Death, and the Girl He Loves

“From everything you knew,” Granddad continued. “Everyone you knew.”

My parents were right behind them. They followed them into the small room, and Mom came over to sit beside me, but I had a hard time tearing my gaze away from my grandparents.

“It started when you were very young,” Mom said. “You told Casey you hated him.”

Casey. I would never get used to calling Glitch Casey.

“And when we asked why, you told us he was going to die anyway. You figured you’d save yourself the pain of losing him later by letting him go then.” Mom lowered her head in sadness. “And you hardly spoke to your grandparents, even though they lived right by you. You just pulled away.”

Guilt assaulted me as the very grandparents I’d apparently been shunning looked on, their eyes full of more understanding than I deserved.

“You started forming friendships based on how badly the person treated you,” Dad said as Mom took my hand in hers.

I frowned as a thought occurred to me. “That would explain my friendship with Tabitha.”

“Yes, it would,” Grandma said.

Dad kneeled before me. “We just didn’t know what to do to help you, Pix. You were so worried about today. Worried you’d failed. Worried you would fail.”

“Until you hardly ate,” Mom said. “Hardly slept. That’s why we’ve been waiting with bated breath for this day to arrive. We knew … No, we hoped that things would change. That you would … come back to us.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, tears spilling out over my cheeks.

“No, sweetheart, no,” she said, fat tears rushing down her face as well. “You saw so much in those early years. You had so many bad dreams. Saw so many people die. Don’t ever be sorry.”

“I don’t understand what happened. The clouds opened up and thousands of evil spirits escaped onto this plane. I didn’t do anything to stop it. I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried.”

Granddad grinned. “You’re going to have a hell of a time convincing your grandpa Mac of that.”

“Mac?” I said. “He’s here?”

“Sure is,” Mac said from the doorway. “And I thought the party was in the church dining hall. What’s everyone doing here?”

“Mac.” I brightened. Like always, his presence was a welcoming salve. “You’re here.”

“Didn’t we already cover that?” he asked, his expression shimmering with mirth. “And I brought something for you. Something we agreed on years ago.”

He shook out a T-shirt and held it up to me. I read it aloud. “My parents stormed the gates of hell and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

My voice grew softer and softer as I read. I glanced at my parents, hesitant to talk about what had happened to them. Hesitant to tell them what I’d done. How I’d led them to their deaths. Or, well, their first deaths.

“Then it was real?” I asked. “I didn’t dream up an entirely different life? I don’t have a split personality?”

“Well, I don’t know about that exactly, eh, Bill?” He ribbed Granddad, who laughed right along with him.

He handed me the shirt, and I wadded it into a ball, wishing I could burn the evidence of what I’d done.

“Do you know what happened?” I asked my parents, suddenly unable to meet their eyes.

“We know everything,” Mom said. “Well, everything your grandpa Mac would tell us.”

Dad frowned at his father before turning back to me. “He’s not the most forthcoming sort,” he said. “But we got the basic gist of things.”

“You were gone for so long,” I said, my voice catching on something in my chest.

Mom squeezed my hand. “And we’re terribly sorry for that, Pix. We would never have left you on purpose.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, becoming frantic. “There was a wind and this lightning bolt and these clouds and then you were ripped away from me.”

Mom flung her arms around me, trying to console us both. “It didn’t happen, Pix. It didn’t happen, because of what you did.”

I leaned back so I could look at her. “I didn’t do anything but watch my friends and family die!” My sorrow and terror welled up inside me and threatened to burst out of my chest. “I did nothing.”

The bed dipped again as Mac sat next to me. He took my face into his hands, wiped away my tears with the padding of his thumbs. “I beg to differ,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “You saved the world from total annihilation.”

I let a frustrated breath slip through my lips.

Instead of arguing with me, he asked, “Do you remember what we did when I was in prison?”

“You were in prison?” Grandma asked, appalled.

“Apparently,” he replied with a grin, teasing her. When I nodded, he said, “Okay, let’s try that again. This will be rather new for me, but we’ve done it before, if memory serves. You told me so.”

By this point, I was so confused, I would’ve agreed to anything if it meant I’d get some answers. “Okay.”

He put up a hand, fingers slightly splayed. We had done this when I’d visited him in prison. Only we’d done it through glass and he allowed me to see how he ended up in prison. He’d gone after the men who’d tortured his wife, my grandmother, for information and killed her. The men, descendants of nephilim, had wanted to know about me. My name. My mother’s name. Where I was born. They knew the last prophet had been born and wanted to kill me before I had a chance at life. She’d died protecting me. She’d died on the day I was born. Mac went after the men who took her. He killed them all in a shoot-out, received several gunshot wounds in return for his efforts, and almost died himself before he found my paternal grandmother. She was dead, of course. Had been dead for hours. But he held her, rocked her, promised to do the right thing.