Chapter 499
She called for Sallie. “Why hasn’t Colton come back?”
“He’s traveled overseas.”
Kristine blinked. “When did he leave?”
“I’m not sure,” Sallie said.
“When is he expected back?”
“Mr. Yates didn’t give a return date.”
Kristine’s brief lift of spirits sank again. If he came back the very next day, the window she was counting on would be worthless. And her legs still weren’t healed. If only Davin were here.
The thought of him drew a long, tired sigh from somewhere deep in her chest.
After returning, she had already tried to find out how he was doing. All she knew was that he was receiving treatment at a hospital in Evira. Beyond that, nothing. Colton wouldn’t say more, and whenever she brought Davin up, his expression darkened into something unreadable — the look of a man who owed a debt he refused to name.
She could only wonder what condition Davin was in now.
Far away, in Qoscaria, two tall men stood before a gravestone.
One was Devin. The other was Colton.
Neither spoke as workers lowered the urn into the ground. The silence between them was heavy with things that had no words.
“In the end, it all meant nothing,” Devin said. His grip tightened until the beer bottle in his hand cracked and gave. “Patsy is really gone. Why did we hold on to the hope that she might still be out there somewhere?”
“Because she gave us too many good memories,” Colton answered, his voice low. “We wanted to believe she was still out there.”
“Damn it!” Devin’s composure broke. He kicked the shattered bottle away. “Why couldn’t she have made it?”
Colton frowned, watching him. “Pull yourself together.”
“I can’t.” Devin turned to him with red-rimmed eyes. “Do you know what the specialist told me? The ashes of an adult woman should weigh around four pounds. Patsy’s were barely over two. Do you understand what that means? She was wasting away before she died. She must have suffered terribly at the end.”
Colton’s dark expression shifted into something stunned and uncertain. “What did you just say?”
Even accounting for illness, Patsy had been a grown woman of normal weight when she died. For her ashes to amount to barely half of what they should have been made no sense at all.
“Are you absolutely certain there’s no mistake?” Colton asked.
“How could there be?” Devin gestured toward the open grave. “We dug these ashes straight out of the ground. The only explanation is that something went wrong during the burial.” Colton’s brow creased. But if those weren’t Patsy’s remains, why had the DNA confirmed her identity? Nothing added up.
He pressed his fingers to his temples, fighting the headache beginning to build behind his eyes. “Is it possible some were spilled during the funeral?” he said, more to himself than to Devin.