For This Life Only (24 page)

It was like the accident had never happened.

The accident. I'd been hurt and Eli . . . Eli had been killed.

Reality came rushing into this space that seemed to exist outside of it, or alongside.

“What . . . ,” I began, not sure how to ask. “How are you here?”

He looked at me, his expression sad but knowing, like he was waiting for me to catch up.

And then I did.

“You're dead. This isn't real,” I whispered.

After a pause, he gave a single bob of his head in acknowledgment.

My eyes burned with tears, and my lower lip started to tremble. I covered my face with my good arm. “What are you doing here? What is this?” I choked out. It was bad enough that I had to live my awake-life without him—now I was being tortured in dreams too?

A noise came from in front of me, like the odd sound a handsaw makes when you bend the blade. My grandpa used to do it to make us laugh.

I lowered my arm. Eli was still there, his fists pressed against an invisible barrier in the doorway. But he was scowling at me now, the way he used to when I took too much time in the bathroom or when I turned off the Jeep and left the fan on high.

Eli shook his head and pointed at the papers on the ground and in my hand.

I stared at the pages and then back at him, in confusion. “What do you want me to do with these? They're all blank.”

He gave me a strange look.

I held up the fistful I'd gathered a moment ago to show him. But as I watched, a thick black scrawl appeared on the pages, filling every inch of the blank space. Only, I couldn't read any of it. The words were jumbled and out of order, or weren't words at all—at least, not in a language I recognized.

When I tried to read one of the pages anyway, the squiggles and letters shifted and reordered themselves, making it impossible.

Panic flooded my chest, that tight, squeezing sensation that made it feel like all the air was being pushed out of my lungs. I had to be able to read these pages.

“Eli, how am I supposed to . . .” I glanced up and found him several feet farther back from the doorway than he was a moment ago.

And he was slowly walking—no, being pulled backward—away from the door. Away from me.

“No!” I lunged at the door, only to be pushed back by an unseen force.

“Wait! You have to stay,” I called after him, desperate.
“You can't leave me here with these. I don't know what to do!”

Growing more distant by the second, he smiled and waved at me, as if he couldn't hear or understand what I was saying. Or he didn't care anymore.

“No, Eli, wait!” I shouted after him. “Wait, please. Eli, you have to tell me—”

I woke up abruptly, heart pounding, mouth dry, my eyes gritty with sleep and filled with unshed tears.

It took me a second to process where and when I was. In my room, Friday, no, Saturday morning.

I turned my head on the pillow to see my alarm clock. 8:47 a.m.

Closing my eyes again, I tried to slow my breathing and my heart rate.

I shouldn't have taken that second pain pill before bed last night, no matter how much I was hurting. That, in combination with what I'd found in Eli's room, had obviously—

No. I wasn't going there.

I didn't know what to do about that folder, couldn't even think about it. It made me feel like my skin didn't fit quite right when I did.

But lying there, trying not to think about it, or anything else, I remembered what Thera's mother had said yesterday.
He wants you to finish what he started.

I pushed myself out of bed and scavenged a pair of basketball shorts from the floor to pull on over my boxers.

When I opened the door to my room, the smell of bacon and coffee floated up, making my stomach growl. I'd retreated to my room early last night, exhausted from the day and the fight and also not sure I could face my mom and my sister without them noticing something was wrong.

But this morning, the tempting scent of food combined with the demands of an empty stomach forced me to try. I made my way down the steps, listening to the clank of pans and the sizzle of food in the kitchen.

I expected the low murmur of voices, my mom talking to my dad or the two of them talking to Sarah.

Instead, I found Sarah curled on a stool at the island, picking at her eggs and looking half asleep.

“Oh, good, you're up.” My mom turned away from the stove and grabbed a plate from the island. “I was just going to try to wake you.” She squinted at me. “I think the swelling in your nose is down, but your eye is certainly more colorful.”

I made a face. “Thanks.” I took a seat on the other stool, next to Sarah.

Mom picked up a spatula and began loading my plate with scrambled eggs.

“Where's Dad?” My voice came out sounding rusty from disuse.

Her hands stilled. “He came home for a few minutes this morning to shower, and now he's at church, writing and rehearsing his sermon,” she said.

Uh-oh.

She resumed filling my plate, plucking bacon out of a glass dish on the stove top.

“When's he coming home?” I asked, pushing back against the scrabbling claws of unease. I didn't particularly want him home yelling at me. But neither did I want to lose another piece of my already fractured and disintegrating family. We were like shards of a shattered mirror, hanging in the frame by the form we used to have but slowly falling out, one by one. And the longer my dad was gone, the more it would start to feel like a real absence, something that couldn't be glossed over or forgotten.

“I want to see Daddy,” Sarah added. “For real, not on the phone.”

My mom turned to hand me the plate. “We'll see, sweetie,” she said to Sarah. “It depends on Daddy's schedule. You know how busy it is during Lent.”

“But I want to—” Sarah began, working herself up to a full whine, only to be interrupted by the doorbell.

For a moment, the three of us just looked at each other in surprise. Who would be coming over without warning this early on a Saturday?

“Maybe Daddy forgot his keys,” Sarah ventured.

Mom winced. “I'll get it. It's probably Lolly from down the street. I ordered some cookie dough for a fund-raiser,” she said. “You stay and eat.”

“Sares, do you have an extra fork over there?” I asked.

“I have my fork,” Sarah said, licking the utensil in question. “But I'm done. You can have it.” She held it out to me.

I made a face. “No, thanks.”

I slid off my stool and headed for the silverware drawer.

“Jace.”

Turning, I found my mom at the threshold of the hallway and the kitchen with an odd expression on her face. “Someone's here to see you.”

