Except what awaited her upstairs turned out to be worse.

Going through her clothes seemed like a good idea, the out, safe, giveaway decisions the kind of thing that her exhausted, yet wired, brain could handle because, hello, it wasn’t brain surgery. Plus, she’d saved some of the U-Haul boxes she and Gerry had used when they’d moved in up in the attic, so she could bring that whole touch-only-once efficiency to the endeavor.

Feeling like she was back on “a” course, if not “the” course, she pulled down the ladder steps from the ceiling in the hall and walked herself up into the cold, raftered attic of her house.

At which point, she got kicked in the chest again.

Sure, there were empty boxes, the lids unfolded, their bellies open. But there was also one that was closed up.

“Damn it.”

Still standing on the ladder, her body half in and half out of the attic, she told herself to keep with the plan. Get the empties and drop them down. Go to her closet. Organize.

Instead, she ascended the last three rungs, and went over to the box with the taped lid. Before she knew what she was doing—and thereby could block the impulse—her fingers pulled up the masking tape and popped the folded sleeves free.

The box was one of U-Haul’s wardrobe varieties, a dowel running across the top so that you could put hangers on it.

There was only one thing suspended within its four sides. Sometime in the last two years, the jacket to Gerry’s wedding suit had slipped off its hanger and slid down its matching slacks to pool in the bottom.

Sarah closed her eyes and sagged.

After he’d died, his parents had insisted on coming over from Germany to claim the body and visit the house which they had not yet seen in person. Sarah had invited them to go through Gerry’s things, thinking that they would want to keep a few of his belongings. She had left the house to give them some privacy—and returned an hour later to find that they had packed up all his clothes and anything that he had had with him through college.

She’d had the sense that his mother had viewed this as a service to Sarah. A way of tidying up the mess that his death had caused in all their lives.

The only thing the woman could have done to keep herself in one piece.

Sarah had known that he still had a few things at work, little mementos on his desk. She figured she would keep them, and then she had pictures on her phone, her computer. Her memories. Plus, how did you fight with someone’s mother over their socks, for godsakes.

So she had let it go, and they had taken everything with them, including his laundry out of the clothes hamper. She’d never forgot those suitcases they’d bought at Target. It had been kind of sad to think that all of Gerry’s worldly possessions could fit into three medium-sized Samsonites. Then again, he’d been a thinker. Possessions had not been a priority for him.

It had been a surprise a week later, then, to go into the closet in their bedroom and find his wedding suit tucked behind her one long dress, two dress blouses, and her own interview suit that she’d last had on when she’d come for an on-site visit to BioMed.

Gerry’s mom had missed the jacket and slacks because everything else of her son’s had been in his bureau outside.

Sarah had put the matching set away up here a couple days later. It wasn’t that she’d wanted to forget him. It was the wedding. The almost-made-it reality of that ceremony and reception had been too painful, although not because she was mourning the fact that they’d never made it to the altar due to his death.

It was more that she hadn’t been sure they were going to make it if he’d lived.

And so … up here.

In this box.

Hanging from a dowel on a Macy’s hanger.

She took the hanger out and smoothed the slacks. There had been a Black Friday sale the day after Thanksgiving, and she’d made him go to the mall with her to take advantage of the savings in the men’s department. He hadn’t even owned an interview suit. He’d gone to BioMed in jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt with a hole in the sleeve. Then again, when you were a genius and people were not hiring you for your sartorial sense, what did all the navy blue and the lapels and the pinstriped ties in the world matter.

Gerry could be odd. Disinterested in things other people normally did.

A pain in the ass, to be honest.

But God, his brain. He had had the most magnificent brain. And as she thought about what he had been like, she realized that his intelligence had been a huge part of his appeal to her. He’d been an outlier as sure as a male model was, an unusual combination of attributes that resulted in a spectacularly special human being.

Except boy, the shopping trip. That excursion had been the first tipoff that things were really bad between them. Or rather … the first tip-off that was a conscious thought of hers instead of a weighty feeling she had resolutely ignored.

He’d never worn the suit, obviously. Had barely tried it on before they’d had to come back here so he could return to his study, his computer, his work.

