Oh, for heaven’s sake, it was no use. There was no way she was going back to sleep. Moving slowly, with the same focus she had used in Texas, only this time for gentleness, she slid from the bed, pulled on shorts and a T-shirt—Reuben’s old one that she kept in her bag, which still lay almost entirely packed—and made her way downstairs.
The moon was nearly full and cast shadows on the back steps, where she chose to sit. The yard looked foreign in that eerie light, as if Casey had landed in some other time, at some other place. She gripped the cement of the stairs, so solid underneath her. So unchanged in the past years.
She closed her eyes and breathed in the night. The air smelled the same, tasted the same. Its composition had not changed since she had last experienced it. But at the same time…
She got up and walked across the yard. When she reached the end, she turned to look up at the house. Reuben. Omar. Eric. A building that once held a family, that now saw what could be referred to as a beginning. Or was it an ending?
A train whistle floated over the breeze, and Casey’s nerves tingled. Where was the train coming from? Where was it going? Casey tried to tamp down a nagging feeling that something wasn’t as it should be. That her priorities had shifted too far. Reuben. Omar. They’d shared a life there, in that house. They were supposed to still be there, with her. That had been the plan. They weren’t supposed to die in a flaming wreck, only for her to replace them with other things, with other people.
God, what was happening? What was her problem? What was she thinking?
Something rustled in the pine trees, but Casey didn’t have to look to see what had caused it. She stood silently in the moonlight. Waiting.
For Death.
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Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series) Page 29