by L. L. Muir
“You can.”
“In spite of your temper?”
“Temper?!”
“Medusa.”
Lanny covered her mouth and laughed. Skye’s eyes widened. Apparently laughing wasn’t appropriate in the room either.
“Forgive my teasing, children. I assure you I have no temper.”
“And when you kicked me out of your kitchen?”
“A lesson in respect? A need for appearances?”
Jamison shook his head.
“How about, I wanted to see if you’d abandon her?”
Jamison would buy that. He gave Medusa a nod.
“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I think you’re all cowards. The Final Host, I mean.”
“Oh, I know what you mean. And you’re right, of course.”
“I am?”
“You are.” Lanny got up from her stitched leather chair and Jamison flinched. She bit her lip to keep from smiling. Didn’t work. “You see, some of us saw clearly what was going on. We joined the Final Host and got them to let us represent them.”
She smiled at Skye as if in apology.
“We tricked them. We negotiated with The Father, not to save them from temptation, like they thought, but to buy them a bit of time, to build up their courage.
“Oh, The Agreement will still work for them as they expect it will. The Father is not a cheat, after all. But for some who learn courage, and maybe an appreciation for what they missed by not gaining a body, they are entitled to a second chance.”
“You put in a loophole.”
“Your mother is a lawyer?”
“Works for lawyers.”
“You might consider it for a profession.”
“Back to the loophole.”
Lanny smiled as if to say she’d just proven her point.
“Skye is now aware of the loophole.”
“So her choices are to either use it and get a body—”
“Or not.”
“Or not. Right. So, if she wants to gain a body, then she would be mortal—breakable.”
“Temptable. Able to feel pain and heartache, as you feel yourself. Able to feel joy. Able to die years before she finds that joy.”
“You lost me.”
“She’d go back, Jamison. She’d go Home and tell The Father that she chooses the right to be born. Born. Like the calf you helped deliver here. Like the calf that might have died and never known its mother.”
“Born,” Skye whispered, “like a baby. Starting from the beginning. Not 16 years old. Not knowing who you are, where to find you—”
“Not knowing that there is even someone she should be looking for.” Lanny sat back in her chair. “There is no such thing as star-crossed lovers, Jamison. There would be no homing beacon in her heart to lead her to you.”
Jamison’s own heart leapt with just a pinch of hope. “But I’d know. I’d know she was out there. I’d find her.”
Skye smiled weakly. “Jamison, you’re forgetting, I’d have parents. Parents with DNA that would determine what I’d look like. Parents who may live on the other side of the Earth, not speak English, never travel to a large city. Would you comb the planet for me, Jamison? Would you keep looking until you found a little girl that seemed to have something familiar in her eyes?”
“There has to be some way.” Jamison wanted to bring the others in, have them brainstorm. Someone would have a good idea.
“And what if you did find me, Jamie?” She reached over and touched his face. “What if you find me in a couple of years? I’ll be two. How long will you wait? Until I’m twenty?”
“If I need to.” It sounded like a great idea.
“And you’ll be thirty-seven?”
“That’s not so bad. Mr. Evans—”
“Yes, Mr. Evans. Do you think it will be so easy, as a thirty-seven-year-old, to convince a twenty-year-old that she’s your long lost soul mate? What if she thinks you are a pervert? What if she falls in love with her high school sweetheart? It happens, you know.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“That’s what you need to understand, Jamie. It wouldn’t be this me. It would be some girl. She’d have my soul. I’d be the essence of her, but what about environment? Peer pressure? What if I die young and you spend your whole life looking for someone who’s not there?”
“There has to be someone who could tell me things.” His mind was racing, trying to come up with any possible scenario that would bring them back together.
Lanny cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Jamison. There will be no one, including me, who can help you.”
Jamison stood and walked to the windows, looking at the light, unreachable from all the layers of drapes covering it. For all he knew, it was a window into Heaven, not one that looked out on the gardens or fields beyond.
It was over. There was nothing he could do. No miracles that could keep them together. Suddenly he realized they were wasting precious time arguing. He spun awkwardly on the thick carpet.
“How much time do we have? Do you know?”
Skye pronounced sentence. “Until three o’clock tomorrow.”
He pulled out his phone. “Twenty-four hours, almost.”
“No, Jamie.” Skye looked him in the eye. “Twelve.”
He looked to Lanny as if the woman could grant them a reprieve.
“Three o’clock in the morning, son. I’m sorry.”
Cheated again! Where was a sturdy BMW dashboard when you needed one?
Then he remembered that blue car hood, out in the middle of a field. Maybe it wasn’t so out of place after all.
With the sour feelings he had for everyone involved in The Arrangement, he thought it best to get out of their precious white room.
“Come on, sweeting.” He pulled Skye to the door. “How the hell do we get out of here?”
She pushed on the panel and it bounced back toward them. Nothing special.
He gathered up their shoes and pulled her elbow to the front door.
“We’ll see you in the morning, then,” Lanny called.
“No, you won’t. We won’t waste time coming back here.”
“But Jamie, I have to come back! At three. I have to do it right.” Skye resisted his pull.
