“They go to bed early,” she said as she stared out the window next to her. “My parents. They always … went to bed early.”
“It’s after ten o’clock.”
“They’ll be asleep.”
“You want to go in the morning?”
“No.”
When she fell silent, he let her stay that way—even though the silence made him want to curse on every exhale.
“You know where I live?” she said after a while.
Looking over at her, he measured the way the headlights of oncoming cars illuminated her face in brief flashes. “Yeah, I do.”
And he got them there in record time, cutting crosswise out of the old estate section of town, speeding through darkened suburban shopping areas, heading into a more modest neighborhood of houses that were set back among big trees.
As he drove them down the correct street, and then came to a stop in front of her house, he felt like he had kept his promise to her mother—but only in theory. What had he brought back for the family, really? It wasn’t like their daughter was going to slip into her old role, filling the horrific void, reversing the agony and the grieving.
Turning off the engine, he glanced across the seat. Sissy was staring out of the side window, her chest pumping up and down under his shirt. As she lifted her hand up to the glass, her thin fingers shook so badly they skipped across the surface.
“You sure you’re ready to do this?” he said gruffly.
“Yes.”
But she didn’t move.
At least now he could help her.
Exiting, he went around behind the truck and remembered what a bitch his own postmortem check-in had been like—namely, him waking up in the morgue at St. Francis and enjoying the truly bizarre experience of looking at his own dead body. This had to be the same for her, consciousness and reality colliding in a way that just shouldn’t ever happen.
Man, even after all the atrocities he’d seen and done, that shit had stopped him short. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for her.
As he opened her door, she dropped her arm. “Do you want to know why I didn’t come out all day long?”
Desperately. Anything to give him a clue where she was. “Yeah.”
“The thing that bothers me most is their pain. I don’t care what happens to me—that’s a whatever. But to see their suffering? That’s a hell I will not survive … so I wanted to make sure they were sleeping.” She got out and faced off at the house as if it were an opponent. “Guess I’m a coward.”
Measuring her set shoulders, he shook his head slowly. “Not what I’m thinking. Not in the slightest.”
Sissy didn’t seem to hear him as she hit the walkway, her feet carrying her haltingly up to the front door. Before she opened the way in, he had an impulse to stop her, thinking of how he’d found her mother sitting in that chair in the living room, the woman’s grief as tangible as a black shawl covering her whole body.
But maybe Mrs. Barten could go to bed now that Sissy’s remains had been found.
As he stepped forward too, more memories came back to him, making him rub his eyes, like that might stop the videos from streaming. He hated thinking of how he’d found Sissy in that cave at the quarry, everything that had made her a living, breathing entity left to rot in the damp earth, discarded as if she had been nothing but garbage.
Goddamn Devina.
“How do I get inside?” she said, as if she were thinking to herself.
Shaking himself back into focus, he cleared his throat. “Walk right in.”
After a hesitation, she gripped the doorknob and turned. “It’s locked.”
“I didn’t mean that way.” Taking her arm, he urged her forward. “Just trust me.”
A bright flare of pain in his forearm told him she was gripping him hard, but he didn’t mind—her reliance on him as she got scared made him feel strong in a way that had nothing to do with his body, and everything to do with his soul.
It helped him deal with the sense that he’d failed her back in the beginning.
“Wait,” she cut in, pulling away. “I can’t … just go through.”
“I think you will.” After all, that newspaper kid hadn’t seen her—so there was a chance that “solid” objects were not all they were cracked up to be for her. “Trust me.”
This time she followed as he stepped forward … and she let out a strangled sound as they passed through the panels of the door, the sensation of buffering only the briefest interference; then they were out the other side, breathing the warm air of the house, taking up space along with the living room furniture.
Sissy looked down at herself, flaring her hands, flipping them over and checking out her palms. “I…”
She didn’t finish as she looked up and seemed to realize where they were.
No mother in that chair across the way. But yeah … you only kept vigil for someone you hoped would come home, not if you had a coffin to bury.
“Oh … God,” Sissy whispered, putting both hands up to her mouth.
Jim let her go, watching from just inside the door as she walked into the room beyond. He couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t need to. The horror was in the way she moved: her shoulders shrugged in, her head going all around, her breathing forced. And then she turned around. In the dull light coming from the one lamp left on in the hall, there were tears rolling down her face.
“I’m dead,” she choked out. “I’m dead…”
“I’m so sorry,” he said roughly.
“Oh … God…”
In spite of the fact that he was awkward with compassion on a good day, he walked over to her. “I’m … so damned f**king sorry.”
He was unaware of his arms reaching out to her, but a split second later, she was up against his chest. And as Sissy clung to him, he found himself cupping the back of her head, urging her onto his heart, holding her even closer. Syllables were leaving his lips, but goddamned if he had a clue what he was saying.
“I’m dead,” she sobbed. “I’m … gone.”
“I know. I know…”
As he held her, his eyes lifted to the bookcase that stood next to the bay window. Photographs of the family were lined up on its glass shelves, the frames all different sizes and shapes, the pictures taken in various eras starting when the children were really young, and then later as gangly preteens, and finally as near-grown-ups.