Grace of Day - BK 4 of the Grace Series

by S. L. Naeole

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I’ve been a lot of things tonight—boorish, spiteful, resentful, arrogant, an ass—stop me whenever you’re ready-”

  This time I laughed, covering my mouth with my hand. “You can keep on going,” I said behind my fingers.

  “How charitable of you,” he replied through white teeth. “Although I do admit I deserve that. You’ve shown an infinite amount of patience with me, despite my hellish behavior. It would be fitting if you did believe me to be the devil himself.”

  “You’re not that evil,” I laughed. “Yeah, you might take advantage of a lonely girl in need of some attention, but that doesn’t make you evil; just ballsy.”

  “Ballsy? Is that one of your human sayings?”

  “It’s one of my sayings—I know a lot of humans who would never let that word pass their lips, let alone admit that they’ve said it.”

  He seemed to contemplate this for a bit, and then grinned. “I think I might adopt that word for my own use. At the very least, it’ll be a great conversation killer should I ever become involved in another dreaded philosophical debate that forever rages amongst the Seraphim.”

  I giggled in spite of myself, the image of a circle of antiquated angels sitting around, arguing the logic of humanity and all of its vices, only to be disrupted by an outburst of “ballsy” by Lem, who, if I had to admit it, looked rather good for someone over ten-thousand years old.

  “Did that amuse you?”

  “Yes, actually,” I admitted. “I didn’t realize how much I needed that.”

  “Needed what?” he asked curiously.

  “A laugh. I think that’s the first time I’ve laughed in over a month.”

  “Well, I’m glad that I could give you what you need.” His eyes darkened on the word “need”, and I quickly returned my attention to my plate, thankful for the few remaining morsels of fruit left there to occupy my attention.

  And mouth.

  “I’m going to walk around the property for a bit,” Lem said suddenly. “If you need anything, call out—I’ll hear you.”

  I nodded, never looking up at him, the ease of humor now gone. As soon as he was out of sight, I ran my hands through my hair, squeezing my scalp as I tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with me.

  When I closed my eyes I could see Robert’s face, his love like a light that filled up every dark corner of my mind. Mouthing his name put every nerve in my body on high alert. They waited in anticipation of his nearness, his embrace, his voice.

  But when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t get the gold and silver stare of Lem to clear from my vision. It was as though the two conscience images were warring within me, and Lem had won my waking consciousness, while Robert still remained something hidden, something far out of reach.

  But that made no sense. I had Robert. I had his love, I had his heart, I had his very life in my hands, and simply imagining any part of my life without him caused my insides to ache. We were so close, so close to finally being together—completely. So why then was Lem still in my head?

  Why did he mean something to me when he shouldn’t? Why did I keep looking out of the kitchen window to see if he was close to returning? Why did my belly do flips in anticipation of that? I scolded myself, convincing my all too eager mind to believe that it was because I worried for him. Someone was out there who didn’t care who was with me, who was near me. He had meant something to my mother, and he was Ameila’s friend. This need to see him return was a completely understandable one—I’d feel the same way if it had been Shawn, or Chad, or even Dwayne.

  “Grace,” his voice broke through my thoughts.

  “Yes?” I stood up, trying to look innocent, trying to keep my confusion hidden as I turned to see his frame standing in the hallway that led to the back door.

  “Come outside. It’s raining.”

  “You want me to go outside…in the rain?” This didn’t seem normal.

  “Yes. It’s a warm rain, so you won’t get sick. Come on—nothing is more enjoyable than a nice walk in the summer rain.”

  “I never get sick,” I replied, unsure of his invitation. “If…if I go out there with you, will you promise…”

  He knew where I was heading with this, and he nodded. “I promise to keep things completely platonic while we’re in the backyard.”

  “What about in here?” I cocked a lone eyebrow up, wanting no surprises, no hidden doors for him to find and open up.

  “I swear on my wings, nothing will happen in here either,” he vowed.

