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Elena was taken aback. Whatever she'd expected, it wasn't this. "I remind you of someone else you
know?"
"Of someone I knew," he said quietly. "But," he added slowly, as if puzzling something out for
himself, "you're not like her, really. She looked like you, but she was fragile, delicate. Vulnerable.
Inside as well as out."
"And I'm not."
He made a sound that would have been a laugh if there had been any humor in it. "No. You're a
fighter. You are… yourself."
Elena was silent for a moment. She could not keep hold of her anger, seeing the pain on his face.
"You were very close to her?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
There was a long pause, so long that Elena thought he wasn't going to answer her. But at last he
said, "She died."
Elena let out a tremulous breath. The last of her anger folded up and disappeared from under her.
"That must have hurt terribly," she said softly, thinking of the white Gilbert headstone among the rye
grass. "I'm so sorry."
He said nothing. His face had closed again, and he seemed to be looking far away at something,
something terrible and heartbreaking that only he could see. But there was not just grief in his
expression. Through the walls, through all his trembling control, she could see the tortured look of
unbearable guilt and loneliness. A look so lost and haunted that she had moved to his side before she
knew what she was doing.
"Stefan," she whispered. He didn't seem to hear her; he seemed to be adrift in his own world of
misery.
She could not stop herself from laying a hand on his arm. "Stefan, I know how it can hurt – "
"You can't know," he exploded, all his quietness erupting into white rage. He looked down at her
hand as if just realizing it was there, as if infuriated at her effrontery in touching him. His green eyes
were dilated and dark as he shook her hand off, flinging a hand up to bar her from touching him again
–
– and somehow, instead, he was holding her hand, his fingers tightly interlocked with hers, hanging
on for dear life. He looked down at their locked hands in bewilderment. Then, slowly, his gaze
moved from their clasping fingers to her face.
"Elena…" he whispered.
And then she saw it, the anguish shattering his gaze, as if he simply couldn't fight any longer. The
defeat as the walls finally crumbled and she saw what was underneath.
And then, helplessly, he bent his head down to her lips.
"Wait – stop here," said Bonnie. "I thought I saw something."
Matt's battered Ford slowed, edging toward the side of the road, where brambles and bushes grew
thickly. Something white glimmered there, coming toward them.
"Oh, my God," said Meredith. "It's Vickie Bennett."
The girl stumbled into the path of the headlights and stood there, wavering, as Matt hit the brakes.
Her light-brown hair was tangled and in disarray, and her eyes stared glassily out of a face that was