“I can’t.”
She watches her reflection in the sundial, combing her fingers through her hair. “Then you need to find him.”
It’s what I want to hear, but the very idea is impossible. I shake my head, just barely. “He’s in Heaven. How can someone like me find him in Heaven?”
She shrugs. “Who am I to tell you what you are? You’re half an angel, just the same as he is.”
“I don’t even know how to get there,” I whisper. “I don’t know the way in.”
“What is it that ties you to him?”
I close my eyes and the shapes of the garden are still printed in negative on the inside of my eyelids. I want to keep my eyes closed forever, and everything reminds me of Truman. The tree, how it made him turn his face away and how he kissed me anyway.
“I have his sadness,” I say with my eyes closed. “He gave it to me.”
“Then take it back to him,” my mother says. “Take it to the place where it was the strongest. The place that speaks to him.”
I nod, thinking about love and sadness, and how they’ve started to feel the same. I remember kissing Truman on the balcony, and maybe he never said he loved me, but he meant it anyway.
And there’s my mother, shrieking in pain when she thought something had happened to her son, and Myra with her sly smile and her dead eyes, grieving for Deirdre in the only way she knew how. My father, holding the razor to Beelzebub’s throat, telling him that it would all be over in an instant.
I know about grief now. I know the complex weight of it, and more than that, I know where to take Truman’s.
In the terminal, I press my palm to the pass panel, speak my word, and the door gasps open, revealing the corridor. I follow it, keeping track of the turns, stepping out of the hallway and into Cicero.
SINKING
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The air under the bridge is cool, but not like it was when I first came to Earth. It’s dusk, and the streets are windy and deserted, rattling with fallen leaves from the park down the block. Autumn, then.
For a long time, I just stand under the bridge, looking out at Cicero. Everything is the same, but incrementally different, just like I’m the same, but not. My eyes feel swollen and hot, but I’ve finally stopped crying.
I find the Avalon apartment complex by memory. The door is still broken, and inside, the air is stale with cigarette smoke and dusty carpet. I stand in the lobby, breathing it, then step into the stairwell and start up to the fourth floor.
Alexa is sitting on the landing with her feet pulled up and her back against the wall, reading a paperback. When she glances up, her expression registers confusion, and then shock. We just look at each other, and for a second, she doesn’t say anything.
I climb the stairs and I stand over her, waiting for some sign that I’m in the right place. Some revelation. The silence echoes around us and time stretches out.
“You look the same,” she says finally.
I don’t know if I’m the same or not. It doesn’t feel like it, but I suppose that if it’s worth remarking on, I must be. She isn’t. Her hair is shorter and in the bright florescent light of the stairwell, her face seems older, more cynical and more wary.
“You’ve been crying,” she says, and her voice is gentler than before.
I nod, mildly surprised that it shows on my face. I should have known, though. Everything feels scalded.
Alexa nods. “Yeah, I did too for awhile. I wait for him,” she says, staring down at the book. “But he never comes back.”
“No,” I say, surprised by how normal I sound. “He can’t.”
She nods. “I figured. It was almost kind of inevitable, I guess—like, meant to be. You just showed up one day, and then he was gone. I mean, I don’t blame you or anything. He was on his way out anyway.”
I want to tell her that it isn’t like she thinks. Truman didn’t swan-dive into oblivion. He wasn’t carried away in a wash of carelessness or self-destruction. He was noble. At the end, he was good.
The stairwell is narrow, cold. I glance up and Alexa follows my gaze.
“Charlie still lives here, if you’re looking for him. He should be home by now.”
I thank her but don’t start up the stairs. I feel like the moment is more significant than our strange, sad gazes and our silence. I should have something to say.
For a minute, I just stand there looking down at her. Then she holds out her hand and I take it. The gesture is familiar and she smiles, a slow, sad smile that makes something ache inside me.
“You should go up,” she says. “I think he’d like to see you.”
On the fourth floor, I’m gripped by an even more crushing feeling of familiarity, of finality. In the hall, I hesitate at the door of 403, hand raised. I already know how this goes—Charlie shambling to the door in his undershirt, looking irritable and rumpled.
But when I knock, he answers almost at once. He stands in the doorway, looking worn-out, but perfectly alert.
For a long time, he doesn’t say anything. Then he passes a hand over his face and shakes his head. “He isn’t here.”
“I know.”
“Then why’d you come back?” His voice sounds defeated.
“I needed to see you.” I don’t know how to say what I really need, the thing that brought me to his door. I need to see the apartment, to find out if any vestige of Truman is still here.
Charlie closes his eyes for a moment. Then he opens the door wider and steps aside to let me in.
The apartment is different now, sparser and cleaner, if that were possible. Lonely. Charlie’s wearing a blue mechanic’s jacket, like he just got home, and I understand that he doesn’t work nights anymore. It’s impossible to think that his life has gone on without Truman, but it’s true. Things have changed so much, even in a few months.
“Come on in and sit down.” Charlie leads me into the kitchen.
I must look worse than I feel, because he takes a seat across from me and regards me kindly. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”
“He died.”
