by Anna Elias
“What?” Tom roared. “A girl getting educated? In art? If Grace wants to play piano at church, that’s one thing, but her place is here, helping me and learning how to run her own house someday.”
Tal’s fists curled. Oh, how she wanted to throttle this guy.
Darleen took a more effective approach. She walked over to Tom, reaching up to hold his face.
He snarled at Tal’s black skin and wrenched away, but Darleen held on tight until his eyes met Tal’s and he saw his wife’s Spirit sparkling inside.
“She’s got a mind, Tom Watts. And her soul and purpose go beyond this farm. Gracie is God’s gift to this world, as are we all, and it is high time she goes out and shares it.”
Tom clenched his jaw and yanked to get free.
Darleen tightened Tal’s grip on his flustered red cheeks and stared Tom in the eye. “I stuck my light under a bushel so long it went out, and me with it. We don’t want that for Gracie. You sell these paintings and sell some land if you have to. Do whatever it takes to send our child to school.”
She let go and Tom staggered back, shell-shocked.
Grace threw her arms around Tal. “I love you, Momma.”
Tom studied the woman hugging his child. “Figures you’d pick a nig—a black woman to come back in.”
Tal hardened. Darleen beamed.
Tom softened. “You always were more open than me that way.” He scanned the array of paintings one by one. Minutes passed like hours. “They’re really good,” he said at last.
Darleen touched his arm. Tom jumped again.
“Close your eyes,” she coaxed.
It took a long moment, but he complied.
“Keep them closed,” she whispered, moving in front of him. Darleen lifted Tal’s arms to encircle Tom’s neck. He cringed but didn’t move.
Tal caught Grace’s look of shock. Darleen focused her.
“I love you, Tom Watts,” Darleen said, caressing the collar of his worn shirt. Stains from years of hard work marred the clean fabric. She pressed her head to his barrel chest. “I always loved you.”
It took some time, but Tom’s stiff muscles began to soften and his resistance eventually melted in their embrace. The pulse slowed in his neck and his strong arms wrapped around Darleen’s waist. A sob caught in his throat. He choked it back but his tears fell onto the back of Tal’s shirt.
Darleen squeezed harder, beaming a torrent of unconditional love into Tom. The only time Tal had experienced anything remotely similar was when she’d held Darden close, and felt his tiny body breathing with hers. Tal’s senses exploded again and the tattoo surged once more to handle the love that pulsed between these two. A small eternity passed before Darleen let go. She stepped back and waited.
Tom’s lids slowly fluttered open. He wiped back tears and looked at Darleen. “I never knew,” he whispered. “I never learned to think about women that way.”
Grace fell against the chair.
Tom’s gaze shifted from Tal’s eyes to her face and skin. His look held significantly less bias. “And I never thought black skin could be ... same as mine.”
Tal teetered, thunderstruck. This much transformation would have taken Tom years to achieve without the Spirit. And when he did change, using human methods like therapy and reconditioning, this degree of metamorphosis would have earned him fireworks and a ticker-tape parade, or at least a story in some medical journal. Liam and Captain Hugh were right about time on the other side—infinite and infinitesimal, endless and connected. It moved without clocks or calendars, years filling up seconds and transforming lives in ways humans could never imagine or understand.
How can people learn to want this for themselves? Tal wondered. And what would they be willing to give up to get it?
Darleen vibrated encouragement.
Tom turned to his daughter, nervous, hesitant. “Have you ever wanted to do that, Gracie? Leave me the way your momma did?”
Grace looked down and her narrow shoulders began to shake. A tear splattered on the floor.
Tom lifted her chin. “Oh, Gracie, no. Please don’t.” His hand trembled, and tears welled. He didn’t try to stop them. “I couldn’t take losing you, too.” The huge man fell to his knees, grabbed his young daughter, and held her close as they sobbed in each other’s arms.
Parting ways on the porch that night, Darleen hugged her daughter close one last time, squeezing as if they could become one.
