I wake up before dawn with this strange feeling, something like déjà vu. I sit up with a gasp, then tear out of bed and down the stairs and burst into Mom’s room as Carolyn is coming out. She nods at me. “Today,” she says.
Now we’re all assembled in there: Jeffrey, whose anger has deserted him for the moment, sitting in a kitchen chair by her bed, leaning forward onto his knees. His eyes never leaving her face. Billy stands in the corner and doesn’t say a word, but whenever Mom looks at her, she smiles. Carolyn flits in and out to take her pulse and try in vain to get her to drink something. Dad sits at the foot of the bed, passing the time cracking angel jokes.
“Do you know why angels can fly?” he asks us. We all kind of shake our heads. “Because we take ourselves so lightly.”
Killer, I know. But it’s comforting, him being there. He’s only been hanging around with us for a little more than a week, but already I feel used to him, his silent joy, his steadiness, his weird sense of humor that fits just perfectly with Mom’s.
And then there’s me. I’m holding her hand. Waiting. All of us waiting, like we are a wheel and Mom is the center of it, the hub. We rotate around her.
“Such serious faces,” she whispers. “Geez, is someone dying?”
But then she stops talking altogether. It takes too much effort. She sleeps, and we watch the rise and fall of her chest. I have to pee in the worst way, but I’m afraid to leave the room. What if she goes while I’m not there? What if I miss it?
I cross my legs and I wait. I examine her hand in mine. She’s wearing her wedding ring again, a simple slender silver band. She and I have the same hands, I realize. I’ve never noticed that before. Hers are frail now, light as the hollow bones of a bird’s, but the resemblance to mine is there. We have the same long nail beds. The same spacing of our knuckles, lengths of our fingers, the same vein that crosses the back of our left hand.
All I have to do to find my mother is to look at my hands.
Then she takes a deep, shuddering breath and opens her eyes, and I forget about having to pee.
She looks at Dad. He reaches for her free hand, the one I’m not squeezing on to for dear life, and he kisses her wrist.
She looks around without moving her head, just her wide blue eyes, but I can’t tell if she really sees any of us anymore. Her lips move.
“Beautiful,” I think she says.
Then I’m distracted for a minute because Dad disappears. Right in front of our eyes, he simply vanishes. One second he’s sitting on the bed, holding Mom’s hand, and the next, gone.
It takes me a moment to realize that Mom’s gone too. It’s so quiet, I should have known. We’re all holding our breath. Mom’s lying back on the pillows with her eyes closed again. But she’s not there. Her chest isn’t moving. Her heart has stopped beating. Her body is here, but she’s gone.
“Amen,” Billy says.
Jeffrey jumps up. The noise of his chair clattering back against the wall seems unbearably loud. His face looks like a mask to me, stretched at the lips, eyebrows drawn low over his red-rimmed eyes. A single tear makes its way down his cheek, hovers on his chin. Furiously he dashes it away and flees the room.
I hear the front door bang as he goes. His truck roars to life, then peels on down the driveway, scattering gravel.
Something floats its way up from my chest, not a sound but a terrible choking ache that makes me think my heart will explode.
“Billy . . . ,” I call desperately.
She’s here. Her hand comes down on my shoulder.
“Just breathe, Clara. Breathe.”
I focus on getting the air to move in and out of my lungs. I don’t know how long we stay in this position, Billy with her fingers dug into the flesh of my shoulder, hurting me but a hurt that feels good, reminds me that I, unlike my mother, still inhabit my body.
Seconds tick by. Minutes. Possibly hours. It occurs to me that Mom’s hand is being warmed by mine. If I take it away, it will get cold. Then I’ll never hold her hand again.
Outside the sky goes gray. A light drizzle of rain falls against the house. It feels appropriate for it to rain at a time like this. It feels right.
I glance up at Billy.
“Is this you?” I tip my head toward the window.
She smiles this odd, hurt twist of her lips. “Yep. I know it’s a silly human perspective, but I can’t help it.”