“And what if you don’t? Huh? They going to send dogs after you, or will you just...evaporate in my arms?”
“Bring her back.” Lanny was right behind them. “Let her do it right.”
The old bitch was lucky she didn’t get hit, but then again, she wouldn’t feel anything. It would still make Jamison feel pretty good for a while. Years maybe.
“Let her do it right. Can’t you see it’s important to her?”
Jamison swallowed, then looked at Skye. It was all there on her face. Lanny was right, damn her. “I’m sorry, sweeting. We’ll come back.”
Skye gave him a pained smile and nodded.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
A mile away he could hear those boulders crashing down the hillside again, those noisy grains of sand in Skye’s hour glass, and he took the first dirt road he found. Winding back toward the mountain, he found the perfect spot. He rolled to a stop under a grandfather of a tree with its bare branches spread wide. Most of the leaves had fallen, making it the perfect place for watching stars.
It felt right, as if his granddad were there, watching over them. After all, he’d been the force to bring them together—he’d stay with them until it was over.
Jamison pulled a large quilt from the trunk and spread it on a clear stretch of grass. He took out the cooler but wasn’t hungry. In his mind, he was just playing house. Bedroom and a kitchen. What more would any couple need?
“There is something I haven’t told you.” Skye leaned back against the car. Her arms folded.
“If you’ve decided you don’t love me, I won’t believe you.”
“No. I love you, Jamie.”
He stood in front of her, wrapping her scarf perfectly around her neck. Leaning forward he rested his li
ps against her forehead. “What is it, sweeting?” he asked against her skin, then kissed it.
“I’m not taking the loophole.”
Jamison leaned back to look at her. “Not taking it?”
“Not taking it.”
“What does that leave you?”
“It leaves me a coward, Jamie. Can you still love a coward?”
“Oh, Skye, sweeting, baby! How could you think such a thing? Of course I still love you. I just don’t understand. Why would you not want a life? I thought you wanted to feel things, taste things. I thought you wanted to cry, though I don’t understand that either.”
She dropped her chin to her chest and he wrapped his arms around her, shaking her, wishing she would look up and smile at him. Wishing for a stupid red sticker on her hand so he could make her laugh.
“What is it? Why don’t you want those things? You deserve them, just like everyone else. You deserve them more! You’re wonderful. You couldn’t be evil if you wanted to. You don’t have to worry about not making it back to Heaven.”
“It’s not that. I do want it all. Of course I do. But don’t you see? I’d be allowing my memory to be taken from me. Any memory I might be able to hold onto—my memory of you, of us, of Kenneth. It would be like you asking Lucas to take your memories again. All of them. Would you want that?”
Jamison’s first reaction would have been to say “Hell no, I’d never do that.” But if he did, that would leave Skye thinking that her memory of him should be worth more than life itself, and that just wasn’t so.
He wanted her to live, to be happy. If he couldn’t be with her, then...then he couldn’t, but she deserved happiness. She deserved to fall in love with her high school sweetheart, just as he had.
Just as he had.
“You do understand, then? Why I don’t take the loophole?”
“No. You’re wrong, sweeting. And I’m going to prove it.”
She shook her head, not wanting to hear.
“Tell me the truth, now. Why you don’t want to have a life? Is it because you don’t want me to be alone in my misery? Do you think it would be more fair for me to be miserable if you are out there, doing your angel duties, pining away for me, too?”
“I don’t want to forget you.”
“And I don’t want to forget you, but I will. If that’s what it takes to keep you from worrying about me, I’ll do it. After the—” Oh, he couldn’t say it. Couldn’t think about tomorrow. It was miles and miles and miles away. He swallowed hard. “After I get back home, I’ll go to Lucas and ask him to take away my memory of you.” He hugged her to his chest to keep her from reading the lie on his face. He was beyond the ability to act anymore, not with the truth spilling out of his eyes and getting them both wet.
Finally, she spoke.
“You said you didn’t think you could survive my leaving. If you can’t remember, I won’t worry about you so much.”
“And if you take the loophole, your heart won’t be broken either, and I won’t have to worry about you.” He loosened his hold and stepped back. “So, no more talking about how horrible it will be, all right? We have until three o’clock to be together. You’ll take the loophole, promise?”
Eventually, she promised.
“And I will go to Lucas, and we’ll both live happily ever after. Maybe we’ll meet up with Granddad on the other side and have a good laugh.”
“That would be lovely.”
Jamison led her to the blanket and they sat. “That reminds me, though. Will you see Granddad when you get...home? Can you give him a message?”
“I’m sorry. I won’t see him. We won’t be in the same place.”
“Won’t you both be in Heaven?” Jamison took a deep breath and held it.
Skye laughed. “Of course we will. It’s just that Heaven isn’t like one great big room where everyone walks around shaking hands. Life moves kind of in a line. It has nothing to do with time, more to do with progress. Once you enter the flow of life, you are constantly moving, progressing, like a leaf in a stream.
“Sometimes you progress faster than other times. The water moves, you move, but always flowing in one direction.”
“Downhill?”