Tom did the same to Tal when Darleen hugged him, and Grace nearly fell over.
“Love is the greatest gift,” Darleen told them. “Live for that.”
Tal walked to the car and Darleen blew a last kiss before they drove off.
Tom and Grace watched the headlights disappear into darkness.
“Well,” Tom sniffed. “I guess that’s that.” He wiped his hands together as if removing dirt. His voice resumed its gruff edge.
Grace crumbled. Had the magic ended already?
“We’ll need to finish that south field first.”
She pinched herself to fight back a hateful crop of tears. “What for?”
“So I can sell it by the time you graduate. College ain’t cheap, you know.”
Grace spun around. “You’re serious?”
He grinned and opened his big arms.
She jumped into them. “Oh, Daddy! Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Reckon you’ll have to teach me how to cook some,” he said, setting her gently back down on the porch. “Else I’ll have to survive on beef stew and biscuits.”
Grace laughed for the first time since her mother died. The sound carried like music into the night.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
LINK
Car tires crunched over food wrappers, soggy leaves, and broken glass before stopping outside a run-down trailer park. Trash and debris cluttered the park, as did a few broken-down vehicles and rusted engine parts. Large power lines cut through the trees behind.
Link shifted into park and turned off the headlights. Dusk settled around them.
“There he is.” Valerie pointed to a young man stumbling out on the sagging, cluttered porch of his trailer five homes in. He swigged from a can of beer, shoved his dog out of the way, and sank into a worn, weathered recliner. The dog returned, tail down. Zach patted its head.
“I did this to him,” Valerie said.
“No,” Rose corrected. “I wanted him to suffer for what he’d done.”
Link’s heart sank watching Zach. Jail was horrible, especially for the innocent, living in tiny cells behind iron bars. But this, in some ways, was worse—a prison of despair and broken dreams that locked souls into solitary and threw away the key, sometimes for life.
“Please go,” Valerie told her mother. “I can’t bear to see him like this.”
Link climbed from the car and scanned the area. No police. He sighed and helped Rose step out. Her hands trembled. His would have, too, if not for Valerie.
A breeze blew past. The sweet scent of crabapple blossoms could not hide the stench from a distant mill that reeked of sulfur and smelled like rotten eggs.
Link fought the urge to gag.
“Heavens.” Rose winced, cupping both hands over her face.
“Come on,” Valerie urged. She took Rose’s arm and started toward the park.
Rose rooted her feet, jerking Link back. She peered at Valerie through his eyes. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why now? It’s been ten years. Why wait to do this now?”
Valerie’s green flecks twinkled under Link’s blue contacts, shimmering at Rose in an odd shade of teal. “Because neither of you were ready.”
Rose tensed at first then nodded.
Link saw Tricia in that moment. Timing was critical, indeed.
Valerie’s Spirit vibrated, a current of affirmation.
She led them across the littered street, into the flickering neon entry of the trailer park. A few children played in the muddy puddles between the first few
trailers, and some feral cats streaked past. People watched from messy porches or through dirt-smeared windows as Link and Rose passed.
“Hello, Zach,” Rose said as they reached his warped wooden steps.
Zach scowled. A roach ran across his foot, and he kicked the tiny creature into orbit over her head. “Aim ain’t what it used to be.”
Rose trembled. “Can we come up?”
“What for?”
“To talk.”
“Got nothing to say.”
“I do,” Rose told him. “I need to ... I have to ...”
Zach drummed his fingers on the chair.
Factory odors mixed with smells from an overflowing dumpster about forty yards away. Link’s stomach churned, but Valerie calmed it.
Rose held her breath against the stench. “I want to ...” She couldn’t finish.
“Yeah. Nice talking to you, too, Mrs. Williams.” Zach squashed the next roach and swigged his beer.
Link squeezed Rose’s hand and Valerie pulsed currents of love into her mom.