“I don’t want to let her go.” It’s one of those sentences I know I will hear echoing around in my head forever, along with the sound of my own ragged, broken voice.
“I know, kid,” Billy says with her own bit of a rasp. “But you’re not really holding her now. You know that’s not her anymore.”
After the initial quiet the phone starts ringing every few minutes, and then the doorbell, and people start pouring in. At first I feel compelled to greet them, like it’s my duty as the only member of my family who actually stuck around for this, as Mom’s child, to let them in and thank them personally for their abundance of sympathy and food. They should warn you about the food. When this kind of thing happens, when someone you love dies, people bring food. So here’s the contents of the Gardner refrigerator: one giant lasagna, three separate and equally disgusting macaroni salads, two fruit salads, one cherry pie, two apple pies and an apple crisp, one bucket of cold fried chicken, one mystery casserole, one spinach-cranberry-and-walnut salad that comes with an unopened bottle of blue cheese dressing, and a meat loaf. The shelves of our poor refrigerator sag under the weight of it all.
Here’s another thing they don’t tell you beforehand: people will bring enough food to feed an orphanage in China, but you won’t be hungry.
It starts to feel like every person who shows up is chipping away a piece of me when they say, “I’m so sorry, Clara. If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to call.”
“She’s suddenly very supportive, isn’t she?” mutters Billy after Julia—yep, that angel-blood who kept asking all the biting questions at the last congregational meeting—leaves one of those macaroni salads and her deepest condolences.
“Yeah, I was tempted to tell her that Samjeeza’s hiding out there in the woods.”
Billy’s dark eyes widen. “Is he?”
I shake my head. “No. When Dad banishes someone, I think they stay banished. I just wanted to freak her out a bit.”
“Right. Well, you should have told her. Then we could have seen just how fast she can fly.”
We smile together. It’s the closest we can come at the moment to joking around. The ache is still here inside me, like an open, raging hole in the middle of my chest. I catch myself touching that spot, right in the center of my sternum, like one of these times I’ll actually be able to put my fist in there.
Billy looks at me. “Why don’t you go upstairs? You don’t have to be here for these people. I’ll take care of it.”
“Okay.” Except that I can’t think what I’m going to do with myself upstairs.
When I get to my room I find Christian sitting on the eaves. This might appear strange to visitors, it occurs to me, but I decide I don’t care. The ache is becoming an ugly hollowness that is in some ways worse than the original ache. But at least I can’t feel Christian’s emotions on the other side of the window. Or his memory of our kiss.
When did you get here? I send to him.
Earlier. Around nine.
I don’t feel my own surprise. My mother died at a few minutes to ten.
I told you I’d be here, he says. You can ignore me, though. Whatever you want.
I want to take a nap.
Okay. I’ll be here.
I lie down on top of the covers, not bothering to slip under the sheets. I turn my face to the wall. Christian’s not looking at me now, but still.
I should cry, I think. I haven’t cried yet. Why haven’t I cried yet? I’ve been crying for months now at every little thing, boo-hoo-hoo, poor me, but today, on the day that my mother actually dies, nothing. Not one tear.
Jeffrey cried. Billy wept using the entire sky. But not me. With me there’s just the ache.
I close my eyes. When I open them again I see that two hours have passed, although I don’t feel like I’ve slept. The sun is lower in the sky.
Christian’s still on the roof.
I get the sudden urge to call him, to ask him to come in and lay down with me. Just like before, the night I found out about the hundred-and-twenty-years rule. Except this time, I wouldn’t want him to touch me or anything. Or talk. But maybe if he got close to me I could feel something. Maybe I could cry and the ache would go away.
He turns his head, meets my eyes. He can hear me.
But I don’t ask him in.
It’s late afternoon when suddenly Christian stands up without a word, and flies away.
Then there’s a light knock at my door, and Tucker sticks his head in.
“Hey.”
I shoot out of bed, hurl myself into his arms. He hugs me close, presses my head into his chest, says something I don’t hear into my hair.
Why can’t I cry?
He pulls back. “I came as soon as I found out.”
