Dust to Dust

by Melissa Walker

  My dad orders for me at our favorite restaurant downtown, where the staff all know us. Soft candlelight flickers on the clean, white-tiled walls, casting shadows in the antique mirrors and on the industrial-steel tables and chairs. This place is a mix of old and new, the past and the present coming together in a modern southern steakhouse. I love it here.

  We’re having a celebratory father-daughter dinner—it’s the first time we’ve been out since the accident. Dad smiles at me as he tucks his napkin into his collar, a country-boy habit Mama never could break him of. I grin back and smooth the white linen napkin over my lap.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks me.

  “Good,” I say, nodding as if to affirm it. “Really good.”

  Dad clears his throat. “I’m glad,” he says.

  The waiter brings over a basket of bread, still warm, with soft butter on the side. I lean forward to take a roll.

  “I want us to be honest with each other,” says my father. My knife freezes midbutter.

  “Me, too, Daddy,” I say, not meeting his eyes.

  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an empty pill bottle. “Carla found this in the trash when she was cleaning your bathroom.” He sets it down on the table between us, next to the still-steaming bread basket. There is supposed to be at least half of the prescription in there, but now there’s nothing left. “Do you have an explanation for this?”

  My mouth opens as I start to lie, but I can’t do it.

  “I flushed them,” I say softly.

  As soon as I acknowledge it, though, I’m relieved. I hated miming the afternoon pill swallow in front of my dad, hated hiding my own strength from him.

  “We talked about this,” he says. “I thought we agreed that following doctor’s orders was what was best.”

  “I know. But I’m feeling much better, I swear.”

  His eyes are questioning and doubtful, so I try to be a little less cavalier. “Okay, I have a few aches, but no real pain,” I tell him, dismissing the sharp crackle I felt at the cemetery with Carson. That was a one-time thing—it hasn’t happened again. “And my mind isn’t as foggy. I feel like I’m thinking clearly, for the first time in forever.”

  “So you’re back to your old self already, huh?”

  “I guess so,” I say. Inside, though, I feel very different. “I’m strong like you,” I tell him, taking a bite of warm bread.

  He laughs. “You sure are strong. But not like me. Like your mama.”

  I stop chewing for a moment, surprised that he mentioned her so casually. Usually any thought of Mama comes with a tortured look in his eyes and a glass of whiskey to chase her away. He misses her too much to think of her.

  “You know,” Dad continues, his voice quieting, “she hung on as long as she could in this life.”

  “I know, Daddy.” A lump forms in my throat. I remember when she got sick, how she grew weak but kept a smile on her face for me, always lighting up when I came into the room. Even at the end, under the harsh hospital lights. For me, she glowed with love.

  “She waited for you,” he says.

  “What?”

  “She was ready to die, but she waited for you to get there. She wanted you to be the one who let her go.”

  His words hit me in the chest. They remind me of what Thatcher told me, that my mother was able to move on to Solus, the final stage after the Prism, only after I got over her death. My eyes cloud with tears and I take a sip of water, hoping that I won’t cry at the table.

  “I’m sorry, Callie—I’m upsetting you.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “It’s okay. I like hearing about her.”

  “Well, I just thank the Lord that he let you stay here with me,” says Dad. “I talked to him all the time while you were in the hospital. I begged him not to take my other girl, and he listened. We should be grateful for every day we have together, Callie.”

  I look at him sideways. My father’s not much for God talk, especially out in public and surrounded by strangers. Still he makes a good point about being grateful for being together, because I’m beginning to learn just how painful it is to be separated from someone you have an unbreakable bond with.

  When our steaks arrive, Dad bows his head in prayer, and I instinctively mimic him, though we don’t usually say grace in restaurants. I guess this is a new thing, and it feels kind of comforting.

  “We thank you, Father, for the food we are about to receive. Tonight we celebrate the miracle of Callie’s life, and the special gifts you’ve bestowed upon her.”