Charlie doesn’t react immediately, but it’s clear that those were not the words he was expecting. He sits at the table with his head in his hands. “What do you want, Daphne?”
“To bring him back.”
“From the dead?” Charlie’s voice is derisive, but his shoulders slump. He looks broken.
“It’s happened before.”
For a moment, he doesn’t move. Then he raises his head and looks at me. He looks at me a long time, and his look tells me he knows that I am not the thing I pretend to be. Not some girl off the street. Not harmless, not human.
Jesus is still hanging patiently over the kitchen door, and Charlie believes in miracles and mysteries.
“I’d like to see the apartment,” I say. “If that’s all right.”
We pass through the living room and down the hall, which feels unbearably like Truman. Even though there’s no solid evidence of him, no belongings or photographs, the whole apartment breathes him. His feelings and his memories are here, and even the furniture and the walls are steeped in all the tiny, priceless moments of his life.
His bedroom is just as it was the last time I saw it, but abandoned now, colder. The shades are down and the floor is dusty.
Behind me, Charlie breathes a heavy sigh, but doesn’t say anything.
Across the hall, the bathroom is small and cramped, exactly as I remember. It’s chilly and white, and every tile and fixture screams Truman.
I understand that Charlie has not let him go. Alexa still waits for him, holding vigil, and in their sorrow, they keep him alive. Truman might have died on a nameless street in a nameless city, but here in the Avalon, it’s like he has never left the building. His memory is a palpable thing, more solid here than in any other place on earth. They carry him with them.
With my heart beating much too hard, I step into the bathroom and sit down in the bottom of the tub. When I turn on
the faucet and lie back, the water rushes around me.
“What are you doing?” Charlie asks, but his voice is gentle. Not the tone one would normally use to speak to a strange girl in his bathroom, lying in the tub in all her clothes.
“Following him,” I say, because there’s no other way to say it. The fabric here is so thin. This is the place he lost everything.
Standing over me, Charlie looks dim and faceless, the overhead light making a blinding starburst behind him.
I close my eyes and remember pain and longing that are not mine. Truman’s memories wash over me in a chaotic wave and I hold my breath and let the water cover me. Underwater, I feel suddenly free, like I’m falling down. I’m closer to him than I have ever been, in the one place he was sadder than any other, and still, I’m filled with a strange, unbridled joy.
Charlie let me into the apartment because he loved Truman. He’s not dragging me out of the tub now for the same reason. He’s ready, like I am, to go as far as it takes. Ready to try anything.
The breathlessness hits and when it does, the sensation is not grief, but a celebration of Truman’s life—all the laughter and the longing and the tragedy. I’m taking it with me. It’s taking me down through the cluttered museum of memory. Taking me to him.
HEAVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
When I open my eyes, the light is soft. Under me, the floor is white and glossy, smooth like marble, and I lie on my back, staring up at a pale blue sky. Staring up at nothing.
After time passes and no one comes, I push myself up from the floor and get to my feet. My hair is soaking wet and water pours off my dress, dripping onto the glossy ground.
I look around, surprised to find that I’m surrounded by buildings, high-rises, shell-white and shimmering. The streets are wide and clean, and the sky is a pale, delicate blue.
“It’s the same,” I whisper to myself—to no one. My voice is shaking. “It’s a city, it’s just a city.”
I thought Heaven would be better, more exalted. I thought the holy and the sanctified would look less like home. From the corner of my eye, I see a flutter of color like sunlight, someone moving, but then it’s gone.
With cautious steps, I follow the parade of flickering lights across the empty plaza and into a vast, silent building.
The lobby is long and empty, with an atrium at the far end, full of pale light and delicate, translucent plants. A man is standing with his back to me, studying a pocket watch. As I cross the lobby, he turns and snaps the watch shut. It’s Azrael.
I feel so tired. I feel like everything inside me has come undone and I just stand there, looking at him.
“You again,” he says, and his voice sounds as tired as I feel.
Me again. I keep seeing movement from the corner of my eye, snatches of color and light, gone before I look.
He stands over me, arms folded against his chest. When he looks at me, his mouth twists in an odd sneer, showing perfect teeth. It’s not a smile.
I stand looking up at him, dripping water all over the white floor. “I want to see Truman.”
Around me, colors are squirming past in fits and pulses, but when I turn to look, there’s nothing but white. I keep thinking I hear voices, low, impossible to decipher.
Azrael stares down at me, shaking his head. “Why in the name of goodness would I let you do that?”
“I love him,” I say.
“Love him?” Azrael says, smiling for the first time. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but you’re a demon. You can’t love.”
“I can,” I say breathlessly. “I can feel it, and it’s wonderful and complicated and real. And he loves me.”
Azrael’s smile is bitter. “Let me tell you a little bit about demons. They love pain and other people’s misery. They lie when it suits them and don’t see anything wrong with it. They corrupt and kill and destroy, all without conscience. You just don’t have the capacity for something as honorable as loving another person.”
“That’s not me, though. You’re not talking about me. If you’d just listen—just believe me.”