I would have called Tucker right after it happened, of course, but he was at school, and I didn’t have the energy to have him pulled out, find him a ride, all that. “Does everyone at school know?”
“Pretty much. Are you all right?”
I don’t know how to answer this. “I was sleeping.”
I disentangle myself from his arms and go over to the bed and sit down. It’s hard to look at him while he’s staring so intently right into my face, trying to meet my eyes. I pick at the stitching on the quilt.
Tucker seems to be at a loss for something to say. He glances around my room. “I’ve never been in here before,” he says. “It’s nice. It fits you.” He clears his throat. “Wendy’s downstairs. We brought you a chocolate cream pie my mom wanted to send over. And a roast chicken and some green-bean thing.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“It’s a good pie. Do you want me to get Wendy?”
“Not yet.” I dare to look at him. “Could you just . . . hold me, for a while?”
He looks relieved. Finally, something he can do. He drops onto the bed behind me and I stretch out and we spoon, his hand resting on my hip.
I don’t feel anything. I don’t think anything. I just breathe. In and out. In and out.
Tucker strokes my hair. There’s something so tender about the gesture. It might as well have been him whispering I love you.
I love you too, I send to him, even though he won’t hear it.
But I don’t feel love. I say it because I know it to be true, but I don’t feel it. I’m too numb for that. I don’t deserve his love, I think. Even now, that moment with Christian in the cemetery is like a dark cloud in my mind.
Three days pass. That’s something you don’t expect, either. You think, death, then funeral, then graveside and all that, then done. But between the death and the funeral there’s a million small events nobody ever thinks about. Writing obituaries. Choosing flowers. Picking out what my mom will wear as she lies in the casket, and what clothes I will wear to her funeral, which for me is a no-brainer: black dress, Mom’s sensible pumps, her silver charm bracelet. I even tell Jeffrey which tie he should wear, the striped silver one, but when I say that he gives me this cold look, and tells me he’s going to wear a black tie.
I don’t know what this means. It’s like my purple corduroy jacket the day of the fire. Could the balance of the universe be affected by the color of a tie?
Tucker skips school the first day to stay with me. Mostly this entails him sitting in the chair next to mine while I sit and do nothing, trying to talk to me, occasionally asking me if I need anything, and I almost always say no, until later that night, when I say, “Can you go home? No offense, but I want to be alone right now.” It’s true. I want to be alone. But I also specifically don’t want to be around Tucker right now, because there are things I’m not telling him, big things, and I don’t want to think about those things.
He says yes, of course, sure, he understands, but he’s offended. I don’t need my empathy to see the hurt on his face.
Every day I sense Christian somewhere nearby. Not trying to talk to me. Not pushing anything on me, any kind of response. Just near. He lets me be alone, but he’s also there, on the edges, in case I don’t want to be.
How does he understand to do that? He was only a kid when his mom died, but still, he gets it. Is it the same for everybody, I wonder, or is Christian so in tune with me that he understands what I need on some other level?
On the third day, Tucker confronts me, not in a mean sort of way, but in a please-let-me-help-you-why-won’t-you-let-me-help-you sort of way. I’m lying in bed, not sleeping, not doing anything, and he suddenly comes into my room.
“I want to be here for you,” he says, no hello or anything. “It’s that simple.”
My eyes dart to the window. No Christian.
“Okay.”
“But you won’t let me. You won’t let me in, Clara. You’re pushing me away. You won’t tell me what you’re feeling.”
“I’m not feeling anything,” I tell him. “I don’t mean to push you away.”
But the truth is, I do mean to push him away.
He doesn’t accept this. “You’ve been pushing me away for months. You don’t tell me things, like you didn’t tell me about that bad angel. I’m still waiting, you know, for you to tell me about what happened with that guy, but you don’t say anything. You think I can’t handle it.”
“Tucker.”
“Why do I get the feeling lately that you’re just biding your time with me? That you’re going to break this off.”
“My mom died,” I snap, sitting up. “I’m not really thinking about anything else.”