  I open one eye to peer at him. What gifts is he talking about? Does he know about the Prism? About my connection with Thatcher?

  No . . . he can’t.

  I close my eyes again and wait for the Amen.

  On the ride home, I’m a bit shell-shocked by our conversation. That dinner was more intense than I expected. Usually Dad chews his steak and we talk about sports or a documentary he just saw or something. I wasn’t prepared for him to talk to me about the day Mama died—or how he begged God not to take me away from him. I’m not sure where any of it came from, or if I was quite ready to hear any of it.

  “Look,” says my father, slowing down at a red light behind a big green truck. There’s a bumper sticker that reads FUBAR, and he says, “Remember when you asked me what FUBAR stood for?”

  I let out a snort. “Fully and Utterly Bad and Wrong!”

  “I had to think of a clean version on the fly,” he replies, smiling.

  “Well, I guess you conveyed the general meaning.”

  We both laugh until our eyes fill up with joy tears, and a small spot of happiness settles into my heart. I can’t remember the last time being with him was this easy. And it shouldn’t be, considering that he knows I’ve been lying to him about the pills. The father I knew six months ago would have given me a stern lecture and probably even grounded me for “not following orders.”

  But maybe being grateful for every day we have together means not letting things come between us and keep us at arm’s length. Maybe it means giving each other more room to be who we are and loving each other in spite of the fact we might not see everything eye to eye.

  My feelings bubble over as we step out of the car, and I rush up to him for a hug.

  “Whoa, what’s all this?” he asks, squeezing me back.

  “I just . . . ,” I start. “I really love you, Daddy.”

  He kisses the top of my head. “Me too.”

  When I get up to my room, I shut the door and sit down at my desk to open my laptop. My search history shows their names: Thatcher Larson, Reena Bell, Leo Cutler. It would be so easy to go down this rabbit hole again, trying to find clues to trigger all of my memories and a way to call out to Thatcher. I close my eyes and turn inward, concentrating, and I can feel his presence, like a gentle hand on my back, an impression on my skin.

  He’s here with me. But I can’t see him, I can’t talk to him.

  My computer dings with an iTunes update. I click to cancel it, and that’s when I remember the song. The one they played at Thatcher’s memorial. I download it and press Play.

  It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart.

  Without saying a word, you can light up the dark.

  The first verses send my pulse racing as a montage of images runs through my mind. Thatcher, greeting me in the mist of the Prism right after my crash, guiding me on Earth and teaching me patience and restraint in my haunting, standing always out of reach until his walls came down and we . . . what did we do? Fall in love? Me and a ghost?

  A laugh-cry escapes my lips, and I cover my hand with my mouth. Music always does this to me—sends my mind traveling over memories or wishes for what may come. Always reaching into my soul. Just like he did.

  I press Play again when the song is over and I set it on repeat before I go to my bed to lie down. In the hazy place between sleep and waking, where emotions fill your body and dreams seem possible, I call to him. “Thatcher . . . Thatche
r.”

  “Callie.”

  It’s a whisper, a notion . . . but I hear it. His voice is like velvet—smooth and soft, draping a curtain over my reality. I can’t tell if my eyes are open or closed when I see the outline of his shape, shimmering in front of me. I sit up and search for him with my hands, but they don’t connect with anything. The air feels thicker where he is, but he’s not solid. I lean back against my pillow on the bed. “Are you real?”

  “I’m here.” His voice is enough. For now.

  “Thatcher—” I start.

  “My mother loved this song,” he says, and now I know that he is here, in my room and sensing everything around us. Even the music in the background. “It was playing—”

  “At your memorial.” I finish his sentence.

  “Yes.”

  I feel a plane of warmth around me, like I’m pressed up against a brick wall that’s been baked in the sun. I have so much to say to him, but I have no idea where to begin. My breath quickens as I try to figure it out, but then I remember something else I learned in the Prism that instantly relaxes me.

