My name is Garrett Becker, and I’m pretty sure that this time I’m dead. I’ve passed the point of no return, the moment when the heart stops beating and the lungs stop breathing and the brain stops messaging. The screen is black. The curtain has fallen.
But death isn’t what I expected. Like a burst of lightning I’m back at the twisted fence in downtown Los Angeles, pouncing on it, gripping the strained wire links. Only now—the chains aren’t there. My idea of them vanishes under my fingers, and my hands slap flat against a plywood barrier much taller than I am. They slide down the rough plane and my feet hit the ground. I crane my neck. The skyscraper is rising without me. In a few more months, granite cladding will stand where this plywood is. I step back out of habit and scan someone else’s work in progress. Judge it. And find I don’t really care.
Sun fills the space around me, warm. Later than the morning rush, but still morning. Not a drop of rain.
“Garrett.”
I turn on the sidewalk. She’s there in her crisp dark-blue jeans and a sweater the intense pink of bougainvillea petals, her mocha eyes bright. That black hair in its ponytail curls across one shoulder. She holds out her hand, and the first thing I fear is that I won’t be able to touch her. I’ll want to hold her, I’ll try, and it will be like clutching air. My first pain in death. When I don’t move, she leans forward and takes my hand for herself. She’s soft, and warm, and alive.
“He said I could meet you here,” Misty says, and she glances over her shoulder.
Across the street on the opposite corner is the man in the maroon beret, his turtleneck unfit for California summer. He’s of a different era. He winks at me.
“A friend of yours?” But I already know the answer.
“A guide of sorts. More like a director. A spiritual director.”
I tentatively encircle Misty, and she leans into me without fear. Her hair smells like Marina’s sweet peas. I touch my lips to the strands. “Forgive me, please.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I betrayed you. That was my fault.”
“A human mistake.”
“I failed you.”
“Then you have to say that I failed you too.”
“No—”
“Garrett, I forgive you. What we did, we did for love. We loved our children imperfectly well.” She laughs.
I want to cry. “I wanted to undo everything. I wanted you back.”
“Here I am.”
I pull away just enough to see her clear and smiling eyes. She’s whole right now, healed of everything from the wound at her temple to the psychosis in her mind to the fear in her heart. Even that light scar on her left cheek has faded to nothing.
“You’re not still angry about Sara? About all the lies I told the kids?”
“No.”
“Don’t you worry for them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Grace.”
A strange word. An archaic word.
“I don’t know what that is,” I admit.
“Grace is what happens when we realize that God is more powerful than everything we ever got wrong. He is bigger than any lie we ever told, any delusion we ever believed. Our children are in good hands.”
“God’s hands.”
“Everything that’s happened has been a mercy—don’t you see, Garrett? Sara’s their family now. She’s good family.”
“She doesn’t know a thing about mothering.”
“She knows plenty about what our kids need.”
“Chocolate, you mean?”
Misty laughs. “Loss. And hope.”
She links her elbow in my arm and turns me around on the sidewalk. Her feet are shoeless. Her dark-blue socks match her jeans. In spite of the filthy street, they’re as clean as if she just pulled them out of the dryer.
Though I can’t see the ocean from here, I can smell it rolling in on the fall breeze that also keeps the smog away. We head toward the blue expanse. We cross the street. We approach the man in the beret.
“Where are we going?” I ask Misty.
“To meet the giver of grace.”
The guide clasps his hands behind his back and asks, “Are you in a rush?” I’m surprised by his voice out here. It’s the distant but rich call of the ocean in a seashell.
“I guess not,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “Come see before we go.”
The water is slate blue trimmed in white foam. It wraps around the Rincon in slender layers like a dress flowing over a woman’s curves. Well out beyond the lineup, our children sit astride their surfboards, torsos clad in black Neoprene, legs dangling in the water. When was the last time I saw Marina ride? It’s been too long.
Thick plastic containers sit forward near the noses of the bobbing boards, and I know without being told that one contains Misty and one me. Their faces are wet. Dylan’s by the sea, Marina’s by her eyes. He’s waiting for her to take the lead. She’s frozen, staring at the temporary urn in front of her.
Dylan guides his board next to hers and lifts the box she can’t bring herself to lift. He carefully breaks the seal and puts the cap down in front of him. The breeze reaches in and stirs the ashes as he hands it back to her. Dust floats on wind above their shoulders. Tiny flecks kiss their cheeks.
He uncaps his own container and puts that lid with the other, holds the box in both hands, and looks at his sister.
“This can’t be them,” she says.
“It isn’t,” her brother says. “You know it, right?”
She nods without speaking.
“And what we’re doing is just . . . a symbol. Like a poem. Got it?”
“Some poems are hard for me to get.”
“Right. Well. Don’t try so hard. Just feel it.”
A shiver runs through her shoulders. “Okay.”
“I didn’t mean literal—”
“Dylan. Are we gonna do this or not?”
“All right,” he says. “Here we go. One . . . two . . . three.”