He shakes his head. “What aren’t you telling me? Why don’t you think I can handle it? Haven’t I handled everything you’ve ever thrown at me?”
“Okay, fine.” I know I must sound angry, but I’m not. I’m tired. I’m tired of hiding things, tired of being what people want me to be in this moment, tired of being that girl whose mom has died and we better tiptoe around her. In some ways, Tucker talking to me this way is a relief. At least he’s not walking on eggshells anymore.
Tucker waits.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” he answers simply.
“All right. Let’s start here. I thought you were dying, for a while. I’ve been having visions of Aspen Hill Cemetery, everybody there because someone was dead, and you weren’t there. So I thought it was you. I didn’t want to tell you because, what if I was wrong, how would you feel about that, and it turned out I was wrong, so I’m glad I didn’t tell you.”
“But you told Christian,” he says.
“Yeah. He can see into my mind, so he knew.”
“Huh,” he says, but I can tell he’s very unhappy at the idea of Christian and I mind-melding.
“And I can read people’s feelings. Sometimes an image or a thought or two, but mostly feelings.”
It feels better, confessing. I feel something. “And there’s more, of course.”
He blinks, startled. “Okay, shoot.”
Funny that he should phrase it that way, when what I say next is like a bullet, traveling at the speed of sound straight from my mouth to his heart. I don’t know why I do it. I only know that I don’t want any more pretense between us. It’s against my nature.
“My purpose isn’t over. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I know that it involves Christian. It’s like we’re meant to be two sides of the same coin. I don’t . . . love him the way that I love you, but we’re the same, him and me. We make each other stronger.”
Storm clouds in Tucker’s blue eyes. He stares at me. He doesn’t want to know this next part.
But I tell him anyway. Because part of me realizes that, as much as I love him, as much as I want to grab on to him now and never let him go, he’ll be better off without me, safer, away from my crazy world of rogue angels and mysterious duties that are going to pop up all my life, happier without me having to lie to him or withhold stuff from him for our entire relationship. I know that telling the truth right now, and especially this next part, will probably ruin things forever for us and as much as I don’t want that, I think it might be the only way to ensure that I don’t wimp out.
So here goes.
“I kissed Christian.” My voice breaks on his name. “Well, actually, he kissed me. But I let him. He said it was part of his purpose, and I let him. Because we’re connected. Because in my dream, when my mom dies, when we’re at the cemetery, it’s him who holds my hand and comforts me and supports me. Because you’re not there.”
Tucker’s expression has gone stony. The muscles in his back are tight. He flexes his jaw.
“When?” he asks huskily. “When did he . . .”
“Two days before my mom died.”
He stands up. “I have to go.”
“Tuck.”
He closes his eyes. His fists clench by his sides, then release. When he opens his eyes again, I see a hint of tears. He lets out a ragged breath. “I have to go.”
What have I done? I think dazedly. I follow him out of my bedroom, down the stairs. “I’m sorry, Tuck,” I say. Like that can fix anything.
My words don’t faze him. He blows right past the group of sympathizers in the living room, past Wendy and Angela, who are sitting together on the couch.
“Wendy, let’s go.”
She jumps up.
“Tuck,” I call again. But then I stop. I resolve to let him go, even if he never talks to me again. The ache in my chest doubles, makes me feel short of breath. I lean against the living room wall and watch Tucker helplessly as he nearly runs out of my house.
He stops at his car, fumbles in his pocket for keys. Wendy catches up to him, grabs his arm, says something, and flicks her head back to the house. He nods. Then he looks back and sees Christian standing on the front porch, and everything seems to slow down.
“You.” He shakes Wendy off and takes a few slow steps toward the house.
“Tucker,” Christian says quietly.
“What kind of person are you?” Tucker practically growls, advancing on him. He ignores Wendy as she pleads to go home. “You wait until she’s at her most vulnerable and then you make your move?”
“Is that what she told you?” Christian asks, not in any threatening sort of way, but also not backing down one bit.
I want to get out there, stop this before someone gets hurt. I have the feeling that someone could really get hurt about now. But as I take a step toward the door, Angela grabs my arm.
