The Light in Us

5. Fallon

5

Fallon

“ T hey’re coming.”

Rory’s fingers tighten in mine. “Fallon, it’s freezing out here. Come back inside.”

But I shake my head. I’m sitting on the steps, staring out at the pitch-black sky. “They promised.”

My parents don’t break their promises.

A jacket settles around my shoulders. It smells citrusy, lemon and pine stinging my nose as Ellis settles beside me. “No sign of them? It’s past ten.”

Murmuring over my head.

I pull out my phone, checking the screen again.

Nothing. No response to the dozens of calls I’ve made to my mom and dad’s cell. It just goes to voicemail.

Hi, you’ve reached Addison and Rick—

Hey there, this is Rick and his far better half, Addy—

Even their voicemails are a mixture of the two of them, laughing and joking together as they urge me to leave them another message.

Where are you?

Rory, Ellis and Shaun take up positions around me when I refuse to go back inside.

We wait. For a long time.

When my phone finally trills, my dad’s name popping up on the screen, I seize it triumphantly. “See? They’re just delayed—,”

My voice trails off as I raise the phone to my ear.

It’s not my dad.

“Fallon?” There’s a hand on my shoulder, but I can’t speak.

Rory gently takes the phone from my hand, talking to the official-sounding person on the other end of the line as I sit there.

He has my dad’s phone.

Why does he have his phone?

“Fallon.” Gentle hands, shaking my shoulders. “We have to go to the hospital.”

Shaun’s eyes look cold again as he pulls me upright. But he holds my hand tightly on the way there. I don’t let go, needing something to hold onto as a doctor leads us into a room—

“We’re family,” Rory interjects. “We’re her pack.”

I don’t argue with him. I don’t say anything at all, even as the kind doctor with the tired eyes tells me that my parents were traveling through an intersection when a truck ran a red light and plowed into the side of their car.

It was instant.

They wouldn’t have been in any pain.

I’m sorry for your loss.

We need a formal identification.

Something inside me… splits. I watch as if I’m another person entirely, as Fallon Matthews walks into a room to identify her parent’s bodies.

And she doesn’t come back out.

I don’t know who inhabits my body now. She’s cold, and numb, and she can’t do anything except cry.

I sit still, through all the movement that follows. I keep my battered copy of The Light in Us held tightly in my hands like a comfort blanket and I don’t let it go, not even to sleep.

They take care of everything. Rory, Shaun, Ellis. It’s easier to stay quiet, to ignore the sympathetic looks and the pity and hide behind them.

At the funeral, I put on the dress Ellis lays out, and I stand in the circle they create, offering a buffer between me and the hundreds of people who come to say their farewells.

I don’t really know any of them, aside from some long-term work colleagues of my father’s. We didn’t have any family, lived in the middle of nowhere.

It was always the three of us.

People want to talk to me about my father, about his achievements, but I don’t want to think about any of that at all. Certainly not the financials, as someone murmurs to me.

Shaun takes over the discussion with the older alpha, his hand on my arm.

It’s easier to let the Smith pack take care of that, too.

To take care of me.

Because they’re the only thing keeping me together at all.