Epilogue

IT was four days later that Amy and Scott sat beside the pond and poured Julia’s ashes into the clear water. In those four days many things had happened.

Frank Truckwater was booked on multiple felony accounts—attempted murder, theft, dealing in illegal drugs. His case didn’t look good. Yet he was young, nineteen, and his lawyer predicted in the paper that Frank would be out on parole before his twenty-fifth birthday. Reading the article, Scott and Amy couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

Stan Easton, Frank’s accomplice, was only sixteen years old, a minor, and the case against him was not as strong, although the same article said he would be doing plenty of time before his twentieth birthday rolled around. But those years behind bars would not start until he got out of the hospital. The doctors thought Stan would walk again, but not well. In fact, they said he was lucky to be alive. He had needed numerous transfusions when he finally was brought into the hospital.

Lieutenant Crawley resigned from the police force two days after Julia’s death. Another article in the paper cited emotional stress as the reason for his hasty departure. Fellow officers—Adams among them—hinted in guarded remarks that Crawley was beginning to show signs of instability, citing recent paranoid delusions.

Jim Kovic was buried three days after being shot. The liquor-store owner, who was responsible for Jim’s death, read a short prayer that he had specifically written for Jim’s funeral. The man had not been charged with any crime, but he’d had to be helped from the church before he could complete the reading of his prayer. Amy and Scott had found the incident moving. Jim’s parents had publicly forgiven the man, but he had been unable to forgive himself.

There was also a reading of Julia’s will three days after her death. In it she left her house and the surrounding property to Amy and Scott. Because Julia was a minor at the time of her writing the will, Julia’s aunt had the option of voiding the will. But she chose to let Julia’s will stand.

Hiking to the pond with Julia’s ashes—stored safely in a blue vase—Amy and Scott realized they were hiking across their own property. Neither had known that Mother Florence’s land extended so deep into the woods. The morning was cold. Frost clung to the trees like blankets of white winter, although fall had scarcely begun. They walked slowly, and Scott with a limp. He said he felt fine, but Amy could see he had some catching up to do. His head scars were healing at a miraculous rate. Yet they were still tender, and Scott continued to wear head bandages.

The doctors at the hospital didn’t know what to make of Scott. They flipped when he discharged himself. One doctor, however, a friend of both the surgeon who had performed Scott’s operation and Mother Florence, was not surprised by his miraculous recovery. When he heard of Julia’s sudden collapse, he advised his colleagues to leave Scott as he was, without the benefit of further treatment. Amy suspected the doctor in question must have witnessed several of Mother Florence’s miracles over the years.

Ice rimmed the pond as they knelt beside the water and set the vase on the ground beside them. They had come early—the sun was less than an hour above the horizon—but someone had been before them. Randy Classick was busy at work on a pine tree that stood twenty feet due east of the pond. So absorbed was he in his carving that they had to call to him to get his attention.

“So it is you!” Amy said, pleased. For the last two years she had been finding the faces whenever she walked in the woods. “I’m impressed.”

Randy turned, startled. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

“We kept waiting for you to notice us,” Scott said.

Randy stood directly in front of his work, trying to shield it with his body. “How’s your head feeling?” he asked.

“A little hollow,” Scott said.

“When will you be coming back to school?” Randy asked.

“Having trouble in chemistry?” Scott asked.

“Failed a test yesterday,” Randy said. He nodded to the vase of ashes. “Is that what I think it is?”

Amy touched the vase. “This was her favorite spot.”

“Yeah, I know,” Randy said, and he had to swallow. He looked down at the knife in his hand.

“Can we see it?” Scott asked.

“What?” Randy asked innocently.

“I bet it’s Julia,” Amy said.

Randy reluctantly stepped aside. The carving was at the level Julia’s face would have been, and it was exquisite. Besides being closest to the pond, the pine Randy had chosen for his masterpiece was big and old. The bark was unusually thick and dry, which had given him a fine base for detail. He had cast Julia in a happy light—not with a huge grin, but with the faint, knowing smile that had been her trademark. The flow of her hair over the bark was a wonder—it looked as if the wood were blowing in the wind. Amy couldn’t get over how realistic it was. She did note that Randy had a photograph tucked in the pocket of his jacket, which she would have wagered was of Julia.

“I just came to put a few finishing touches on it,” Randy said, almost apologetically. “I’ve been working on it for the last couple of days.” He nodded to the vase again. “But if you guys want to be alone, I don’t mind. I can come back later.”

“No. Stay,” Amy said, patting the ground beside her. “I’m sure Julia would want you here.”