My throat aches and my vision has started to blur. Suddenly, tears are spilling down my face now, and they’re hot. Not warm like over Truman’s body in the street, but furnace-hot. They’re the color of blood, trembling on my lashes and then they turn blue. White by the time they reach the ground. Where they fall, the floor smolders and starts to melt.
Smoke curls up from the floor, leaving charred pockmarks. Then the flames start, leaping around me, racing away in runners. “Please, I need to find Truman. I just need to see him.”
Azrael steps closer, avoiding the guttering flames and blocking my view of the curtained window behind him. “Seeing him now would make no difference. He won’t know you, and there’s nothing you can do to make him know you now that he’s forgotten.”
I wipe my cheeks with my fingertips and the tears are scalding. “I think you’re wrong.”
The voices are hazy but insistent now, whispering all around me. My heart is beating very hard.
Behind Azrael, the window glows white behind its pale curtain and the voices are calling for me to go through it. With a dazed, heavy feeling, I push past him, toward the window. The curtain is thin, fine as gauze, obscuring what’s beyond. I step through, pushing it away easily.
In a translucent garden, a boy is sitting on a bench under a crystal tree, holding the hand of a black-haired girl. Their heads are bent close together and they’re talking in low voices.
As I step over the low windowsill and down into the courtyard, Truman turns to look at me. His eyes are a pale, transparent blue. His hair is dark blond, close-cropped and clean. He’s different now, but I know him. I would know him with my eyes closed.
He stands, coming to meet me across the glass garden. He looks so long I want to hide my face in my hands. I fight the urge to turn away. It’s so hard to look at him.
“You’re wet,” he says, reaching out to touch the water dripping down my face.
I’m holding onto myself, elbows cupped in my hands. “I had to be. I couldn’t find you, otherwise.”
He nods and smiles, like I’m actually making sense.
The girl has come up beside him, her hair long and shining, hanging in a sheet down her back.
I look at her, at the perfect lines of her face. “Why is she with you?”
He grins like the question is silly. “Well, I couldn’t be happy without her.”
Without me. She reaches for him and he takes her hand. He says, still looking at me, “I thought for a second that I knew you.”
The black-haired girl smiles, so placid. “Who is she,” we say, pointing to one another.
“That’s Daphne,” he tells us.
“Do you love her?” we ask.
“More than anything.”
I’d thought that at those words I’d want to scream in triumph, to Heaven or Azrael or to God Himself. To shout See? See, he loves me. But Truman is holding the other girl’s hand and she is not me.
Once, he told me that I was the thing in the world that made him happy, that I made him feel like he wasn’t full of broken glass. Now, he’s holding someone else’s hand.
My eyes feel brittle and hot. The girl reaches out, smiling, patting my arm. But I know she’s just a mockery of me, a doll made of how much I love. Of how much he loved me.
He keeps looking back and forth between us. “Don’t I know you? I think I know you.”
“Wouldn’t you remember if we’d met before?” I reach out, taking his hand in mine, and he doesn’t pull back. The three of us—Truman, the girl, and me—each holding someone’s hand. He smiles as I turn over his wrist, then slide his shirtsleeve up, folding the cuff back carefully.
“What are you doing?” he says, like he might start laughing.
His wrist is smooth. There are no marks on his arms, not anywhere.
“What have they done to you?” I ask. Trace the pattern with my fingertip, lik
e I could put it back on his skin. Close my eyes, imagine him sick, filthy, sobbing. When I look at him again, I see how healthy he looks. There is nothing broken in him now. “What have they done?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your wrists, they used to be . . . ”
He laughs, sudden and bright. “See, I do know you. You look familiar, I just—I can’t place it.” Then his face clouds. “What about my wrists?”
“Nothing,” I tell him, trying not to cry, afraid that if I burn heaven down, he will never love me. “They used to be—they used to be—”
“Hey,” he says, reaching out. “It’s okay. Why won’t you just tell me what’s wrong?”
Beside him, the ghost of me is standing with her chin lowered. They have always been so much braver, but now her eyes are filling with tears. They’ll overflow and then I’ll burn down the garden and it won’t even be me doing it.
Truman reaches for me again, and this time he pulls me against his chest, cradling my head on his shoulder. It’s like a physical hurt, being so close to him, like burning myself again and again.
I wrench myself from his arms. “Don’t—you don’t have to touch me.”
He steps back, looking worried, and I want to grab him by the shoulders, smash my mouth against his, but I’m so, so afraid of how much it will hurt.
“Were you happy, on Earth?” I say.
He looks serious for the first time, and uncertain. “No,” he says. “No, I wasn’t happy.”
“Why not?”
“A lot of things. I don’t really remember all of them now. I was lonely. My mom—she died when I was sixteen. But even before that, I guess I wasn’t very happy.”
It makes my eyes sting to hear him talk easily about things he could barely say out loud when he was alive.
He says, “I don’t remember a lot of it. I keep thinking I do, but then it gets mixed up.” He stares at me so hard he must be looking past me. “There was this girl I knew. I think she saved my life.”
“Yes, you were going to die. But she woke you back up.”
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