Hallowed

Chapter 20 Loving Memory

There are a lot of things the dream didn’t prepare me for. Like seeing Mom’s body so still and waxlike lying in the casket. They put too much makeup on her. Mom hardly ever wore more than mascara and lip gloss. In the coffin she looks like a painted doll. Beautiful. Peaceful. But not her, you know? It’s hard to look at her like that, but I also find it hard to look away.

Or for the line of people who file by to look at her, and then expect to talk to me. It’s like a reverse wedding reception. First, see the corpse. Say your good-byes. Then say hello to the family. They all think Mom died of cancer, so they keep talking about pain. “At least she’s no longer in any pain,” they tell me, patting my hand. “She’s beyond the pain now.” At least that’s true.

Or the actual funeral. The church part. Sitting in the front row with Jeffrey and Billy, a few feet from Mom’s coffin. Dad’s still a no-show, and part of me feels betrayed by that. He should be here, I think. But I know he’s in a better place, literally. With Mom.

“He is with Mom, right?” I’d asked Billy as she braided my hair this morning, a long clean plait that miraculously stays in place all day. “He has been all this time?”

“I think so. Funerals are not really for angels, kid. Your dad would unsettle everyone if he came. He knows that. So it’s best if he stays away. Plus, he wants to be with your mother now, help her through the transition.”

Tucker’s at the church. He comes up to me after the service, stands in front of me with his hands folded together, looking lost. I stare at his black eye, the cut on his cheek, the scrape on his knuckles.

“I’m here,” he says. “You were wrong. I’m here.”

“Thank you,” I say. “But don’t come to the graveside. Please, Tucker. Don’t come.

Samjeeza will be there, and he’s angry, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I want to be there,” he protests.

“But you won’t be. Because I’m asking you to stay away,” I whisper. I would say the same thing to Wendy, ask her not to come to the cemetery, but I already know she won’t listen.

Because she’s there, every time, in my vision.

“Please,” I say to Tucker. “Don’t come.”

He hesitates, then nods and files out of the church.

So finally, after a day that seemed longer than any other, like it could really have stretched a thousand years, I get out of the car at Aspen Hill Cemetery. I blink in the sunshine. I take a deep breath. And I start walking.

I thought I knew how this day would go, this day that finds me at last standing in a black dress in the grass at Aspen Hill Cemetery. I have seen it so many times. But this time, the real time, it doesn’t feel the same. I’m future-Clara now. There’s an ache in the middle of my chest that makes me want to cut my heart out and chuck it into the weeds. But I bear it. I walk. Because there is no other choice but to put one foot in front of the other.

I see Jeffrey ahead of me, and I say his name.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he says.

The color of his tie didn’t matter, after all.

Everyone’s here. The entire congregation, every single one of them, that I can tell, even the Julia lady. No one chickened out.

Funny that it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, my dream. I drive myself crazy trying to figure out why Tucker isn’t there. Thinking he’s dead. Thinking there shouldn’t be a force on earth that would keep him away. But in the end, he’s not there because I asked him not to be.

That’s what we call irony.

The ache really gets me then. This is it. My destined time. My gauntlet to run, and I was meant to do it without Tucker. It gets so bad I have trouble breathing. I stop to catch my breath.

Someone takes my hand. Christian, as I knew it would be. I take in the sight of him, his neat black suit, pressed white shirt, silver tie. His gold-flecked eyes are red-rimmed, like he’s been crying too. In them, a question and an answer all in one.

And this, I realize, is the moment of decision, what my vision has been warning me about all this time. I could break away now, pull my hand from his, tell him again that I don’t need him.

I could hold on to my anger, my frustration at this hopeless choice. Or I could accept him. I could face what’s between us, and move on. It’s such a big decision to ask of me now. It’s not really fair. But then, it never has been fair, this entire fiasco, from start to finish.

The thing is, with him holding my hand, touching my skin, the ache in my chest eases.

It’s like he has the ability to take on some of my pain. I feel so much better around him. Stronger.

And he is willing to take my pain. He wants to bear it with me.

I can see it shining in his eyes. I’m more than a duty to him. I’m more than his literal dream girl. I’m so much more.

I think back to that morning in November, in my kitchen in California when I first saw him standing there in the trees, waiting for me. My heart pounding, my mouth opening to call his name, even when I didn’t know it yet, that irresistible need I felt surging through me to go to him.

It all plays out in my mind like a movie reel, every moment I’ve spent with him since then, him carrying me to the nurse’s office on my first day of school, Mr. Erikson’s history class, the Pizza Hut. Riding the chairlift together. Prom. Sitting on the front porch looking at the stars. Him coming out of the trees the night of the fire. Every night he sat on the eaves, the meadow, the ski hill, this cemetery where he kissed me, every single moment that’s passed between us, I felt this force pulling me toward him. I’ve heard this voice, whispering in my head.

We belong together.

