Make Them Regret It Chapter 43
I went to Florida first.
The setting sun turned the sea to gold as seabirds wheeled up from the palm trees.
I stayed with my grandmother in Boston for a month, tending her garden and dusting my mother’s urn.
After that, I went to the cherry orchard in Michigan my sister-in-law had once told me about.
The cherry blossoms were in full bloom.
Following the method she had taught me, I picked the blossoms, washed a jar, and sealed the wine inside. I buried it beneath the largest cherry tree.
I carved her name into the trunk.
After that, I kept traveling west.
The snow in Colorado was even heavier than I had imagined. It settled on my dagger almost instantly.
Standing in that snowfield, I thought of the cold in the chapel.
The memory still hurt.
But the snow here was bright. There were lights in the distant town. The wind smelled of coffee. Children ran through the snow, their laughter carrying on the air.
Cold did not always have to mean despair.
There really could be light at night.
I went to many places.
I weathered hurricanes and took shelter from blizzards in mountain cabins. My dagger helped me drive off men who tried to block my path. With each use, my Core fused a little more completely with my body.
Sometimes people asked what family I came from.
I would think for a moment, then just say, “My name is Blythe.”
That was enough.
In the spring of the third year, I received a message from Lighthouse.
It was not a call for help.
It was the first letter the little girl had ever written to me.
There was only one line:
“Sister Blythe, I can open the door by myself now.”
The handwriting was still crooked, but her letters were bigger than Gia’s had once been.
I sat on a mountaintop and read that letter over and over again.
The sun rose over a sea of clouds, brightening the screen of my phone.
And suddenly I understood: I hadn’t left Lighthouse behind so that everyone would remember death.
I had wanted the people who came after us to have a chance to walk out of their own chapel, alive.
I saved the letter, unwrapped one of the chocolates my grandmother had given me, and when I was finished, I kept walking.