For This Life Only

by Stacey Kade

  “I didn’t see anything, though,” I said, studying the hinges of the door. Saying these words aloud felt like speaking in a foreign language for the first time; I wasn’t sure what I was doing, nothing felt familiar or right. “When I was gone, there was just nothing. Blackness.”

  My throat swelled with all the emotion I’d been fighting to keep down. “And then, when I woke up and they told me Eli was dead, I realized . . .” I worked my jaw back and forth, trying to get a grip on my runaway feelings. “I realized I’d done that to him. I got my brother killed, and worse than that, if what I saw is right, I made him not exist. Not here, not in heaven, not anywhere.”

  The last word exploded out of me in a gasp, and tears—ones I wasn’t allowed to shed because this was all my fault—overflowed, hot on my face.

  Thera was quiet for a moment. Then she squared her shoulders, seeming to come to a decision.

  “Come on.” She reached out and caught my wrist, tugging me across the threshold.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  THE ENTRYWAY OF THERA’S house smelled of cookies and something flowery.

  I rubbed my sleeve over my eyes to get rid of the tears, but my throat felt raw and full in a way that suggested they might start again anytime.

  Thera shut and locked the door behind me, holding a finger up to her lips. “She’s with a phone client,” she said, tipping her head toward the closed pocket doors to my right. I could hear the faint murmur of a female voice beyond them.

  “This way.” Thera moved around me and then started up the stairs, her bare feet light on the worn wooden treads.

  Out of habit, I wiped my feet on the mat, then followed her. Lots of framed photos decorated the wall on the way up, covering but not hiding the faded and peeling wallpaper. Everything here seemed old, but not messy or dirty, unlike the outside of their house. Nothing screamed “paranormal” here either. No Ouija boards or crystal balls that I could see, no strange symbols painted on the walls.

  At the top of the stairs, Thera walked into the only lit room.

  I stopped in the doorway. The room was small, with angles in the ceiling that made it feel even smaller, and the bed, covered in a quilt and a tidy assortment of textbooks and notebooks, dominated the space. A brightly colored rag rug, flattened and dulled by time and use, lay right by the bed. Pages torn out of magazines and books—at a quick glance, they all appeared to be photos or sketches of bridges—were taped to the slanted ceiling, right above where it met the walls. But the windows were old and big, so the overall effect wasn’t so much claustrophobic as cozy, a hideaway from the world. It wasn’t anything like what I’d expected from her, not that I had any specific idea of what to expect.

  “Come in,” Thera said. “Sit there.” She pointed to a heavy wooden rocker in the corner. “I’ll get you a towel.”

  She disappeared into the hallway, her feet padding softly on the floor, before I could respond.

  I dropped into the rocker, scrubbing my hands over my face. My eyes felt hot and swollen.

  Thera returned in a few seconds. “Here.” She passed me a towel, green and soft-looking, with frayed edges.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as she retreated to sit on the edge of her bed. “I’m not sure what I’m doing here. I just couldn’t be over there anymore, and I didn’t know where else to go.” Said aloud, it sounded ridiculous. Like Thera would somehow have answers to questions I barely had the words to express.

  A trickle of icy water from the now melting sleet ran down the back of my neck and under my collar. I shivered.

  Thera stood with a sigh and took the towel from my hands, then moved between my knees.

  “I don’t know what happened to Eli,” she said quietly. With quick but gentle movements, she rubbed the towel over my head and down my neck. “I don’t know if anyone can really know for sure.”

  After the accident, I’d fought for months to regain my independence in everything, from walking unassisted to showering without one of those old-person bath seats. Asking for help always felt like being a burden on someone else, and when it came to my family, I’d already caused so much pain and trouble, I didn’t want to add to it any more than necessary. I didn’t want to make them care for me when they blamed me.

  But it felt so good to be touched, I had to curl my hands into fists to keep from reaching out to pull Thera closer. I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d felt that connection with another living person.

