze.

A scrap of paper?

I know by the end of the first line, this isn't a went out for breakfast note.

Quil, it reads.

I'm sorry. I have to go. It's too much to be here when she isn't.

Your keys are locked in your truck at the SeaTac airport. Don't forget your spare when you come get it.

Don't chase me. I'll have my phone.

I love you.

Claire

I can't decide whether I need my phone to call her or my underwear and shoes to just start running. I end up grabbing everything I can, shoving my legs in my boxers, dress pants next. I'm trusting Jonathan is still out of it enough not to notice the rest of my clothes are missing.

My heart is pounding in my throat, threatening to stop beating altogether. I know she isn't here, but I still check Callie's room anyway, then the bathroom.

Jon is sitting at the table, which I only managed to half clear yesterday. He's drinking coffee, staring at the closed bedroom door. I wonder if he's been inside yet.

Maybe it makes me selfish, but I couldn't care less right now.

"Have you seen Claire?" I ask, and dammit, I sound panicked. I am panicked, but that's beside the point.

He finds my eyes slowly, dark circles ringing his eye. He looks like he has a broken nose, they're so dark. "No. Is she not upstairs?"

"She—" I clutch the note in my hand, swallow so my heart returns to its normal position inside my chest. "This was on her nightstand."

And I let him read the note, the one she must have written while I was fast asleep in her bed. Naked, but Jon doesn't need to know that.

His brow furrowed, he looks up at me. "I don't understand." His eyes drop back to the note and stay closed for a long minute. There's something about him, the tone of his skin. He's translucent. Ghost-like.

The silence stretches thick between us. Me, wanting him to be as upset as I am; him, not having any mental capacity left to handle anything more than breathing.

Claire's barely an adult. Seven-fucking-teen. Not old enough to do this on her own; not young enough to think she needs anyone to do it with her.

I barely register the front door opening. Callie comes in, duffle bag slung over her shoulder, smelling a little like stale booze and cigarettes and maybe pot. Maybe, I think half-heartedly, it's from the parents of the girl she stayed with last night. She draws closer and asks, "What's going on?" The smell isn't just on her clothes, it's in her skin, spilling from her pores and clinging to her hair.

Callie, what did you do?

"Your sister left," Jonathan says, and it explains nothing and everything.

Callie's forehead crinkles, and I physically see her fighting what is probably a wicked hangover. "Left where?"

Dad waves the note at her like a white flag, and Callie grabs it and blinks down at it for a few seconds. Her eyes find mine, scan my body, and I wonder if, even hungover, she knows. Sister Telepathy, Claire always called it. The tops of my ears go hot and I hope she's too hungover.

Callie reads the note again, her mouth hanging more and more open. When she's had to have read it three or four time, she looks at me in shock. "She can't just—"

I watch her struggle with words, wrestle with her pain. Fight, Callie, I think. Fight for her with me.

But Callie corrects herself, remembers she's supposed to be pissed off at her sister. She holds the note out for me again, indifference steeling her features. If Jon is a ghost, Callie is a statue.

"I hope she has a great fucking vacation," Callie mumbles, but Jon and I hear anyway, and it's a red flag that Jon doesn't scold her. That I don't, either. "I'm gonna shower."

Jonathan hangs his head in his hands, rocks it back and forth a few times. "She would know what to do," he finally whispers, seconds before his arms give way and his head falls to the table in soft sobs.

And I know the she he's talking about. Hannah would know. She'd know how to make Claire come back and how to make the girls stop fighting and also the silly shit like what Chevy Chase movie would force color back in Jon's cheeks and what song would get them all to dance around the living room like they love each other.

But Hannah is not here.

I am.

"I'll handle it, Jon," I say, hand on his shoulder. I might have answered too quickly to be truthful.

SOS, I sent to the Pack an hour later.

The texts started rolling in almost immediately.

Rachel: Is everything okay?
Embry: Meet at Jacob's place in 20.
Paul L: you can't just say SOS and not give any other details
Bethany: Claire ran away
Jared: FUCK
Paul L: oh shit my b

Now, Claire's note has been passed around so much the paper is starting to wrinkle. I know it's necessary, but it's burning up my insides—what if those are the last words she'll ever write me? The promise I made to a grieving Jonathan feels insurmountable.

It's a pared-down version of the usual crew: Katie Clearwater is here, baby Sienna strapped to her chest in one of those sling things.

Paul and Rachel, who took a long weekend, are here with their twins, too. Rachel's five months pregnant. It's twins again. There's a rumor that when Paul found out, he passed out, woke up, and scheduled a vasectomy for the next business day.

Embry and Jacob closed up the mechanic shop to meet me at Jake's cabin, and Bethany rushed over (as fast as a woman with crippling morning sickness can rush anywhere) to meet us and Nessie and the kids.

Everyone else, apparently, has a boss that actually gives a shit if they miss work. I say that with all the love in the world. Or as much of it as I can find today, given the circumstances.

The kids are playing in Marie's room, tucked away from things too old for them. I wish I could join them. I don't feel prepared to do this, figure this out.