  Content and satisfied with his response, I followed him down the hallway, my heart thudding loudly in my chest as we passed Robert—our—room. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I told myself over and over again. I was simply going outside to stand in the rain and forget about things for a while. There was nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.

  I wasn’t wearing shoes, so when my feet came into contact with the cool, damp, and springy grass, it made my toes automatically curl inwards, sinking ever deeper in the plush green carpet. I stalked to the middle of the large backyard and held my arm out as the rain fell down all around me like little faeries that glimmered in the moonlight.

  Droplets gathered on my hair, separate little pearls of water that soon morphed into the dampness that pulled my hair back, making it cling to my skin like webbing. I could feel the beads of water on my lashes, weighing them down and making them feel lush, an impossible feat, even for rain.

  “You look so carefree,” he murmured as he stood off to the side of me, maintaining a distance that made me feel both comforted and disturbed. “It’s as if you’ve given up all of your concerns to the sky.”

  “No,” I replied, wiping my face with my hands and clearing the blur of moisture from my eyes. “I’ve just put them on the back burner for now. I can’t constantly focus on doom and gloom and still expect to live a normal life. If I want to spend my last days alive that way, I might as well already be dead. I deserve better than that. Robert deserves better than that.”

  “He’s very fortunate to have you.”

  “I’m the fortunate one,” I corrected. “Robert saved my life.”

  Lem nodded in understanding, his eyes hard and focused on mine, even through the thickening rain.

  “Do you ever wish that things were different?”

  I looked at him quizzically. “Different? What do you mean?”

  “Your circumstances. Do you ever wish that they were different?”

  My arms lowered, and I thought about his question. How many nights had I asked myself the same thing? How many nights alone, crying over Robert, crying over what might have been, did I ask myself if I wanted things to be different in any way. My eyes rose to his and I answered him with a firm, “No.”

  “No? But look at everything that you’ve lost—friends, loved ones. Soon you’ll have to give yourself over to Robert to die. You would still allow him to take your life?”

  There was no hesitation in my response. There could never be one. I was as sure of it as I was my name. “Yes. I wouldn’t wish for anything different. Every decision I made brought me to this place. If I hadn’t gone to school that first day, I’d probably never have bumped into Robert. He would’ve never noticed me. I’d have never gotten on that bike with him and learned his secret.

  “If Graham had told me he loved me, if he had felt the same way about me that I felt for him, I probably wouldn’t have noticed him. I chose my fate, and knowing now what I do, I realize that every choice I made, even the ones that hurt, were the right ones. And while I might not be sure of the choices I’ll make in the future—however long it might be—whatever I do choose will be the right one, because each one will be for love and for hope.”

  “And what kind of hope do you have? You’re going to die, Grace,” he said, his tone challenging as he approached me, closing the once safe distance between us rather quickly.

  “But Robert’s going to live,” I told him stubbornly. “My hope rests in
him. He’s going to do what he was meant to do, just as I’m going to do what I was meant to do.”

  “And you believe that you were meant to die?”

  “Yes. I’ve seen what not following through with one’s call can do to your kind. I won’t let Robert destroy himself to protect me, not when my life is so meaningless without him in it.”

  Lem’s hands reached for my face, but I pulled back, and they hung there in mid-air, his fingers strained at the emptiness that lay between them. “How…how can you say that your life is meaningless without him in it? How can you measure yourself based on his existence?”

  “Because there are some things you just know, Lem. You can’t know if you’ll ever fall in love, or who you’ll fall in love with, but when you do you know it. You know it like you know your own name. You feel it, and it eats at you, consumes you until all that is left is what you feel. And when you meet the reason you exist, the reason you breathe, the reason your heart beats, you know that without them, you cease to exist.”

  “And what if I tell you that without you, I cease to exist? What would you say to that?”

  My head swayed from side to side in quiet denial of his words. “I’d say that you were fooling yourself, that you did not understand what it truly meant to be in love.