“I need to ... apologize,” Rose said at last.
Zach’s eyebrow lifted in surprise, then he chugged the last of his beer and crushed the empty can. “Little late, don’t you think?”
Link recognized the hurt behind his words. Sarcasm and bitterness were often the only pillars left. Link silently thanked Sam and the Program for saving him before the same could happen.
Zach bounced his crushed can off the porch wall and into a tall plastic container filled with empty cans and bottles. Link and Rose noted the mounds of crumpled burger bags beside it, and the dirty dishes piled high at the kitchen sink inside the open window. Dried, crusty mud encircled the trailer’s bottom like a skirt where years of rain had splattered dirt from Zach’s yard. His small, paint-faded car rode on two spare tires.
A suffocating darkness permeated this place, one Link recognized all too well from his time in jail. Hope was gone. It had died here long ago.
Rose fought back tears. “I’m sorry, Zach. I had no idea ...”
“Shut up and take it inside,” a neighbor groused from next door. “I’m trying to sleep.”
Zach ignored him and pointed to Link. “Who’s that?”
“He is ...”
Link shook his head imperceptibly.
“... family. From up north. He learned more about the accident and came to tell me. He found out where you lived and brought me.”
Zach sneered at Link. Valerie beamed, a dusting of green in Link’s eyes. Zach did a double take.
“He told me what happened. How Valerie was drinking and pressured you into speed surfing on County Road Six.”
Zach jumped to his feet. “He couldn’t know about that. No one else was there to know about that.”
Link tensed, praying Zach’s anger wouldn’t lead to anything physical—not with Valerie inside. Then again, she could probably lay both of them out without breaking a sweat.
“I know you swerved to dodge the rock. And no one saw the hole before your tire hit.”
Zach glared at Link, sobering fast. “How do you know this?”
“It doesn’t matter, Zach,” Rose replied. “The important thing is that I know. The accident wasn’t your fault. I hope you can forgive my years of—”
“Hate?” he snapped, spinning in her direction.
She looked down. “Yes.”
Zach stomped across the porch, boards moaning under his muddy boots. Muscles of his torso rippled under his open shirt as he grabbed the overhead rail.
Valerie’s Spirit flashed bright green in Link’s eyes.
Zach stormed down the steps to Link. “Who the hell are you?”
Link stepped back. A tomcat yowled nearby. “Easy, man. I’m just the messenger.”
The flecks dimmed. Valerie bided her time.
The few working streetlights popped on around the park, including the one near Zach’s trailer. It cast an unnatural orange glow.
Zach whirled on Rose, his tall shadow gashing her tiny frame. “It’s great you’re telling me this, Mrs. Williams. And I hope it makes you feel better. But honestly, it doesn’t do shit for me.”
She drew back.
Fury burned in Zach’s eyes. “I lost my scholarships, my friends, and my family. I couldn’t get a job anywhere, so I moved here to work construction where nobody knows me, and nobody cares, as long as I can swing a hammer or shingle a roof. I live paycheck to paycheck, eat cheap fast food, and come home to my chair, my beer, and my dog.” He shoved his angry face in hers. “So, thanks for your apology, but go back to your nice clean home in your nice clean neighborhood with your ‘God hates sinners’ church friends and leave me the hell alone.”
He turned to go back up the steps, but Rose grabbed his arm. “This is not you, Zachary,” she said. Tears dampened her cheeks. “It’s not who you are, and it’s not where you belong.”
He startled at her grip, at the conviction in her gaze, then jerked away. “It’s not where anyone belongs, Mrs. Williams.”
Rose continued, undeterred. “The Zach Valerie loved was an outstanding student and captain of two ball teams. He had scholarship offers from three universities.”
“Yeah, well, things change.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Change is what brought me here and change can take you out.”
Zach leaned down, eyes sizzling. “You going to help me with that? Considering you and your judgmental, unforgiving, holy roller hate helped put me here?”