“Don’t,” she says. “You’ll make it worse.”
“She told me you kissed her,” Tucker says.
“I did.”
“It doesn’t matter to you that she has a boyfriend? That she loves me?” Tucker is close to Christian now, climbing the steps to the porch. He stops a few feet in front of Christian and stands with his hands in fists, waiting for the excuse Christian is going to give him to hit him.
I can’t see Christian’s face from this angle. His back is turned to me. But somehow I know that his face is impassive, his eyes cool green emeralds that glitter unnaturally in the light. There’s no warmth in him at all when he says, “I always liked you, Tucker. I think you’re a decent guy.”
Tucker laughs. “But what, I’m not worthy of her? She’s out of my league, just because—”
“She and I belong together,” Christian interrupts.
“Right. Because of your purpose,” Tucker says in a low voice.
Christian glances around, irritated that Tucker knows this word, that he would dare to say it here in front of all these people. “That and about a hundred other reasons, none of which you’d be capable of understanding,” he says.
“You smug bastard.” And that’s when Tucker punches him. Right in the face. Christian’s head snaps back and a river of blood instantly starts to stream from his nose. He wipes at it, looks at his blood-sullied fingers. It’s possible that he’s never seen his own blood before now. His eyes narrow. He wipes his hand on his jeans. Then the porch erupts in a flurry of motion, people scrambling to get out of the way, women shrieking, fists flying. I tear loose from Angela just in time to see Tucker push Christian back against the house wall so hard it cracks the glass in the front window. I watch Christian’s dark brows draw low over his eyes, a genuine fury rising there, about to be unleashed. He puts a hand in the middle of Tucker’s chest and sends him sprawling, striking the porch rail with a sickening crunch as he flies backward onto the driveway. Gravel scatters everywhere. Tucker springs to his feet, wiping a smear of blood off his chin, hair all disheveled, eyes blue fire.
“Come on, pretty boy,” he taunts. “Show me what you’ve got.”
“Stop!” I scream.
Christian jumps over the fractured porch railing so lightly he almost seems to float. Next to Tucker he has a slender grace, not the muscle from roping calves and working hard every day, not the grit of being a farm boy from Wyoming, but I know that he is incredibly strong.
Tucker swings at him, and Christian ducks away. He lands a punch to Tucker’s side that again sends him crashing back into the dirt. He grunts, straightens up to go at Christian again.
“Stop it!” I scream.
Neither of them pays any attention. Tucker feints another punch, then almost gets one into Christian’s gut, but one more time Christian moves away before the blow can land. Tucker makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat as Christian hits him again, this time in the jaw.
This isn’t fair. There’s no way for Tucker to win this fight. Christian will always be faster, and stronger, and harder to hurt.
Please, I send to Christian with all my power to speak in his mind turned up full blast. If you care for me at all, stop.
He hesitates.
I stumble down the porch stairs toward them. I’m not thinking anymore. I need to get myself between them. “Christian, don’t hurt him,” I say out loud.
This stops them both cold. Tucker gives me this incredulous, offended look. How could I think that he’d be beaten by this fancied-up city kid, no matter what kind of blood runs through his veins? His lip actually curls in disgust. You don’t believe in me, his eyes say. Why don’t you believe in me?
At the same time, Christian drops his fists, turns to look at me with a hurt expression.
I wasn’t going to hurt him, he says in my mind. You think I would use my powers to do that?
I don’t have an answer for either of them.
“Okay, that’s enough!” a voice rings out. Billy makes her way down the front steps. She walks up beside me and glares at Tucker and Christian.
“What are you two doing here acting like elk in rut? This is a time of mourning. You should be ashamed.”
“I’m going,” Tucker says. He doesn’t look at me again. He must be hurting all over, but he keeps his head high, his back straight, as he walks to his car. Over his shoulder Wendy shoots me a look that’s half murder, half apology. She gets in the driver’s seat. I can see her talking, possibly yelling at Tucker as they drive off.