“Yes. But not in a bad way. Everything just flows. It would be against natural law for something to move against that flow. And since Kenneth is part of that flow, he’s moved on. And who knows where I’ll be dropped into the stream. It could be tomorrow. It could be fifty years ago. To The One who tends to the flow of life, time means nothing.”
Jamison couldn’t help but be excited.
“So, Skye. There is a chance I could go open a phone book and find you. Your life could be overlapping mine right now.”
“Yes. Of course. But Jamie, which name are you going to look for? And how long would you look before you gave up?” She ran her hand down one side of his face. “That’s why you must go to Lucas, when it’s over. I will not have you torture yourself like that.”
Jamison knew she was right. He wondered how many of those hoarder people, with three foot stacks of phone books in their houses, had started out loving a Somerled.
The hours flew by as they lay on the quilt and watched the sun go down and the stars come out. For her sake, he set an alarm on his phone; he only wished they’d gotten no reception up there. And maybe the car could have broken down. With his luck, though, Lanny would send out a search party for them around two so they’d have plenty of time to make it back to the ranch.
They talked about silly things; about how he needed to take the pig shed wood off the tree house. He tried to describe how it smelled, but gave up when he realized they could be discussing other things.
He told her how she was going to love flowers, how she could bite the tip of a honeysuckle bloom and taste what bees spend their short lives dreaming about. Cutting her finger, skinning her knee, and even being stung by those sweet-toothed bees were things that would pale in comparison to chocolate fudge, roller coasters, and band-aids when applied with a kiss.
They spent a good hour talking about kisses alone, then another one testing their theories. When they were done, Jamison nearly wished they’d stuck to the subject of food—nearly.
The final hour was anguish again. 2:05 he held her tight and sobbed, all promises and cheerful subjects forgotten. At 2:30 the alarm went off and he walked her, slowly, to the car, his eyes having finally emptied. By the time he left for home, those reservoirs would be full again, he was sure. Maybe he’d float half-way to Flat Springs. Save gas.
He drove up to the ranch, numb. Around back a single figure stood with a flashlight and waved them over.
“We’ll walk from here,” the Somerled told Skye and took her elbow.
“Let go of her.” Jamison couldn’t keep the growl out of his voice. He might have reacted differently if the guy hadn’t taken her arm, like he wasn’t giving her any choice.
He took her hand and started walking. She didn’t.
“You’re coming?” Skye’s mouth hung open.
“Of course I’m coming. I don’t want you looking at one of these dopes when you...at the last minute.”
She gifted him with a beautiful smile that wobbled through the few tears he’d neglected to shed earlier.
The field could have at least been a bit further away. He was so not going to be as tough as he’d planned.
Lanny stood there, smiling, damn her.
“I’m so glad we didn’t have to send the boys after you.”
Jamison realized she’d dug into his thoughts for that, that there had never been a plan to send anyone after them. He still toyed with the idea of not letting her go so he could see what would happen.
“Stop that.” Lanny gave him a little squeeze. “Be tough for her, Jamison. It’s the last thing you can give her.”
Buchanan was next. “Old Jamison gone, then?”
“Yes.”
Buchanan nodded.
He didn’t know anyone else. That Shawn kid tried to ge
t her attention, but she ignored him, turning instead to Jamison. He started to lift his arms, but a tiny shake of her head stopped him.
“We’ve said it all, haven’t we?”
“Yeah. I guess we have. I love you, sweeting.”
“And I love you, Jamie. You’ll always be my high school sweetheart.”
She was backing away! He hadn’t noticed.
“And you’ll always be mine.” His voice was so small. Did she hear him?
“She heard.” Lanny put a hand on his shoulder.
Skye was near the center now. The Somerleds started humming.
He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t just stand there!
He pulled his shoulder out of Lanny’s grasp and ran to the center, throwing his arms over Skye’s shoulders as if she was that balloon and he couldn’t let her go.
Her face was twisted in a tearless cry.
“Let me go, Jamie.”
“Promise me! Promise me you’ll take the loophole!
“I promise, Jamie. Promise me you’ll speak to Lucas.” She lifted off the ground and put her hands out a little for balance. He would have grabbed her around the waist, but she shook her head. “Promise!”
“I promise.”
“I’ll love you forever.”
He fell to his knees, his empty arms wrapping around his body, his hands digging into his sides.
Skye was whisked into the air and was gone. Burning traces, like sparklers, rained through the air high above him and he watched until there was nothing left.
He rolled into a ball on the ground and waited for the Earth to open up beneath him. When that didn’t happen, he cried Skye’s name for hours, long after his throat was raw. That physical pain was a merciful distraction from the tear in his soul.
In a daze of misery, he mistook the brightening sky for some kind of reprieve, only to realize it was just the sun. It was too much. Fresh tears flooded his bloody throat and he ground his forehead against the soil and fell asleep cursing God.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Jamison woke to the crow of a sick-sounding rooster. A second later, he was hit with cruel joke number one, and number two. Two thirds of the people he loved on this Earth had been taken from it.
He tried to roll over, but something held firm against his back. Cornstalks. The crop circle was gone. Of course.