"I mean," Paul says, munching on a handful of chips he scrounged from the pantry. Paul is always eating. "It could be worse. At least you didn't fuck her."

Nessie moves to smack him in the head but Rachel beats her to it.

I'm not sure what gives me away—my face, the noise that crawls up my throat, or maybe the one my heart makes when it cracks inside my chest.

But the room lets out a collective sound. Some parts shock, some understanding, and one comment that sounds almost like Paul saying who won the pot?

"What happened, Quil?" This is Bethany, and when I meet her eyes, I don't find the judgement I'm expecting. Compassion shines back at me instead.

And maybe a little bit of her Mom Glare, because I feel my mouth moving before I give it permission, ready to tell her every ounce of the truth.

"I walked in on her changing after the funeral," I say, the grief cresting like a fresh wave in my voice. "And she… she ordered me to touch her. So I did."

Did I want everyone to find out this way? No. But life doesn't always go the way you plan. I expected Claire to be next to me when I woke up this morning.

I expected Hannah to last longer than a year.

I expected to have Claire by my side while we dealt with the pain together.

Paul keeps eating. Jacob and Embry keep brainstorming, but the girls shoot them down at every turn. Nessie disappears to the nursery to tend to baby Will, and when Kim and Jared show up with baby Miles, Kim still wearing scrubs, Bethany catches them up.

Rachel hangs up the phone, having put in a call to one of her many IT contacts, and I know by the minute shake of her head that she's come up empty. "She hasn't used the credit card."

I wince, looking at the note in my lap. Hoping there's a clue or hidden message or riddle. Something.

It's the next to last line, the don't chase me that prevented me from running straight to the airport and manhandling the agents there into giving me information. If I look hard enough, I can see through scribbles, to a word she scratched out. Yet.

Don't chase me yet.

I can't tell if I should be devastated she crossed it out, or hopeful she wrote it in the first place.

"Tell me again what she took," Bethany says, eating a plate of—gross—soggy microwaved French fries.

I count the items I noticed were missing on my fingers: "My truck, with her hybrid surfboard. Clothes. Phone. Toothbrush. Swear jar—so probably five grand in cash. Her mom's letter." I swallow. "Her passport." I regret ever having that stupid idea in the first place.

"And she didn't answer her phone?" Nessie says from the expansive L-shaped sectional, her feet tucked under her as she nurses Will beneath a cover.

"I called seven times. Straight to voicemail."

Embry groans. "If she's already in the air we'll have to wait until she lands.

"I—" I say, but stop. In the heavy stone of my heart, I'm thankful my brother has adopted a we mentality.

Some of the kids come out of the bedroom, Marie leading the way, and they're enough of a distraction that I take the time to call again. My phone feels like a brick in my back pocket, and when I pull it free it tumbles to the wood floor.

I scrabble for it, my hands shaking as I dial the number. Most of the ears in the room can hear the dial tones, and our breaths are held collectively. My family, ready to weather this storm with me.

The line clicks. "Quil?"

"Claire," I breathe, and although I feel like I can breathe again, the other still aren't. Their forms blur in my eyes, and I turn my back to them so maybe they'll miss me wiping my eyes. "Are you okay? Where are you? Do you feel okay? I love you so much, sweetheart."

Paul snorts a sweetheart, and gets smacked two times. Jared and Jacob, if I had to guess.

"I'm okay," Claire says in my ear, and even from here, I can tell her chin is trembling. That her throat is scratchy with the effort of holding back tears. "I'm okay. I just turned my phone back on from the flight."

There are so, so many questions I need to ask her. Why, at the forefront. Where. I settle for, "Are you safe?"

She pauses again, and I appreciate her honesty. Maybe she knows I need it. Maybe the part of her heart that belongs to me is telling her. "I booked a hotel for a few days. It's got good reviews."

"Good, good." I swallow the lump in my throat. Although everyone in this room knows what went down last night, I still want to respect her privacy. "How are you… feeling." The end falls flat and peters out.

"I'm fine," she says, too quickly.

An overhead announcement cuts through the silence. "Now boarding flight DL1334 from San Diego to Memphis. Sections one through three…"

"I've gotta go," she says suddenly, probably trying to drown out the announcement. That has to be a clue. She interrupted too fast for it not to be important to her.

"Will you call me?" I say, my eyes watering again at the thought. In my head I repeat it like a mantra. San Diego. San Diego. San Diego.

"I love you," she says instead of answering. "Bye." Beep beep beep.

My hand falls limp at my side. I stare out the sliding glass door, to the clearing where Bethany and Embry had their wedding reception and I danced with Claire and tried to stop my feelings from boiling over in a too-full pot.

"Is she okay?" Jacob says.

When I turn around, he's at the kitchen island with Embry. Two thirds of my closest friends. And the other one's in—

"San Diego," I blurt. "There was an announcement for San Diego."

"Who's in San Diego?" Seth Clearwater says, toeing off his work boots at the door. Katie catches him up quickly, and they have a silent conversation—argument? Katie wins, I think.

"I don't know if it will work," Katie says, balancing on the sides of her feet. "But we might have a plan."