  “I keep saying that I love Robert. It’s not true. I don’t love Robert. What I feel for him is something that goes beyond that. Love is a trivial thing compared to what I feel for him. He’s every thought in my head, every second of time that passes by, every inch of space that I walk into.

  “And, even though when I stand here, and I see you, and I think to myself how much I’d like to kiss you, I realize that the act of kissing you is nothing compared to the thought of kissing Robert. Just the thought of it is enough to wipe out every other memory for me. That’s not love, Lem. You don’t ever find that with anyone except the person whose soul is the match for your own. Robert’s my soul mate, and that continues on long after death.”

  “That doesn’t mean that you just hand yourself over to it. What about your father? Your brother? Your friends? What about them? How selfish is it to put all of their wants aside for one person?”

  It hurt, seeing the anguish in Lem’s face, seeing his pain. It was as though I was looking at him through someone else’s eyes, and every ounce of dismay that lay within him was cold needle to my heart because despite his words, despite his actions, he’d been a good friend.

  “They love me, with as equal devotion and trust as I feel for them, and they know that what I do, it’s not just for me, and not just for Robert, but for them as well. I’m a danger to them—the longer I exist, the closer their lives come to ending. I have no obligation to anyone but myself, and it’s because of that I’ve chosen to leave everything behind.

  “I’d rather never see my little brother grow up, if it means knowing that he will. I’d rather say goodbye to my dad forever and walk away, knowing that he’ll live to raise my brother, than live with the knowledge that he’s gone.

  “So yes, I am selfish. I’m very selfish. I can’t accept any harm coming to my family because of me. Too many people have died because of me, and my friends and family have already suffered enough. They don’t deserve any of this and I refuse to let anything else happen to them.”

  “What if I can keep them safe? What if I can keep them from being hurt?”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I asked him softly. “More importantly, why are you doing this to yourself? Do I remind you that much of my mother? She didn’t love you either.”

  I had gone too far. The rain turned cold, icy, tiny shards that were sharp and bitter as they fell on me, slicing my skin and filling the damp air with the scent of my blood.

  “She had no choice—but you do. You could love me if you wanted,” he said to me darkly.

  I ignored the stinging in my arms and held my ground, even as he removed what little distance there was left between us. “But that’s just it. I don’t want to.”

  The air around me was bitter with its chill, mirroring the frozen wasteland that I’d turned Lem into. He looked stricken; angry, empty. I felt like crap for doing that to him, but I wouldn’t lie to him to make him feel better. I wouldn’t do that to someone I called my friend.

  And almost as quickly as it had happened, the hard sleet turned soft once more, warming and soothing the stinging slashes on my arms and cheeks. Lem’s eyes seemed to widen in surprise, and then a smug, knowing smile crossed over his lips as his gaze was averted, something—someone—now standing behind me.

  “N’Uriel, I hope you enjoyed that speech. If ever there was a doubt in your mind where you stood, let it be clear now.”

  “I never doubted it for a moment, Llehmai,” Robert said behind me confidently. “I’ve always known Grace’s heart and her thoughts were one in the same.”

  “How lovely it must be, knowing that she feels her thoughts are safe with you.”

  I felt the warm wash of body heat behind me, and Robert slid his arms around my waist, drawing me in, protectively, possessively. “Every part of her is safe with me.”

  Lem smiled a friendly smile that was incongruent to the rigidity of his body. “As it is with me.”

  “Thank you for watching after her.”

  “It was my pleasure. She is full of insight, your Grace is.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  Listening to the two of them speak to each other was like watching a tennis match with the sound on mute; the back and forth volley hid the true dialogue, and I yearned to hear what was being said between them. I could almost imagine the inner argument, the accusations of neglect.

