She buried her parents alone because it couldn’t wait. She hopes she did it well enough. Mrs. Ruthie was a big help and now she’s spending her days trying to track down their great-aunt Patty, the only living relative Bea and Lo have on their (dead) mother’s side. They’ve never met but Patty should probably know this happened.
* * *
There’s so much wrong with Lo now that what the accident did isn’t going to be what kills her. It’s the infection she’s gotten since. The doctors have met it with every antibiotic they have and Lo is full of so much fluids, her fingers and arms and feet and face swell. Today, when Bea steps into the hospital, a nurse tells her to stay the night if she can stand it. Bea can’t stand it.
Stay anyway, the nurse tells her.
Lo was a strange kid; her whole childhood foreign to Bea, lacking all the magical impulses of her own. Bea ran toward the world without looking back and Lo couldn’t seem to head in any direction without the assurance of a point of return. When she was six, Lo would wake up in the night crying with her sheets soaked through and go to Bea about it, never Mom or Dad. She always looked so pitiful, Bea couldn’t be mad.
I had a nightmare, Lo would say in one breath while begging Bea not to tell anyone she’d wet the bed in the next. Bea didn’t have the heart to tell Lo that Mom and Dad knew—who else was doing the laundry? Still, they’d change the sheets together and clean Lo up, and Bea would tuck her back into bed, trying, unsuccessfully, to get to the root of whatever terrified her sister awake so she could make it stop. One night after Bea put her to bed, Lo looked at Bea with wide eyes and asked her if she was ever afraid of all the things she didn’t know could happen to her. Bea told Lo no. She only believed in things she could see.
Lo wants to be a writer.
Bea is tormented by all the stories her sister will never get the chance to tell.
* * *
Bea goes to the hospital chapel where no one is, the journey comprised of one halting step in front of the other until it comes to an end. She collapses in front of the altar and the cross, pulled down by the weight of her grief, and she weeps.
I’ll do anything, she says to the ground because she doesn’t know where else to look.
I’ll do anything.
She lies down right there, her eyes bloodshot, her cheeks slick with tears, the skin around her lips and nose breaking away from her, rubbed raw and sore.
God, she whispers and it’s all she whispers, over and over and over again. God, I’ll do anything. Please, God …
And then He appears.
PART ONE
SEPTEMBER 2017
I woke to the promise of a storm. It wasn’t in the air but I felt it in my bones. Sunlight edged the corners of my covered window and if I’d told anyone to pack an umbrella, they would have told me I was crazy because when I threw the curtains wide, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But my body never lies and by the time I get to the train station, it’s raining.
“Damn.”
I slowly raise my eyes from my lap, unclenching my fingers from fists. My cab driver is leaned forward, staring through the windshield at the dark gray shroud overhead. I dig my wallet out of my pocket and fumble for some bills, passing them over the seat before getting out. The first few drops of rain land cold against my skin and the downpour starts in earnest the moment I’m safely through the automatic doors. I turn to watch the people who didn’t get so lucky as they scramble for cover.
“Fuck’s sake,” a woman mutters as she fumbles in, drenched, dragging two miserable toddlers alongside her, a boy and girl. The boy starts to cry.
I face the station and check the noticeboard against the wall. I’m ten minutes early; no delays. A relief, though not in terms of arrival. When I close my eyes, I see the mess of blankets atop the bed I forced my aching body from, awaiting me.
I turn and stumble into a human wall, a man. Or a boy. I’m not so sure. He might be a little older than me, maybe a little younger. Time has yet to stake a claim on him in any definable way. His eyes widen just slightly at the sight of my face.
“Do I know you?” he asks.
The apples of his cheeks are a fevered red against his pale white skin, and there are dark circles under his brown eyes, like he hasn’t known sleep in any recent sense of the word. He has a greasy mop of curly black hair and he’s very thin. I’ve never seen him before and I like the way he’s looking at me less and less, so I sidestep him, leaving him to his mistake.
“I know you,” he says at my back.
I join the crowd gathering at my platform. I hate the preboarding jostle, of finding myself amid an impatient collective that has lost all sense of assigned seating. Soon, I’m surrounded by twitchy passengers, their shoulders touching my shoulders, elbows touching my elbows. I press my lips together and close my eyes, rubbing my hands together. I love wasting a day off at the doctor’s office for my annual diagnosis of still kicking, whatever that means.
“Whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.”
I still at the strangeness of the words, at the newly unwelcome familiarity of the voice they belong to. I open my eyes and glance beside me to see if anyone else heard, but if they have, they do what I don’t, keeping their faces pointed down the tracks, awaiting the train. I decide to do the same, ignoring the heavy presence behind me until there’s a push against my back, and those words again—but closer.
“Whoever will lose his life for my sake will—”
I face him. “Look, would you back the fuck off—”
“You’re Lo,” he says.
It stuns me into silence. His eyes broker no argument, more certain of me than I’ve ever been of myself. Before I can ask him how he knows my name, where he ever could have heard it, he opens his mouth once more. The rumble of the oncoming train drowns him out, but I read his lips: Find it. He grasps my arm and moves me aside to push through the disgruntled travelers standing between him and the edge of the platform. The edge of the platform and the …
“Hey,” I say at his back. “Hey!”
No one sees him until he’s made a clean jump onto the tracks and then everyone sees him and they all watch, waiting for what he’ll do next.
“There’s still time,” someone yells.
There’s still time. Maybe he just had to get this close to the other side to realize it was there all along because sometimes that’s the moment life brings you to. But more often than not, it feels like it’s this one: you lie down on the tracks and the train is coming.
The boy, trembling, lifts his head to be sure.
I turn away, my heart pounding, and force myself back through all the bodies until I’m free of the immediate crowd, only to be trapped by another greater swell of onlookers.
One of them screams, “Don’t do it!” But it’s already done.
OCTOBER 2017
I’ve been answering Paul Tindale’s phone, replying to Paul Tindale’s emails, scheduling Paul Tindale’s appointments and getting Paul Tindale’s coffee for exactly one year. Lauren brings this to my attention—as if I wasn’t already acutely aware—when I arrive at the SVO office, eight a.m. as usual, balancing breakfast in my arms. I artfully arrange the assortment of bagels, croissants and donuts on the kitchen island and watch as she plucks a pastry from the center of my masterpiece, fucking with the whole aesthetic. She’s flawless as always: black hair knotted into a messy top bun; large, black-rimmed glasses a stylish interruption across her face; her signature merlot lipstick perfectly complementing her golden-brown skin. She says, “Happy anniversary, newbie,” ahead of her first delicate bite before wandering away.