Christian wipes blood off his face. His nose has stopped bleeding, but the blood’s still there.
“My uncle’s going to kill me,” he says.
“He can get in line,” I shoot back.
He looks at me, startled. Clara, I’m—
Don’t you dare tell me you’re sorry. Just go.
I was only—
Go. I send again. I want you to go away, Christian. I don’t want you here. I don’t need you.
He swallows, stuffs his hands in his pockets, and looks at me hard. He doesn’t believe me.
“Get out of here,” I say out loud.
He turns and tromps off into the woods, where shadows are stretching out through the trees.
“Girl, you have a knack for drawing trouble,” Billy says, clapping an affectionate hand on my shoulder.
Don’t I know it.
After darkness falls the people all go home. The house gets brutally empty. Jeffrey comes home, from wherever it is that he disappears to every day, retreating into his room without a word to anyone. I go to the door of Mom’s office and push it open. Part of me expects her to be there, hunched over her computer, writing code. She’d look up and smile.
“Tough day, sweetie?” she’d say.
I swallow. I try to remind myself that she’s in heaven. But I can’t picture it. I can’t feel it. All I know is that she’s gone, and she’s never coming back.
That night I can’t sleep. I’m not even sure I want to. I stare up at the ceiling and watch the shadows flit across it, the outlines of leaves from the tree outside my window, moving back and forth.
Around midnight, the phone starts ringing. I wait for someone to answer it, but no one does. Where is Billy? I wonder. When will Dad come back?
The phone keeps ringing its lonely song. I pad sock-foot into the kitchen, take it out of its cradle, and look at the caller ID.
CLARA, it reads.
Huh?
I’m getting a call from my own phone.
I click TALK. I’m suddenly wide awake. “Hello?”
Silence.
“Hello?” I say after a few seconds of nothing on the other line.
“Hello, little bird.”
It’s such a strange thing, hearing Samjeeza’s voice without the accompanying sorrow. Almost like talking to a normal person, having an ordinary conversation where I don’t have to fear for my life or wonder if I’m about to be dragged to hell. Strange, like I said.
“What do you want?” I ask him.
Silence.
“Well, it’s been nice talking to you, but I’ve got to go. . . .” I start to lay the phone back down. “I have to bury my mother in the morning.”
“What?” he says, sounding truly shocked.
He doesn’t know.
“Please,” he says after a minute, real desperation in his voice. “What happened?”
“You knew about the one-hundred-and-twenty-years rule, didn’t you?”
He hisses out a breath. “Is that how old she was? I knew she was nearing that, but . . . it’s hard for me to keep track of human time. When?”
“Three days ago.” I feel a flash of anger, which actually feels good. Any emotion besides crushing sadness feels good at this point. “So now you won’t ever be able to hurt her again.”
Again, there’s silence. I think he might have hung up. But then he says, “I didn’t feel her pass. I should have felt it.”
“Maybe you weren’t as connected as you thought you were.”
“Oh, Meg,” he says.
That’s when I blow a fuse. He has no right to grieve, I think. He’s the bad guy. He tried to kill her. He wanted to bring her down to hell with him, right? He doesn’t deserve my pity.
“When are you finally going to get it?” I ask him furiously. “My mom’s name is not Meg. Whatever you had with her, whatever was between you, was over a long time ago. She doesn’t love you. She never did. She was always meant for someone else, from the very beginning. And there’s nothing you can do about it now because she’s dead.”
The word rings in the air. I sense the presence of someone behind me. It’s Billy. She catches me by the shoulders, steadies me when I wasn’t even aware that I was swaying, about to fall. Then she slowly takes the phone out of my hand and sets it down in the cradle.
“Well, now we know why he’s mad at you tomorrow in the cemetery,” she says. She shakes her head at me. “I would feel a lot better if you didn’t go around antagonizing Black Wings.” Then, without me even having to ask her, she walks me back to my bedroom and lies down beside me in the dark, sings a low song that matches the cadence of the wind outside, like I’m a kid again. And she holds my hand until I fall asleep.