The SUV was uncomfortably quiet.  McKenna didn’t speak. She wasn't happy leaving Dane behind since she had no idea where they were taking her.

Suddenly the old cemetery came into view. "Why are we here?" McKenna demanded.

"There's something we have to show you," her father said. "We should have done it sooner."

He opened the car door and climbed out. He reached for McKenna's hand, but she pulled away. She didn't want either of them touching her.

She didn't want to be in this cemetery. She had a horrible feeling this wouldn't turn out well, and she should stop them. But she continued to follow them down the path.

She stopped and stood still in the quiet graveyard. Suddenly the bile rose in her throat. She leaned over and vomited on the grass. "No," she moaned. "I'm not going to follow you. I'm going back to Dane."

"Kenna!" her mother pleaded. "Please listen. There's something you have to know.”

"No!" she cried. “I’ve heard enough. I can’t take anymore. I need to think, but you keep coming at me. Why can’t you just leave me alone? You’re not my parents. You’re strangers to me. Just go away!”

Her mother grabbed her by the arm. "You can't see Dane anymore, McKenna.”

"Let me go!” she pulled her arm from her mother’s grasp. “Why won't you leave us alone?”

"I’m begging you, McKenna, please don't see him anymore!”

"Why not, Mother?"

“You’ll die if you go to him!”

“That’s absurd. Dane won’t let me die. He’s the one that saved me…”

She stopped in mid-sentence.

All of her sessions with Dr. Olsen opened up. She saw herself as a child, drowning, saw her father hang over the boat, heard the harsh words her parents spoke to each other. She saw herself wake up on the little beach by the cemetery and looking up into blue eyes. And that’s when she saw Dane’s face and heard his voice.

“You’ll be all right now.”

***

Her mother stared at her. "Listen to me, McKenna."

McKenna grew faint, her vision darkening before her. "I feel sick," she mumbled.

Her mother grabbed her by the hand and knelt at her feet. “I don’t care anymore what happens to your father or me. I don’t care if we go to jail. But, McKenna, I’ve loved you all your life, and you’ll always be my little girl. I’m so sorry all this happened.”

"You're not," McKenna pulled her hand free. “I don’t feel well.”

"Please come.” Her father approached her slowly. "Please, Kenna. You need to see."

The sun was shining through the trees. A slight breeze stirred the branches as they led her through the cemetery and past the old monuments that were once underwater.

She followed them in a daze. Everything seemed surreal. The beautiful morning, she woke up to was suddenly dark and filled with evil.

Her parents stopped and waited for her to catch up. "This is what we wanted to show you,” her dad said.

McKenna peered at the carving on the headstone. It was the old, weather-beaten gravestone she had refused to look at when she first came here with her friends.

She read the lettering, "Jan Jankowski, Born 1900, Died 1942. On the other side, she read, "Dane Jankowski, Born 1922, Died 1942".

"What is this?"

"You needed proof,” her mother said. "Here’s your proof, McKenna."

“I don’t understand. This makes no sense at all. Who are these people?”

“This is why you can’t be with Dane. This is why you can’t love him.”

"I love him, Mother, and he loves me!”

"You can't love him!

"You tell me why! Why, Mother? Why can’t I love him? Why can't we be together?"

“Because McKenna…”

McKenna buried her face in her hands and started to cry. The answer was there, right in front of her. An answer she didn’t want to accept but one that she knew all along.

“Because McKenna… because he’s dead.”

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