I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until I let it out. I gaze down at our joined hands.

His thumb strokes slowly over my knuckles. I look up again, at his face. Has he heard all this, the babbling of my heart? Has he read my mind?

You can do this, he says. I don’t know if he’s talking about Mom, or something else.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

I meet his eyes, tighten my hand in his.

Let’s get up there, I send to him. People are waiting.

And together, we keep walking.

I expect the circle of people, the gaping hole in the ground with my mother’s coffin poised over it, but the shock of seeing it has worn off some. I know the words Stephen will say. I expect to sense Samjeeza there. But I didn’t know that I would feel sorry for him in that moment.

I didn’t plan to go to him afterward, after the prayers are said and the coffin lowered into the ground, dirt layered over it, after the crowd scatters and leaves Jeffrey and Christian and Billy and me standing there. I feel Samjeeza, his sorrow that doesn’t come from being separated from God or going against his angelic design, but from finally accepting that he’s lost my mom for good. And I know so clearly what to do.

I let go of Christian’s hand. I walk off toward the fence at the edge of the cemetery.

Clara? Christian calls after me, alarmed.

Stay there. It’s all right. I won’t leave hallowed ground.

I call to Samjeeza.

He meets me at the fence. He comes up the hill in the form of a dog, then changes, standing silently on the other side of the chain-link with mournful amber eyes. He can’t cry — it’s not part of his anatomy. He hates that he hasn’t been given the dignity of tears.

This is awkward, him being evil and all. But I’ve finally moved beyond mad.

“Here,” I say.

I fumble to take a bracelet off my wrist, Mom’s old charm bracelet. I thrust it through a hole in the fence.

He looks at me, face slack with astonishment.

“Take it,” I urge.

He holds out his hand, careful not to touch me. I drop the bracelet into it. It tinkles as it falls. He closes his fingers around it.

“I gave this to her,” he says. “How did you. .?”

“I didn’t. I’m just playing it by ear, here.”

Then I turn and walk back to my family, and I don’t look back.

“Baby girl, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” says Billy.

“Let’s go,” I say. “I want to go home.”

Samjeeza is still standing there, like he’s been turned to stone, a marble angel in the cemetery, as we drive away.

What I really don’t expect is the police to be waiting for us when we get home.

“What’s this about?” Billy asks as we get out of the car to gawk at the police car parked in the driveway, the two officers poking around outside the house.

“We need to have a few words with Jeffrey Gardner,” one of them says. He looks at Jeffrey. “You him?”

Jeffrey goes pale.

Billy, as always, is the picture of calm.

“Regarding what, exactly?” She puts her hands on her hips and stares them down.

“Regarding what he might know about the Palisades fire last August. We have reason to believe that he may have been involved.”

“We’d also like to take a look around, if you don’t mind,” the other officer says.

Billy’s all business. “Do you have a warrant?”

The officer’s face grows red under her intense stare. “No, ma’am.”

“Well, I’m Jeffrey’s guardian. He’s just been through his mother’s funeral today. Your questions can wait. Now you two gentlemen have a pleasant afternoon.” Then she takes me by the shoulder with one hand and Jeffrey by the shoulder with the other and ushers us into the house. The door bangs shut behind us. She lets out a breath.

“Well, this could be a problem,” she says, staring at Jeffrey.

He shrugs. “Let them question me. I don’t care. I’ll tell them. I did it.”

“You what?” But part of me isn’t really so surprised. Part of me suspected it, even from the first moment when I saw him flying out of the forest that night. Part of me knew.

“It was my purpose,” he says. “I’d been dreaming about it since we moved to Wyoming. I was supposed to start that fire.”

Billy frowns. “Now, see, that’s a problem. You two stay inside for the evening, okay? I have to make a few calls.”

“To who? The congregation has a lawyer?” Jeffrey asks sarcastically.

Billy looks at him with no humor at all in her usual twinkly dark eyes. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“Do we have an accountant, too?”

“Mitch Hammond.”

“Whatever,” Jeffrey says. Any vulnerability I saw in his face earlier today, any hint of the little boy who wanted his mom, is completely absent. “I’ll be in my room.” Off he goes, roomward. Off Billy goes, to Mom’s office, and shuts the door. Which leaves me alone. Again.

I wait for a few minutes, until the silence of the house starts to feel like a buzzing in my head. Then I figure what the heck and head up to Jeffrey’s room. He doesn’t answer when I knock. I stick my head in just to make sure he hasn’t gone out the window.

He’s there, messing around with stuff in his dresser. He stops and glares at me.

I sigh. “You know, it might be easier for both of us right now if you would stop hating me for like ten minutes.”

“That’s your sisterly advice?”

“Yeah. I’m older and wiser too. So you should listen.”

And Mom wanted us to be there for each other, I don’t quite dare to say out loud.

He snorts and goes back to counting out pairs of socks.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Packing my gym bag for this week.”

