THEODORE'S POV
I watch her car disappear.
Sleek black swallowed by pine and fog, the taillights bleeding red through the grey before those too are gone. The forest closes around the absence of her like a wound sealing over something that should have been left open.
My hand is bleeding.
I don't remember breaking the glass. I only remember seeing her car through the window — that first flash of black between the trees — and then the sound. Sharp. Clean. The way things break when you don't mean to break them.
I look down at the blood threading between my fingers and feel nothing about it. Which is appropriate, I suppose. I stopped feeling things the way normal men feel them a long time ago. Pain registers. It simply doesn't matter.
What matters is that she was here.
Beatrice.