  All the thoughts and feelings that I’m having—Thatcher is already aware of them. The sense of intuition and perception that spirit guides have is incredible. So in a way, the pressure of saying the perfect thing to him is totally off. And oddly enough, I’ve never had that with anyone in my life. Not even Nick.

  With that last thought, my body tenses up. I wonder if Thatcher has been witness to everything since I awoke from the coma, including private moments that Nick and I shared in this very room.

  “Are you with me all the time now?” I ask him.

  “No. I’m here often, to see how you’re doing, but I have to return to the Prism when my energy gets low. And there’s also . . . other business to attend to.”

  “Right.” I sigh, a little relieved, yet still feeling a bit foolish for ever thinking he would devote all of his time to me.

  “I’ve felt your knowing.”

  “What?”

  “You can sense when I’m here, Callie, can’t you?”

  There have been times when I think I’ve felt him near me, as well as a strange coldness that makes it seem like he’s far away, but I wasn’t sure if my impression of him was real or not.

  Until now.

  “Yes, I think I can.”

  “The way we’re connected, it’s . . . unique,” he says. And I think his voice sounds almost loving, but I’m afraid I’m wishing for that more than hearing it.

  I’m about to ask him why this connection of ours is different from what he has with anyone else. But all of a sudden, something in the room changes. It’s an invisible shift, as if someone opened a door on a bright winter day, letting in a chilling wind.

  Although I can’t see Thatcher’s face clearly or his remarkably blue eyes, I sense his gaze turning serious, like he’s holding back his feelings so that he can tell me something important.

  “Are you off the pain meds completely?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  “I got your message,” I say.

  “That took a lot of energy. I had to go back to the Prism for a while after that.”

  “It was a bold move,” I tell him. Thatcher, the consummate rule follower, surely wasn’t supposed to scrawl something on a mirror for a living person to see. It’s a breach of worlds.

  I hear the conflict in his voice when he responds. “I had to do it.”

  “Why?”

  He doesn’t answer right away, but then he says, “Unclouded thinking is always best.”

  Thatcher sounds exactly like he did when we were in the Prism together, teaching me about things that I didn’t even know mattered, changing me forever.

  “It’s strange. My mind is getting clearer, but what I’m remembering sometimes seems so unreal that I don’t trust myself.”

  “You should. You’ve had good instincts from the beginning. You were more aware and alert than anyone else I’d ever worked with.”

  I feel a big twinge of insecurity when he says that, like we were just business partners or something, but that fades away when my thoughts wander back to the words I wrote in my journal, the ones I thought came from Thatcher: I’ll find them. I’ll protect you.

  I remember the fear I felt in the cemetery, and I have to ask him: “Thatcher, am I in danger?”

  “You’re alive, and that means you’re safe.”

  “But what about the polt—” I start.

  “Callie, you shouldn’t worry about anything that happened before. It’s best if you move forward, live today’s life.”

  Move forward. Does that mean he wants me to forget him?

  “I can’t.” It’s a whisper, soft and pleading, because the truth is that I don’t want to let go of him or our time together. I don’t want him to ask that of me.

  “You can,” he says. “That’s what I came here to tell you. I know you’ve been through a lot, more than anyone could ever imagine. But you have a real second chance, and I want you to embrace it and really live.” He pauses for a moment, and I can feel how reluctant he is to say what’s coming next. “Which is why you have to turn your back on everything you experienced while you were in a coma. Thinking about the Prism or me or anything else from that time is just going to interfere.”

  “I don’t understand. You told me to stop taking the pills and it made me remember more,” I say. “If you wanted me to forget, why did you—”

  “I wanted you to know that you weren’t crazy. That you didn’t hallucinate or imagine any of the things you saw. I didn’t think you’d be able to be true to yourself if you believed your mind was playing tricks on you.”

  I curl my legs into my chest and breathe in deeply, letting the sweet air fill my lungs. I missed that when I was nearly dead, I realize. That feeling of my chest expanding and releasing a soothing sigh.

