“What?” he says, sounding truly shocked.
He doesn’t know.
“Please,” he says after a minute, real desperation in his voice. “What happened?”
“You knew about the one-hundred-and-twenty-years rule, didn’t you?” He hisses out a breath. “Is that how old she was? I knew she was nearing that, but . . . it’s hard for me to keep track of human time. When?”
“Three days ago.” I feel a flash of anger, which actually feels good. Any emotion besides crushing sadness feels good at this point. “So now you won’t ever be able to hurt her again.” Again, there’s silence. I think he might have hung up. But then he says, “I didn’t feel her pass. I should have felt it.”
“Maybe you weren’t as connected as you thought you were.”
“Oh, Meg,” he says.
That’s when I blow a fuse. He has no right to grieve, I think. He’s the bad guy. He tried to kill her. He wanted to bring her down to hell with him, right? He doesn’t deserve my pity.
“When are you finally going to get it?” I ask him furiously. “My mom’s name is not Meg.
Whatever you had with her, whatever was between you, was over a long time ago. She doesn’t love you. She never did. She was always meant for someone else, from the very beginning. And there’s nothing you can do about it now because she’s dead.” The word rings in the air. I sense the presence of someone behind me. It’s Billy. She catches me by the shoulders, steadies me when I wasn’t even aware that I was swaying, about to fall. Then she slowly takes the phone out of my hand and sets it down in the cradle.
“Well, now we know why he’s mad at you tomorrow in the cemetery,” she says. She shakes her head at me. “I would feel a lot better if you didn’t go around antagonizing Black Wings.” Then, without me even having to ask her, she walks me back to my bedroom and lies down beside me in the dark, sings a low song that matches the cadence of the wind outside, like I’m a kid again. And she holds my hand until I fall asleep.
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.