Most of the town was still down at the theater, reeling from the sheriff’s revelation, and maybe she should’ve stayed with everyone else but the truth of it was that she wanted to be alone. Tea in one hand, candle in the other, she moved out of the dark kitchen and into the hallway. Lifting the kettle off the flame, the whistling died away, and she poured the boiling water into her favorite ceramic mug in which she kept a tea infuser perpetually filled with chamomile leaves. She struggled to her feet, her mind racing. She’d just smile across the table at her husband and say, “I lost it.” She’d say, “I had the strangest dream last night,” but as she’d try to explain it, all that she’d experienced in Wayward Pines would slip back into the fog of forgotten dreams. She would be waiting for him at the breakfast table when he stumbled out of bed in that disgusting robe, disheveled and sleepy and everything she loved. She would slip quietly out of bed and go into the kitchen and cook him eggs. Teddy would be lying beside her, still sleeping, and this place-Wayward Pines-would all have been a dream. Hope that one day she might wake up back in Spokane. On some level, it was that hope that had gotten her by all these years. She’d always harbored hope that the world was still out there. In her life before, she’d been a pack-a-day smoker, and God could she use a cigarette right now-something to steady her nerves and her hands, which wouldn’t stop trembling.Īs her eyes filled with tears, the candlelight fractured.Īll she could think of was her husband, Teddy, and how far apart she felt from him. Lighting what was left of the candle, she sat down at the breakfast table. She turned on the gas and struck a match to the back burner and set the teakettle over the hissing blue flame. She felt her way around the fridge to the cabinet over the stove, opened it, and grabbed the crystal candlestick holder, a candle, and the box of matches. Jennifer tried the kitchen light out of instinct, but nothing happened.

The wayward pines trilogy the last town