  “You have no idea how remarkable you are.” Even though his shape is barely visible, Thatcher’s voice fills the corners of my room, nestling into the crevices of my bookshelf, enveloping the window seat and the bed, covering me like a blanket. “No one else has ever been to the Prism and returned to Earth like you did. Coma victims usually don’t come to the Prism—they linger on Earth until they die or wake. But you . . . you’ve seen both sides.”

  “I have. So how can I forget what I saw? What I felt?”

  “What you felt?”

  He’s going to make me say it—make me tell him that I love him. “Yes,” I say. “What I felt.”

  The room goes quiet, and for a moment I’m afraid he’s vanished. But then Thatcher speaks again. “You’re back with your family and friends,” he says. “You have your whole life in front of you. Anything you might have felt in the Prism doesn’t matter now.”

  “Doesn’t matter?”

  “Callie, don’t make this harder on us,” he says.

  And the sound of those two letters—us—lets me know that he felt it, too, that he remembers we did much more than “work” together. His voice deepened in that last moment, and I feel a strange tingling sensation near my ear and running down along my chin, like Thatcher is trying to caress my face.

  “The people you really care about are all here—your father, Carson . . .” He pauses, and then he says, “Nick.”

  As soon as he says Nick’s name, the tingling is gone.

  “He truly adores you,” Thatcher says, like he’s trying to remind himself not to cross a line with me.

  “I know,” I mumble. I want to say that I adore Nick, too, but our relationship doesn’t come close to the completeness that I feel right now, at merely the sound of Thatcher’s voice. I can’t even see him, and yet at the same time he’s all I need.

  And then he lets an admission slip: “I wish I could . . . be there for you in that way.”

  My throat tightens as I swallow down a lump of sadness that threatens to rise up and spill into tears.

  Thatcher laughs, a small, rueful sou
nd. “I’m almost jealous.”

  “There’s nothing to be jealous of,” I tell him, and as I say it, I know it’s true. What I have with Nick isn’t what I have with Thatcher.

  But what Thatcher said is true, too. He’s not a part of the physical world, the way Nick is. And as hard as it is for me to acknowledge right now, Thatcher can’t give me a future of togetherness. All he could offer me is a life of separation and him haunting me from a place I’ll never see again . . . until I die.

  “Oh, but there is,” says Thatcher. And then I feel a whisper of a touch on my forehead, like he’s kissing me good night. I lift my face, hoping that I’ll feel the same light pressure on my lips, but then suddenly the temperature drops in the room, causing me to shake.

  He’s gone. And when I wake up the next morning, I only have a vague sense that Thatcher was with me.

  Like it was all a dream.

  Seven

  “CALLIE, YOU HAVE GOT to pay attention!” Carson snaps her fingers in front of my face and I blink.

  “Sorry,” I say. “What was the question?”

  “Classic navy striped dress with ballet flats, or cooler eyelet lace mini with cut-out ankle boots?”

  She’s holding two potential first-day-of-school outfits in front of me as I lie on my stomach across her fluffy rose-dotted comforter. I’m sleeping over at her house for the first time since I’ve been out of the hospital—Dad’s been reassured by how well I’ve done off the meds, and the doctor cleared me to start school with everyone else on Monday.

  “Both are cute,” I say, rolling over onto my back with a sigh.

  “Okay, you could not care less,” says Carson. “I know that. Indulge your best friend.”

  I close my eyes and reach out, grabbing one of the outfits. “This one!” I say.

  “Callie, this is serious,” says Carson, throwing the clothes and their hangers onto the chair in the corner.

  “It’s really not,” I tell her. But I sit up with a grin.

  “Fine,” she says. “I’ll decide tomorrow. But I do want to finish our conversation from the other day.”

  “What conversation?”

  “In the cemetery,” she says, her eyes shining with anticipation. “Remember, you said you knew those people whose names were on the plaque, and that you were friends with them but that something wasn’t right?”