“Who?” Immediately my mind conjured the last visitor I'd had. “If it's Leah, I can't—”

“It's not Leah,” she said. “You should go.” Her tone seemed strained, and yet she was encouraging me to go to the door.

“Okay,” I said slowly, turning away from the drawer. Her weirdness was kind of freaking me out.

But when I got to the hallway and the partially open front door, I saw the reason for it.

Thera was on my front porch. She was rocking back and forth, as if on starter blocks for a race and waiting for the gun. Her dark hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail, and the hood on her sweatshirt beneath her battered
leather coat was halfway up, as if she'd been reluctant to pull it down to begin with. She was beautiful, as always, and if the color in her cheeks was any indication, she was either really cold or really angry. Possibly both.

“Hey,” I said, stunned. I pulled the door open the rest of the way, but reflexively looked over my shoulder for one or more of my parents, who under normal circumstances—maybe in a life that was no longer mine—would be hovering barely out of sight. “What are you doing—”

“Your mom asked if I wanted to come in. I said no,” Thera said, lifting her chin. “I just have two things to say to you.”

I edged out, shivering in the cold—shorts and a T-shirt were no match for March—and pulled the door mostly shut behind me for privacy. “Thera—”

“First. You left this in my car.” She handed over my backpack, loaded down with all Mrs. Rafferty's yearbook examples.

I took it, the weight of it pulling me forward. “Thanks,” I said. I'd forgotten all about it until now.

“Eli deserves a memorial page, and you don't have the right to screw that up because you want to avoid me,” she said.

I flinched. “I wasn't going to—”

“Second. You don't have to believe me about Eli.” She let out a soft breath that wreathed her face in white. “I
honestly think he would have changed his mind and come through for us in the end.”

No, he wouldn't have.
My guilt and confusion over what I'd found roared back at full force.

“But that doesn't matter now. What does is what you said to me.” She swiped at her watering eyes angrily with a shaking hand. “I didn't kiss you or let you touch me to convince you of something. If you really believe I did, then you're not who I thought you were. You're no better than Doug and Aaron and those other baseball assholes who think it's my fault what happened last year.”

Tears left bright shiny tracks on her red cheeks, despite her efforts to wipe them away, and the sight of them tore at me.

“Thera.” I reached out for her. “I am so sorry.”

But she spun away from me. “I'm done now,” she said over her shoulder as she pulled her hood up.

Thera strode down the two brick steps to our sidewalk, heading for her battered car parked in the street. The one and only person who'd made my life better, who'd been willing to accept me for who I was now, damaged, broken and lost, was walking away, for good. She was innocent in all of this mess, too, the one who'd be hurt the most by other people making decisions she couldn't control.

Was I really going to let her go because I was confused, because not everything was exactly like I thought it was
or should be? That seemed wrong. Like the action of a person I didn't want to be. Or didn't want to be anymore.

Do something.
The urgency in me built to a breaking point.

“You were right,” I called after her, the words slightly too loud in my desire to make sure she heard me. They seemed to echo off the frozen landscape, hard and harsh; but like a breath of that cold bracing air, saying the words aloud brought along a sweeping sensation of being cleansed.

Thera slowed, then stopped, turning to face me. “What?”

“I know you were telling the truth. About everything,” I admitted, the confession coming easier now that I'd started.

She eyed me with suspicion, as if expecting a sudden reversal or a trick.

“I'm sorry,” I said again, pleading. “I was so caught up in trying to figure out what I believed, I lost track of who to believe.”

She shook her head, but she didn't walk away. Which was more than I deserved.

Please let this be the right thing to do.
I offered up the silent prayer to God, my brother, anyone who might be listening; then I moved back, making room in the doorway.

“You should come in,” I said.

THERA STEPPED INTO OUR
house with the wariness of someone expecting an attack from all sides.

“Come on.” I shut the door and waved her forward, leading the way to the kitchen.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked.

“It'll be fine,” I said, though I wasn't absolutely sure about that. But we definitely had better odds with only my mom and Sarah home.

My mom, having returned to her position behind the island, went still when she saw Thera behind me.

“Mom, this is Thera Catoulus. She's been helping me with . . . stuff. She brought my backpack back to me. I forgot it after my fall yesterday.”

Mom nodded uncertainly, the spatula in her hands,
like she was holding the situation at bay with the flat plastic end as a shield.

“Thera, this is my mom, Carrie Palmer.”

Thera rallied faster, pausing only slightly before stepping forward and offering her hand to my mom over the expanse of the island counter. “Nice to meet you,” she said.

My mom transferred her spatula to one hand and shook Thera's with the other. “You too,” she said.

“And this is my sister, Sarah,” I said.

Sarah, who'd been staring at Thera this whole time, cocked her bed-tangled head to one side. “Do you like the boys better at St. Luke's? Jace's old girlfriend does.”

“Sarah!” my mom scolded.

I groaned.

“Uh, actually, I don't know any. I don't think,” Thera said, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets.

Sarah nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer. “Okay.”

“Thera, can I make you something to eat? We were just sitting down to breakfast,” my mom said hesitantly.

“No, I'm fine, thank you, Mrs. Palmer,” Thera said, shooting me a look that said “get to it.”

“Actually, I have something I wanted to show Thera upstairs real quick.” I headed that way, nudging Thera as I passed so she'd come along.

“But your eggs will be cold,” my mom said with a warning frown.
Visitors aren't allowed upstairs.

“It won't take long. I'll be back in a few minutes.” I wasn't asking for permission.

I started up the stairs, with Thera a step behind me.

“Keep your door open, Jacob,” my mom called when we were about halfway up.

My face went hot, and Thera inhaled sharply.

“She didn't mean anything by it. It's just the rules,” I murmured to her.

“Whatever.”

At the top of the staircase, I turned and opened the door to Eli's room. Then I moved back to allow Thera in and closed the door after her.