Rose’s shoulders slumped but she didn’t look away. “And I was wrong. I’m sorry. For all of it.”
“You want sorry?” he seethed, spitting words like barbs. “Live every single day of your life having killed three innocent people with their whole lives ahead of them. Hear two of them scream for help as they’re crushed alive in front of you, knowing one is the girl you love more than anything else in the world, the one you want to marry, start a family with, and adore for the rest of your life. Then have that girl’s mother, and everyone else who loved you and thought you were the greatest thing on two legs, suddenly hate you for what they think you did.” He stepped back and took a sharp breath. It hitched in his throat. “And the worst part—you didn’t mean to do it. You didn’t want to do it. You were the one saying ‘no’ to begin with but—”
“Zach. Please.” Rose started to cry.
Zach ran a trembling hand over his face so he wouldn’t. “Doesn’t matter, right? They’re still dead.”
Link turned away, knowing all too well the false accusations and hijacked innocence Zach had suffered. He prayed for this same shot at resolution with Tricia Martin when the time came.
“You think you can do what they want and still keep them safe.” Zach’s chin quivered. “You think you have everything under control. But you don’t, you know? You don’t have anything under control. Some damn pothole appears and, because of it, and the one tiny moment when your Jeep wheel hits it, three kids are dead, and you have to live with that the rest of your life.” He swatted back tears. “Except you can’t live with it. You wanted me to go straight to Hell for what I did, Mrs. Williams. Looks like you got your wish. Thanks for the apology but please leave.”
Zach trudged back up the steps and collapsed into the broken recliner. He cracked open another beer from a cheap Styrofoam cooler, leaned back and closed his eyes. The dog licked his arm.
“I love you, Zach Thompson,” Valerie said.
Zach jerked up to see Link standing over him. He leaped from the chair. “Shit, man! What the hell are you doing?”
Link’s heart pounded. Valerie swelled to calm him, an ethereal blanket of peace.
She beamed at Zach, her flecks sparkling like emeralds in Link’s eyes. “I loved you from the day we met at that silly carnival, and you gave me your cotton candy.”
Zach stumbled back, tripping over the recliner.
“You made me so proud,” Valerie continued. “I loved being your girl and sharing your dreams. I wanted more than anythi
ng to one day become your wife. Don’t end things here because of me. Go and be the man you were destined to be before I stopped you.”
Waves of emotion crashed over Zach’s face. He stepped closer. “Valerie?”
“It’s her, Zach,” Rose said. “I can’t explain it, but she’s in there. She brought him.”
Valerie took his hand. “Please forgive me, Zach. For what I did, for what I put you through. My death was never your fault.”
Zach teetered. Link helped him to the rail. Zach turned. His gaze met Link’s. “Valerie?”
“I love you.” She slowly wrapped Link’s arms around Zach’s neck and held on tight. Zach’s whole body went rigid at first and he tried to pull away, but Valerie’s warmth blanketed them both and he slowly gave in and held her close. Though not as intense as the one with Rose, the current between these two souls ignited Link’s tattoo and vibrated every nerve.
“Thanks, Vals,” he whispered. “I don’t know how you ... I’m not sure how it all ... Thanks.”
Valerie stroked his cheek. “I love you forever.”
“I love you, too,” Zach replied.
Zack backed up and Link stepped off the porch.
“You’re a good man, Zachary,” Rose said. “You always were. I was a fool to let my anger blind me. And for so long.”
He swiped back a tear and cleared his throat.
“You come to me when you’re ready,” she told him. “I’ll give you work, a place to stay, and help with school.”
He nodded. A small, hopeful smile turned his lips.
Rose waved and walked off with Link through pools of orange streetlight. The same half-naked children threw mud at each other in the same smelly night air, and more mangy cats dashed past.
Rose took Link’s arm, and Valerie surged at the bright, open and airy feel of her mother’s joy. Rose was hate-free for the first time in ten years.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