“What are we going to do?” Randy asked self-consciously as he walked over and joined them on the cold grass. Amy half wished they had brought a blanket, yet there was also something nice about the feel of the earth so close to their skin. Randy added, “I don’t know any prayers, if that’s what you’re going to say. The minister at my parents’ church told me when I was twelve years old not to come back until I learned to fear God.”

“Why did he tell you that?” Scott asked.

“I think it was the Walkman I used to wear to church,” Randy said.

“We’re not going to pray normal prayers,” Amy said. “Scott?”

Now it was Scott’s turn to appear self-conscious, which was perhaps a first for him. “I have this weird idea,” he said. “I don’t know where I got it. But I think that if we pour Julia’s ashes in this water, and let them sink down, and look in the water with the sunlight on it, we’ll see something.”

“What?” Randy asked.

“I don’t know,” Scott said.

“Have you had any other weird ideas since you got shot in the head?” Randy asked.

“Randy,” Amy said, “you have to be respectful at a time like this.”

“I’m trying.” Randy eyed the vase uneasily. “What’s left of her isn’t gross or anything, is it?”

“No,” Scott said, picking up the vase. He looked at it silently for a moment. “It’s beautiful.” He handed the vase to Amy. “You were her best friend. You do it.”

“OK,” Amy said. She unplugged the cork from the top of the vase and began to sprinkle the ashes lightly on the pond’s surface. Then she began to hum softly, a song she didn’t know the words to. She thought it was a song Mother Florence had sung when they walked together, but she couldn’t be sure. It just came to her out of nowhere. To either side of her, she noticed Randy and Scott had closed their eyes. She closed hers. She finished sprinkling the ashes and briefly submerged the vase, pouring the water back into the pond, moving by feel alone. Setting the vase by her side, she sat with her own eyes closed for several minutes. All the time she was aware of her friends beside her, but she was unaware of their breathing, or even her own. The three of them were so settled, they could have been figures carved in the trees. Finally, Scott spoke.

“Let’s open our eyes and look in the water,” he said softly.

Amy’s eyes felt remarkably heavy, and she opened them with some difficulty. As she peered into the pond, however, a peculiar lightness spread through her limbs and flowed into her head. It was like a magnetic current that possessed the power to transform flesh and blood into something finer, more permanent. A wave of silent exhilaration swept over her right then, and she realized that all the ashes were gone, absorbed by the pond, a miracle in itself. Not even the tiniest particle floated on the mirrored surface. Yes, Amy understood; it was a mirror, of course. That was why Julia had spent so much time peering into its depths—to see things inside herself, things of another world, another time.

Julia’s giving us her vision now.

Later, Amy was never to know for sure if what she saw right then was her imagination or if it was real. Yet if it was a dream, then the three of them shared it in exact detail.

Julia was swimming from the center of the lake where Scott and Julia had almost drowned, swimming to the shore, to a place where her mother stood waiting. The sun shone brilliantly on the two of them, and Julia had only to cross the width of the sandy shore and take her mother’s hand to be dry. Amy watched as they turned and walked into the woods, following them along a narrow shaded path that led to where Randy and Scott and she now sat, beside the pond. But Julia and her mother did not pause to look in the water, at least not right away. They circled behind the granite hill that stood beside the pond and scaled to the top, moving with springy steps that knew nothing of gravity. At the peak, they clasped their hands together once more and stared down at the pond as the morning sun shone on its delicate surface.

I’m seeing through her eyes.

It was true—for Amy could see herself sitting on the grass beside Randy and Scott. Amy was right there with Julia when Julia turned to her mother and asked, “Do you think they can see us?”

Mother Florence nodded. “They see the sun.” Then she smiled at her daughter. “Come, it’s time to step into the sky.”

Julia smiled. “And fly higher than the highest bird?”

“Yes,” Mother Florence said.

Together they stepped off the peak. Yet they didn’t fall, not that Amy could see. They simply vanished. Amy jerked her head up, away from her vision on the water. They all did.

But there was nothing there.

“Weird,” Randy whispered.

Amy looked at him. “You saw them?” she asked.

“I saw something,” Randy said, lowering his gaze back to the pond.

“How about you, Scott?” Amy asked.

Scott nodded and pointed to Randy’s carving in the tree. The sun had moved behind Julia’s face, behind the tree, and the morning rays glowed at the edges of the bark like flames. Amy recalled Mother Florence’s words of a moment ago and knew them to be true. It was blinding to look at the carving. Julia had merged in the sun, in this world and the next.

“I remember she came to me at the hospital,” Scott said.

“What did she say?” Amy asked.

“That you and I should go to Tahiti together,” Scott said.

“I believe it,” she said.

“I can carve Jim on the tree beside her tree,” Randy suggested. “If you don’t mind, Amy?”

Amy looked at the tree and smiled. “I don’t mind.”