  “But on the really bad days, when I’m struggling and wondering if there’s a point to any of this,” she said, “those are the days that I remind myself about the sun.”

  “What, that it will come out tomorrow?” I asked.

  She retreated with a snort, taking the towel with her. “No,” she said, settling on the foot of her bed. With the room as small as it was, I could still reach out and touch her. “It takes, like, eight minutes for light to reach Earth from the sun. But it’s instantaneous to us here.”

  Hello, science. She was a science nerd. I never would have guessed that.

  “We don’t even think about it,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ears as she warmed to the topic. “It’s easy to forget that we’re one little planet in the distant corner of a huge galaxy and that there probably are other life-forms out there, but not like us. Not exactly like us, anyway. They have problems too, whoever they are. We, in our tiny corner of the universe, don’t understand everything, not even half of what we know about, let alone what we’re still discovering. So—”

  “So what’s one person dying in all of that?” I asked bitterly. “That’s what you’re saying.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “I’m saying that the world or existence or whatever is bigger than we allow ourselves to think. Which means that no matter what, we’re only seeing part of the picture. Individual pixels. What looks like the end or like meaningless and painful chaos might just mean we’re too close to the screen to understand.”

  Pain tightened her voice, and her gaze dropped to focus on the towel in her lap as she folded it, matching the raggedy edges precisely.

  Immediately, my mind flashed to her in the hall yesterday, Caleb stalking alongside her, trying to touch her hair. How she’d slapped his hand away and picked up her pace.

  What had the rest of her day been like? What was the rest of her life like?

  I cleared my throat. “So you like bridges?”

  Her hands paused, and she looked up. “Yeah.”

  “Which one is your favorite?” I gestured to her ceiling.

  “Uh, which picture or which bridge?” she asked.

  “Both.”

  She stood and moved around to the side of the bed to point at a black-and-white photo in the center of the ceiling. “The Juscelino Kubitschek Bridge in Brazil,” she said. “My favorite picture.”

  I got up to get a better look at it. The photo showed a side view of a bridge at night, the angled arches glowing like silver.

  Thera had stayed where she was, her toes curling on the rag rug. Her arm brushed my sleeve, and I could smell the soft, minty scent of her hair. If she turned toward me, we’d be almost eye to eye. Mouth to mouth.

  I took a deep breath. “And your favorite in general?” I asked.

  “My favorite in general is the da Vinci bridge. It’s a footbridge in Norway.” She moved around me carefully to point at a color print hanging above the rocker where I’d sat, probably exactly where she could see it from bed. “The builders followed da Vinci’s original plans on a reduced scale; it opened in 2001. The plans are centuries old, but it looks like something that could have been designed today.” Her voice held awe and admiration.

  “So this is your thing,” I said. Like baseball had been for me.

  “I want to build them,” she said, raising her chin in challenge.

  “Architect?” I asked.

  “Engineer,” she muttered. “If I can ever get out of here.”

  Thera sat back down on th
e bed.

  I started toward the chair, but she moved a pile of notes to make room for me. “Here,” she said, nodding at the now cleared space.

  Careful to keep distance between us, I sank down next to her.

  “I miss him,” I admitted, my voice gritty. “So much. But I can’t say that to most people because—”

  “You can miss him, no matter what. You’re allowed,” she said fiercely.

  I nodded, my stupid eyes overflowing again. “You want to tell everyone else that?” I managed, forcing a laugh as I wiped my face with the heel of my hand.

  She shrugged. “If you need me to,” she said with a small smile. And it wouldn’t surprise me if she did it. She was a fighter.

  Lowering my head, I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers against the lids. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Thera bumped me gently with her elbow. “There’s no right way to miss someone. It’s a hole on the inside. You can’t fix that. You just live through it until one day the edges of the hole aren’t so sharp.” The ache of experience resonated through her words.

  I opened my eyes to look at her. “Who?”

