Dawson. Not Dawson. He couldn’t be dead.
But she heard again what Tanner had told her. He’d gone to the Tidewater. Ted and Abee were there. He’d saved Alan Bonner and now he was gone.
A life for a life, she thought. God’s cruel trick.
She suddenly flashed on the image of the two of them holding hands and wandering in a field of wildflowers. And when the tears finally came, she wept for Dawson, and for all of the days they would never know together. Until perhaps, like Tuck and Clara, their ashes somehow found each other in a sunny field, far away from the beaten path of ordinary lives.