Running her hand down the slacks, she found the fine wool smooth. There were no cuffs yet on the bottoms of the legs because they’d needed to get it fitted, but she’d known better than to try to get him to wait until the in-store tailor had been done with another customer.

There would be time, she’d told herself.

Nope. No time.

With a curse, she bent down into the box and picked up the jacket, pulling it out—

Something dropped to the bare floorboards.

An envelope.

Nate had no idea where he was or what he was doing.

Okay, he was outside in the woods somewhere and it was cold. Oh, so very cold. He had on a borrowed parka that was puffy as a cloud. Borrowed shirt and pants that were huge in terms of size and yet fit him. Borrowed underwear. Borrowed boots.

He had been out here for now three hours and forty-five minutes. Give or take.

So in a way, he had grown used to how much he didn’t like looking around. Too much of a vista, and everything was overwhelming: the spindly trees, the fluffy trees, the spiky undergrowth, the sense that there was an incalculable distance to be traveled in any direction. And he really didn’t like looking up at the vast sky above: The incalculable number of little pinpoints of light shining through a dense blackness made him worry he was going to fly off the earth and get lost up there.

And the smells. The complex bouquet of earth, animal, and air was just too much for his brain to handle. His heart was pounding like he was being chased, he was too hot under the parka, his eyes were darting everywhere and making him dizzy.

Then again, he had been working hard.

As his eyes watered, he brushed at them with impatience. The cold dry wind. Yes, that was it.

He absolutely was not crying. From fear of how big the world was. From anger that he had been cheated out of twenty years of his life. From sadness that he was out here for his mahmen.

“They should arrive soon,” a female voice said. “Any minute.”

Nate looked over his shoulder. Xhex, the female who had been kept in the same lab as his mahmen, stood with her back to the wind. Her short hair was smudged by the gusts, moving this way … another way. She was dressed in black leather, and her face was grim.

He wondered, if his mahmen had survived for another two decades, whether she would have turned out to be as tough as this female clearly was. Or would she have remained as he remembered, kind, gentle, but scared.

He wanted to ask what Xhex recalled about his mahmen and the lab, but he had a feeling he didn’t want to know. He’d seen enough for himself. He’d had enough done to him.

“Are you over it?” he asked roughly. “What they did to us?”

It was a while before the female answered. “No. I don’t think about it much, but I don’t believe it’s because I’m over it.”

“Am I going to be okay?”

“Yes, you are. I promise you that.”

Nate shivered and braced himself … and then looked over at the simple pine coffin that had been put on a platform in the clearing. He had hammered himself the latter from trees that he had cut down with an axe and honed as best he could. His palms were torn up. His work was shoddy. And the scent of pine sap was still thick in the air.

But he had made the pyre himself. As was proper.

The coffin had just appeared, about twenty minutes ago. Murhder and John had driven it into the clearing on the back of a beautiful truck, and they had just taken the vehicle back to wherever it had come from—

One by one, two figures materialized in the clearing. Murhder and John reappearing.

“Hey, son,” Murhder said as he came over.

They embraced, and the older male said, “You did fine work with this. Very fine.”

Nate took his hands out of his pockets. He meant to say something, but he choked. His torn up palms spoke for themselves, though.

Murhder squeezed his shoulder and then John was giving him a hug, too. As the males stepped back, he wished Sarah were here. Even though that made no sense, he supposed.

Yeah, except for the fact that she had found him. Helped get him free. Taken care of him.

He missed her presence from this like a family member’s.

Nate took a deep breath and stared at the coffin. While he’d been staying in the training center, he’d asked everyone who came by to visit him how they honored their dead. The humans had one way. The symphaths another. The vampires a third. After a couple of nights, people had started to seek him out to share their stories. Doggen had come to him. Two Shadows.

And then a blond-and-black-haired male who had seemed like a vampire, but who, he later learned, was actually a fallen angel.

A real, live fallen angel. Which was pretty magical.

He’d never met an angel before. Other than his mahmen, of course.

Actually, he hadn’t met many people.

The fallen angel had given him the best advice. He’d said that there was no right or wrong way to honor the dead. The living could pay their respects in any way they chose. The important thing was that the deceased was sent unto the afterlife on a wave of love.

Because it helped the departed souls find peace in their new place.