  “My grandparents,” she said. “They were . . . normal.” She gave me a rueful smile. “Mostly, anyway. When they were alive, my life was better. They gave my mom total shit for what she is, what she does, and that wasn’t so great.” Thera shrugged. “But regular meals, money to buy a new lawn mower or fix the leaky faucet, a reliable roof over our heads . . .” She sighed. “I don’t know.”

  I did. She was as trapped by her mother’s choices as I was by my dad’s, choices that had been made before we were born.

  Against my better judgment, I reached out to touch the back of her hand, half expecting her to jolt away or slap at me, as she had Caleb.

  But to my surprise, after a second of hesitation, she turned her palm up and caught my fingers in hers. Her gaze held mine, and that feeling of connection between us pulled tight.

  Following it, I leaned in. The warmth of her breath and the minty scent of her hair surrounded me. I brushed my mouth over hers, and her lips were soft beneath mine, shaking a little as she kissed me back.

  But she slid away almost immediately, releasing my hand.

  It took me a second to process what had happened. “Sorry,” I said, my face hot. “I shouldn’t have . . . That was—”

  “It’s okay.” But she wouldn’t look at me.

  I’d screwed up. Again.

  An awkward silence descended. I could hear a radiator wheezing to life somewhere nearby.

  “I should get back,” I said. “Services are shorter on Wednesdays.”

  She nodded. “You don’t want anyone to know that you’re over here.”

  I winced, though her tone held no judgment. “Yeah. It’s—”

  “Complicated,” she said, climbing off the bed. “I know.”

  Of course she did. Eli had already told her all about it.

  Jealousy clawed at me.

  I shook my head. Stupid. It was only tutoring. But I liked Thera. And she and Eli had obviously been close, a closeness I couldn’t hope to replicate. Eli was Eli, and that wasn’t me. Much to everyone’s regret.

  Thera led the way out of the room and down the stairs.

  I followed, but at the door, I stopped. “Thank you.” The words were completely inadequate in exchange for the first moment in months where I hadn’t felt completely alone—before I’d messed it up—but they were all I had.

  Thera folded her arms, moving her foot across the floor in the pattern of the faded flowered rug. “You’re welcome.”

  “You know you could come back to Pussy—to Exempt, if you wanted to,” I said.

  She gave an easy shrug. “Nah, the library’s okay. I have friends in there most of the time, and more aide hours is better for my college applications anyway. I just couldn’t get them to approve it before.”

  I nodded. “Okay, so I guess . . . I’ll see you.” The idea of not knowing when I would see or talk to her again for sure created a hollow space inside me.

  She pulled the door open for me and stepped back. “Yeah.”

  But as I walked out the door and onto the porch, she drew in a breath. “Jace . . .”

  I turned to face her, and an emotion that I couldn’t identify flickered across her face, furrowing her forehead, before vanishing.

  Then she shook her head. “Good night,” she said simply, and closed the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  * * *

  I SHOULDN’T HAVE KISSED HER. Stupid.

  I thumped the back of my head against the exposed brick wall of the narthex.

  After Thera had closed her door, I’d slipped back into the church. Judging by the prayers in progress, the service was about ten minutes from the end. The ushers had long since entered the sanctuary, and with any luck, no one would know how long I’d been gone, or where.

  Listening to the beginning notes of the final hymn, I leaned against the wall and shifted my weight off my bad leg, which was throbbing from effort and the cold.

  It had been worth it, though. Just saying the words aloud—I died—had lifted an enormous burden. And Thera hadn’t taken offense at my questions or doubts. Hadn’t seemed even vaguely threatened. If anything, doubting and questioning appeared to be a regular part of her thought process.

  You hear about people being described as a breath of fresh air, but I’d never understood how much that actually meant in the context of suffocating slowly in a thick, stale, unbreathable atmosphere.

