TL really didn’t know why he’d gotten off the bus. He felt something in his heart and he followed it, thank God, but he never could’ve imagined what he was about to encounter.

The heart can be tricky, you know. It’ll tell you what to do, and it’ll be right, but it won’t tell you the pain you’re going to experience. Or how to heal from it after it’s all said and done.

Like I said before, there are things TL doesn’t know, things that would crush him if he knew, but you, reader, need to know. You’re like me—we see it all, sitting high and lifted up, but most people can’t bear such weight. It’s the weight of truth. It burdens them down and destroys their imagination. That’s all truth really is, huh? Imagination? So I’ve been sent to fill the empty spaces, to tell you what you need to know in order to fully understand this story. And to make sure my brother doesn’t miss his destiny along the way.

I’ll start by saying this: When TL left years ago, I thought I’d die. I stood at the screen, watching him disappear down the road until he vanished into a future I would never know. I was seven, a chubby little kid who couldn’t figure out how to get my joy back. Days after he left, I kept looking down the road, hoping he’d forgotten something so he’d return, if only for a moment. My spirit lost its spunk. I couldn’t seem to find happiness anywhere I searched. I suppose I was depressed, but I didn’t know it then. I simply knew I had no motivation to do anything. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. I had that deep down pain, the kind that eases into your pores and settles like a salve. The best I could do was hope. Each morning, I ran to the screen and looked for him, but the sun always set without his return.

I wasn’t angry with TL; I knew why he’d left. It was Daddy I didn’t understand. Why had he been so hard on the boy? I asked him once and he told me to mind my own business. Said I didn’t know nothin’ ’bout raisin’ a man, so I should keep my mouth shut. I never asked again. I just loved my brother as hard as I could. He loved me, too. That’s why he had to leave—’cause a man wasn’t supposed to love like that, and TL was almost a man.

I didn’t talk for a week. Momma whipped me for being ornery, as she called it, but I didn’t care. I needed my brother. He’d been my only friend. I could tell him anything. He even saw my imaginary friends! If I messed up my hair, he’d fix it better than Momma had it at first. I would’ve traded God for him. I knew TL. He touched me, hugged me, sang to me, and made me feel like I was the most special little girl in the whole world. God wasn’t so attentive.

But now I understand that it was all orchestrated. I’m on assignment, you could say. I’ll tell you other things as we go along, but I can’t tell you what TL will discover. That would be a violation of realms. My job is to make sure he makes it. That’s why I came. He loved me then; I love him now. And I can’t tell you why things happened the way they did. Even here, you don’t understand everything. You just see everything. Except the depth of a person’s heart. No one can go there. Not even God goes without an invitation, and few invite Him. So I’m gonna tell you not why things happened, but for what purpose. By the end you’ll know that, amidst all the craziness, there were no mistakes.