Pete remembered hearing that your life flashed before your eyes when you died.
It was true, he realized now, but it also happened while you were alive. How fast things went, he thought. As a boy, he had marveled at the life spans of butterflies and mayflies, some of them alive for only days or even hours, and it had seemed unimaginable. But he understood now that it was true for everything—that it was only a matter of perspective. The years accumulated quicker and quicker, like friends linking arms in an ever-expanding circle, reeling faster and faster as midnight approached. And then, suddenly, it was done.
Unfurling backward.
Flashing before your eyes, as it did for him now.
He looked down at a child, sleeping peacefully in a room barely lit by the soft light from the hall. The little boy’s hair was swept back behind his ear, with one hand clutching the other in front of his face, completely still aside from the gentle rise and fall of the covers. Everything was calm. A child, warm and loved, was sleeping safely and without fear. An old book, its pages splayed open, lay on the floor by the bed.
Your daddy liked these books when he was younger.
And then here was a quiet country lane. It was summertime and the whole world was in bloom. He looked around, blinking. The hedges on either side of the road were lustrous and thick with life, while the trees reached together overhead, their leaves forming a canopy that colored the world in shades of lime and lemon. Butterflies flickered across the fields. How beautiful it was here. He had been too focused to notice that before—too busy looking without looking. He saw it so clearly now that he wondered how he could have been so distracted as to miss it then.
Here—a flash—was a scene so abhorrent that his mind refused to countenance it. He heard the nasal buzz of the flies that were darting mindlessly through the wine-stained air, and he saw an angry sun staring down at the children on the floor that were not children anymore, and then somehow, mercifully, time reversed more quickly. He stepped backward. A door swung shut. A padlock clicked.
Nobody should have to see hell even once.
There was no need to look inside it ever again.
Here was a beach. The sand beneath the backs of his legs was as soft and fine as silk, hot from the bright white sun that seemed to fill the sky above. In front of him, the sea was a froth of silver feathers. A woman was sitting so close to him that he could feel the tiny hairs on her bare upper arm tingling against his own skin. With her other hand she was holding out a camera, pointing it at them both. He did his best to smile, squinting against the light. He was so happy right then—he hadn’t realized it at the time, but he was. He loved her so much, but for some reason he had never known how to articulate that. He did now; it was so simple in hindsight. When the photograph was taken, he turned his head to look at the woman, and he gave himself permission to feel the words as well as speak them.
I love you.
She smiled at him.
Here was a house. It was squat and ugly and throbbing with hatred, much like the man he knew resided within, and while he didn’t want to go inside, he had no choice. He was small—a child again now—and this was his home. The front door rattled and the carpet breathed out dust beneath his feet. The air was thick and gray with resentment. In the living room, a bitter old man sat in an armchair by an open fire, his paunch pushing out so far against the dirty sweater that it rested on his thighs. There was a sneer on the man’s face. There was always that, whenever there was anything at all.
What a disappointment Pete was. It was clear to him how useless he was, how nothing he did was ever good enough.
But it wasn’t true.
You don’t know me, he thought.
You never did.
When he was a child, his father had been a language he was unable to speak, but he was fluent now. The man wanted him to be someone else, and that had been confusing. But he could read the whole book of his father now and he knew that none of it had ever been about him. His own book was separate, and always had been. He had only ever needed to be himself, and it had just taken time—too much time—to understand that.
Here was a child’s bedroom, windowless and small, only twice the width of the single bed.
He lay down, breathing in deeply the suddenly familiar smell of the sheets and pillow. The comfort blanket from his cot was tucked between the mattress and the wood. Instinctively, he reached out for it, curling a corner of the soft cloth in his hand, bringing it to his face, closing his eyes, and breathing in.
This was the end, he realized. The tangle of his life had been unpicked and set out before him, and he saw and understood it clearly now, all of it so obvious in hindsight.
He wished he could have it again.
Here was a door opening. An angle of light from the shabby hallway fell over Pete, and then a different man walked tentatively into the bedroom, moving slowly and carefully, limping slightly, as though he had been hurt and his body was tender in some way. The man approached the bed and, with difficulty, knelt down beside it.
After watching Pete sleeping for a time, unsure what he was going to do, the man finally came to a decision. He leaned across and embraced him as best he could.
And even though Pete was all but lost in deeper dreams by then, he sensed the embrace, or at least imagined he did, and for a moment he felt understood and forgiven. As though a cycle had been completed, or something found.
As though a missing piece of him had finally been returned.