“Oh.”

“I’m busy, okay?”

“Jeffrey. .” I move a pile of dirty clothes from his desk chair and sit on it. “What’d I do to make you hate me so much?”

He pauses. “You know what you did.”

“No. I mean, yes, I guess I was pretty selfish last year, about my purpose and stuff. I wasn’t thinking about you.”

“Oh really,” he says.

“I’m sorry. If I ignored you, or took the attention away from you because I was so focused on my purpose. I didn’t know about yours, I swear. But don’t you kind of owe me an apology too?”

He turns to me incredulously.

“What for?” he demands.

“You know. .”

“No. You tell me.” Suddenly he tugs off his tie and flings it on the bed.

“You started the fire!”

“Yeah, I’ll probably go to juvie. Is there even a juvie in Wyoming?”

“Jeffrey. .”

But now that he’s talking, he doesn’t plan to stop. “This is pretty convenient for you, right?

Because now you get to blame me. If I hadn’t started the other fire, Tucker would have been safe and your thing with Christian would have gone off without a hitch, and you’d be a good little angel-blood who fulfilled her purpose. Is that right?”

“Are you sure it was your purpose?”

“Are you sure about yours?” he counters.

“Okay, true enough. But seriously, I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. But if you say you had the visions about it, and that’s what you were supposed to do, I believe you.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it was?” He’s almost shouting now. “The crazy stuff that went through my head, like I could have been murdering people, starting that fire. All those animals and all that land, and the firefighters and people who risked their lives to put it out. But I still did it.” His lip curls in disgust. “I did my part. Then you had to go and bail on yours.” I lower my eyes, look at my hands. “If I hadn’t, Tucker would have died.”

“You’re so wrong it’s pathetic,” Jeffrey says more calmly. “As usual.”

“What?” I glance up, startled. “Jeffrey, I was there. I saved him. If I hadn’t shown up when I did, he would have. .”

“No. He wouldn’t have.” Jeffrey looks out the window like he can see it happening all over again. “He wouldn’t have died. Because I would have saved him.” He starts packing his bag again, underwear this time. He laughs, a mean, humorless sound, shakes his head. “God. I was frantic that night, looking for him. He didn’t show up where he was supposed to, where he always did, in the visions. I thought I’d messed up somehow. I thought he was toast for sure.

Finally I gave up and came home. I saw you on the porch with Christian and I was like, well, at least she did it. At least she fulfilled her purpose. Then I spent all night agonizing over how your face would look when you found out Tucker was dead.”

“Oh, Jeffrey.”

“So you see,” he continues after a minute. He grabs a stick of deodorant and tucks it into his duffel bag. “You thought I screwed up your purpose, right? But the truth is, if you’d followed your vision, if you’d just trusted the plan, then you and Christian would have done your thing in the forest, and Tucker would have been perfectly safe, and everything would have worked out fine. But instead you had to go and screw it up for the both of us.” I don’t say anything. I just slink out of his room and shut the door. In my own room I lie down on the bed and stare up at the empty ceiling wide-eyed, dry-eyed, and it feels like the ache opens a huge gaping hole in my chest.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp, although I have no idea who I’m apologizing to, Jeffrey or my mom, who believed in me so much, or even God. I just know that it’s my fault, and I’m sorry.

Don’t beat yourself up, Christian says in my head. I sit up and glance at the window, and of course he’s there, sitting in his normal spot.

I messed things up for you too, I remind him.

He shakes his head. No, you didn’t. You just changed things.

I go to the window and open it, step outside into the cool night air. It feels like summer now, a kind of shift in the way the night feels, the way it smells.

“You’ve got to stay out of my head,” I say as I hunker down awkwardly next to Christian.

I’m still in my mom’s nice black pumps. My toes hurt. “It can’t be very fun for you, always finding out my deep dark secrets.”

He shrugs. “They’re not so dark.”

I give him a hard look. “My life is a soap opera.”

“A really, really addictive soap opera,” he says. Then he puts his arm around my shoulders and draws me into him. And I let him. I close my eyes.

“Why do you want me, Christian? I’m hopelessly screwed up.”

“We’re all screwed up. And you look so cute while you’re doing it.”

“Stop.”

The back of my neck feels hot where his breath is touching me, stirring the wisps of my hair that managed to escape my braid. “Thank you,” I say. We sit there for a while, not talking.

An owl hoots in the distance. And suddenly, miraculously, there are tears in my eyes.

“I miss my mom,” I choke out.

Christian’s arms tighten around me. I lean my head onto his shoulder and cry and cry, my body shuddering with sobs. It’s one of those loud, probably unattractive kind of sobfests, the kind where your nose runs and your eyes get all huge and swollen and your whole face becomes this messy pink swampland, but I don’t care. Christian holds me, and I cry. The ache empties itself out on his T-shirt, leaving me lighter, a good emptiness this time, like if I tried I might be light enough to fly.