  With Thera, I could breathe. I could ask. I could argue. It made me almost shaky with relief, the pressure relieved, if only temporarily.

  And then I had to mess things up.

  There was nothing like asking a girl if she was secretly involved with your brother one day and then trying to kiss her the next. God.

  I’d have to find her tomorrow, try to apologize again. I didn’t want to lose . . . whatever that was. However you defined it, those few moments with her had been the easiest, least complicated minutes of my life in months.

  The ushers came out and opened the doors to the sanctuary, and I straightened up, pretending to have been there for a while. Like I’d left to use the bathroom and hadn’t wanted to disrupt the last of the service by going back in.

  “Jace! There you are,” my mom said when she emerged from the crowd, relief written on her face. “You were sitting with Leah?”

  “Uh . . .” Leah hadn’t joined them? “I didn’t . . .”

  But my mom was giving me a warning look. “I told Sarah that’s where you were,” my mom said, with that “don’t mess this up” tone in her voice.

  My gaze dropped to my sister, who was holding my mom’s hand and carefully avoiding making eye contact with me.

  “Yep. I sat with Leah.”

  Hopefully my mom and Leah wouldn’t compare stories about where I was and was not.

  Huh. Maybe Eli and I were more alike than I realized.

  • • •

  “Come on, Sarah!” my mom called in the direction of the dining room. “We’re having late night special, and I need you to pick out which cookie cutter we’re going to use.” It was a bribe, an obvious one. Then she turned to me. “Jacob, bowls.”

  Late night special was a tradition on Wednesday nights during Lent. Usually tomato soup and grilled cheeses, cut into shapes.

  When Eli and I were younger, we’d fought over whose turn it was to choose the shape. But once Sarah turned four, we’d handed over that responsibility to her. She’d taken it on with glee, choosing the most ridiculous cookie cutters.

  But I doubted that making everyone’s sandwiches look like ghosts or candy canes was the enticement it had once been. Still, my mom was trying.

  The familiar smell of toasting bread was comforting, as was the clank of the skillet against the burner. It could have been a scene from any night in my life over the last few years.

  I crossed to the cabinet and pulled down four bo
wls. I was halfway to the dining room before I realized what I’d done: grabbed four automatically and without thought, as I used to grab five. It was the first time since Eli’s death that I’d done that.

  I froze, teetering on the sharp edge of relief and a double-portion of guilt. Relief that maybe Thera was right and that Eli’s death wouldn’t always hurt this much, that one day it wouldn’t be the central focus of my life. Guilt because Eli was dead and it should hurt. I was alive; I didn’t deserve relief.

  “Jacob, honey?” Mom asked. She was watching me closely, the spatula in her hand. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m fine, I just . . .” I held up the bowls. “I only took four.”

  Her expression softened.

  “It’s all right,” she said gently. “Life goes on eventually. It’s supposed to happen that way. He wants that for us, I’m sure.”

  I wasn’t sure Eli wanted anything anymore.

  The garage door went up, and we both automatically looked toward the mudroom.

  “Dad’s home early,” my mom said with surprise. “Sarah, I need you to come now! Otherwise I’m going to make them all circles.”

  I took the bowls into the dining room, and was heading for the silverware drawer in the kitchen when my dad’s footsteps sounded behind me, too loud and too close. I moved to get out of the way, thinking I’d crossed in front of him accidentally.

  But then his hand caught tight around my collar, hauling me backward. My arms windmilled as I tried to keep my balance.

  “Micah!” My mom sounded shocked.

  “What is wrong with you?” he demanded through clenched teeth, his voice right next to my ear.

  “I don’t . . . What?” I asked, my heart catapulting into triple time. My dad had never laid a hand on any of us.

  “Are you trying to make things worse?” He shook me a little and then let go.

  I stumbled to the side, catching myself on the edge of the island to keep my footing, and then turned to gape at him. His face was flushed above his blue shirt and white clerical collar, and his dark hair was rumpled.