HALLOWED
CYNTHIA HAND
Dedication
For Carol, my mom
Epigraph
When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
—Genesis 6:1–2
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Looking for Midas
Chapter 2 - First Rule of Angel Club
Chapter 3 - Other People’s Secrets
Chapter 4 - Freaking Out
Chapter 5 - Find Me a Dream
Chapter 6 - Sooner or Later
Chapter 7 - Go Take a Hike
Chapter 8 - Summer Without Crickets
Chapter 9 - Paradise Lost
Chapter 10 - The Absence of Certainty
Chapter 11 - Storm’s Coming
Chapter 12 - Don’t Drink and Fly
Chapter 13 - Go Out with a Bang
Chapter 14 - Sing a Song of Sorrow
Chapter 15 - Angel on My Doorstep
Chapter 16 - Square Ice-Cream Cones
Chapter 17 - The Part Where I Kiss You
Chapter 18 - The Alternative to Me
Chapter 19 - The D-Word
Chapter 20 - Loving Memory
Chapter 21 - High Countries
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
In the dream, there’s sorrow. I feel it over everything else, a terrible grief that chokes me, blurs my sight, weighs down my feet as I move through the tall grass. I walk among pine trees up a gentle slope. It’s not the hillside from my vision, not the forest fire, not anyplace I’ve seen before. This is something new. Overhead the sky is a pure, cloudless blue. Sun shining. Birds singing. A warm breeze stirring the trees.
A Black Wing must be nearby, really nearby, if the raging grief is any indication. I glance around. That’s when I see my brother walking beside me. He’s wearing a suit, black jacket and everything: dark gray button-down shirt, shiny shoes, a striped silver tie. He gazes straight ahead, his jaw set in determination or anger or something else I can’t identify.
“Jeffrey,” I murmur.
He doesn’t look at me. He says, “Let’s just get this over with.”
I wish I knew what he meant.
Then someone takes my hand, and it’s familiar, the heat of his skin, the slender yet masculine fingers enfolding mine. Like a surgeon’s hand, I once thought. Christian’s. My breath catches. I shouldn’t let him hold my hand, not now, not after everything, but I don’t pull away. I look up the sleeve of his suit to his face, his serious green gold-flecked eyes. And for an instant the sorrow eases.
You can do this, he whispers in my mind.
Chapter 1
Looking for Midas
Bluebell’s not blue anymore. The fire has transformed Tucker’s 1978 Chevy LUV into a mix of black, gray, and rusty orange, the windows shattered by the heat, the tires missing, the interior a sickening blackened twist of metal and melted dashboard and upholstery. It’s hard to believe, looking at it now, that a few weeks ago one of my favorite things in the world was riding around in this old truck with the windows rolled down, letting my fingers trail through the air, sneaking glances over at Tucker just because I liked looking at him. This is where everything happened, pressed against Bluebell’s beat-up, musty seats. This is where I fell in love.
And now it’s all burned up.
Tucker’s staring at what’s left of Bluebell with grief in his stormy blue eyes, one hand resting on the scorched hood like he’s saying his final good-byes. I take his other hand. He hasn’t said a lot since we got here. We’ve spent the afternoon wandering through the burned part of the forest, searching for Midas, Tucker’s horse. Part of me thought this was a bad idea, coming out here again, looking, but when Tucker asked me to bring him here I said yes. I get it—he loved Midas, not only because he was a champion rodeo horse, but because Tucker had been there the night Midas was born, watched him take his first shaky steps, raised him and trained him and rode him on practically every horse trail in Teton County. He wants to know what happened to him. He wants closure.
I know the feeling.
At one point we came across the carcass of an elk, burned nearly to ash, which for an awful moment I thought was Midas until I saw the antlers, but that was all we found.