  Their voices in my head; angry, prideful, possessive. I should have felt smug about it, this silent battle between the two of them over my affections, but I only felt remorse for ever allowing anything to have happened between Lem and me. Even if I somehow managed to live for a million years, I’d never forgive myself for what I had caused.

  “Grace, this isn’t your fault,” Robert whispered against my hair.

  “It is,” I insisted.

  Robert turned me around to face him, the house at his back, and his mouth opened to say something, his eyes brimming with reassurance, but nothing came out. Nothing was able to. There was a flash of white, my eyes felt burned to the back of my skull, and I found myself lying on the ground, my shoulder digging into the wet grass, my head tilted at an odd angle.

  I could see white, bright, glowing, hot white, with ghosts of darkness floating inside. My ears were filled with the harsh pinging of something metallic, while my nose was tickled with the smell of smoke. I could feel myself being lifted, feel my body being cradled and adjusted gently, and then passed like a gift to another set of arms whose face hid in that dark ghostly shadow.

  There was a strong pain in my abdomen, and my arm, the same arm that I had used to block Dad’s attack on Lem, was the only part of me that didn’t seem to hurt. I think I opened my mouth to say something—perhaps I was successful and simply couldn’t hear myself—no response came to me. A cool hand pressed against my face, and though I could not see to whom it belonged, I felt my body relax and lean into the touch. Cool ribbons of calm seeped into my skin, and my mind grew fuzzy.

  “I don’t want to sleep,” I said. Or, at least I tried to say. “I don’t want to sleep—don’t make me sleep.”

  I grew frantic in my thoughts. Sleeping, blacking out, I did not want any of it. I felt myself being lifted once more, and placed into a seat. The cool pin-prick of sensation was returning to my arm, as well as the rest of me, my body healing in its usual fashion. Something was pulled over me, and the telltale click of a seatbelt being fastened alerted me to the fact that I could hear again. Or maybe it was just my imagination.

  “Grace, you’re going to be okay. I’m going to drive you away from here—you’re not safe here anymore. I don’t know where you’ll be safe, actually…”

  It was Stacy’s voice. Stacy had come back, just as Lem
had said she would. I spoke her name, but she didn’t respond—maybe I hadn’t said it at all. I felt the cool pat of a hand against mine, and then a soft vibration beneath me—the car had been started. Whose car?

  “What happened?”

  Had I asked that?”

  “There was some kind of explosion,” her voice said to me. I had asked it after all. “It wasn’t a normal kind of explosion, like the kind you see on television. This one—it was like everything just got sucked in, like a vacuum on steroids or something. But it made this god-awful sound, and that light…you were looking straight at it.”

  I had. So that explained why I couldn’t see. “Where’s Robert?”

  “He’s okay, Grace. He and Lem are both okay. They’ve stayed behind to sift through the mess and figure out what happened. Oh this is going to make the news tomorrow, that’s for sure.”

  “The news?”

  “Yes. Your name is going to plastered all over the papers tomorrow, I’m afraid. Everyone will know that you and Robert are married, and that the police came to speak to you about Mrs. Deovolente. It’s going to bring up questions…questions about Mr. Branke, and Erica, and even Janice—your dad is going to be fighting off the reporters all wanting to speak to you.”

  The car was moving smoothly on the road, no alteration in the drive, no sharp turns, no turns at all. “Where are we going?”

  “Robert told me to take you to Graham and Lark.”

  “You know how to find them?”

  Silence was my answer for a time, and then the strange, hardened voice that had so often taken over Stacy’s usual cheerfulness replied, “She’ll find us.”

  Of course she would. Stacy would only have to call out to Lark and she would respond. We drove on, the quiet filling up time and leaving my mind to wallow in the fuzziness of it all. I was bound to die soon—but obviously not soon enough. Not soon enough for someone.

  Who would benefit from my death? What would my death coming days, weeks before it was intended allow for? Death was death, no matter when it happened. The cost of it was endless to those who would be left behind, but if it was meant to occur, then what would rushing it bring?