by Meg Cabot
I was too tired to argue. Much.
"He thought he was robbing me of Jesse," I said. "Even his memory."
Father Dominic shrugged. "In the end, Susannah, that might actually have been kinder, don’t you think? Kinder than this, anyway." He nodded his head at Jesse’s unconscious form.
Well, that much was true.
"He would have had to leave, anyway, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "Someday."
"I know." The knot in my throat throbbed.
Which was when I remembered. There’d been a ghost in Father Dom’s life, as well. The ghost of a girl he’d loved, maybe even as much as I loved Jesse.
"I . . ." I could barely speak, the lump in my throat had swelled to such gigantic proportions. "I’m sorry, Father Dominic. I forgot."
Father Dom just smiled sadly and touched my arm.
"Don’t be too hard on him," he said, meaning Paul. Then, with a final glance at Jesse, he said, "There isn’t much I can think of to do. But the insurance situation. That I think I can take care of. I’ll be back soon. Can I bring you anything? Have you eaten?"
The thought of trying to swallow anything down past the mass in my throat was so ludicrous, I actually laughed a little.
"No, thanks," I said.
"All right." Father Dominic started from the room. At the doorway, however, he paused and looked back.
"I’m sorry, Susannah," he said quietly. "I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when . . . it happened. And I’m more sorry than I can say that it had to end this way."
And with that, he was gone.
I stood there for a moment, not doing anything, not thinking a thing. Then the true meaning of his words sunk in.
And I lost it.
Because Father Dominic was right. This was the end. I could deny it as much as I wanted, but this was it. Jesse was dying, right before my eyes, and there was nothing, nothing on earth, that I could do for him.
And it was my fault. My own fault he was leaving me. Sure, I could comfort myself that wherever he was, it had to be better than the half-life he’d had with me.
But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
I fell into the chair beside Jesse’s hospital bed. I couldn’t see, I was crying so hard. Not out loud. I didn’t want any nurse to come running with a bunch of tranquilizers or anything. What I really wanted, I realized, was my mom. No, not my mom. My dad. Where was my dad now, when I really needed him?
"Susannah."
I thought about Jesse’s grave, the one marked by the headstone Father Dominic and I had paid for. What was in that grave now, if Jesse’s body was here? Nothing. It was empty.
But not for long. No, not for long.
"Susannah."
And back in his own time? What were Mr. and Mrs. O’Neil doing right now? Probably combing through the rubble of what had been their barn. They’d find one skeleton for sure. But would they know it wasn’t Jesse’s? Would Jesse’s family have closure or would they wonder forever what had happened to their beloved son and brother?
No. They had no way of knowing the body was Diego’s. They’d think it was Jesse. The de Silvas would have a funeral. But for the wrong man.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Great. Someone was there. Someone was watching me cry my eyes out. Nice. Let the girl have a little time to grieve, would you, please?
"Go away," I snapped, lifting my head. "Can’t you see I’m—"
That’s when I noticed that the figure beside me was glowing.
chapter twenty
I must have jumped about a mile and a half into the air, I was that startled. I know I sprang from the chair, so fast that I knocked it over. I stood there, my chest heaving, my eyes suddenly bone dry, and stared.
Because standing there beside the bed, looking down at Jesse’s prone body, was . . .
Jesse.
I looked from one Jesse to the other, not quite believing what I was seeing.
But it was true. There were two Jesses, the dead one and the live one.
Or, I suppose it would have been more correct to say the dead one and the dying one.
"J-Jesse?" I swiped at the tears coating my cheeks with the back of my smoky sleeve.
But Jesse wasn’t looking at me. He was staring down at . . . well, at himself, on the bed.
"Susannah," he whispered. "What . . . what did you do?"
I was so overjoyed to see him, I wasn’t thinking straight. I went to him and grabbed his hand.
"Jesse, I went. Back through time, I mean," I babbled.
He tore his gaze from the tigure on the bed and focused all of that intense dark gaze on me. He didn’t look too happy.
"You went?" He glared at me. "You went after Slater? After I told you I could take care of myself?"
He was furious. I was so happy to see that fury, however, that I let out a little burble of laughter. I didn’t realize, then, what seeing him here in the hospital meant.
"You did take care of yourself," I assured him. "I-I told you—the past you—about Diego, and he didn’t kill you, Jesse. You killed him. But then . . . then . . . there was a fire." I swallowed, not feeling like laughing anymore. "In the barn. The O’Neils’ barn . . ."
His eyes narrowed.
"The O’Neils," he murmured. He appeared to be in as much of a daze as I was. "I remember them."
"Yes," I said. "There was a fire, and Jesse . . . Jesse, you saved me. Or, at least, you tried to. But . . . but . . ."
My voice trailed off. Jesse had dropped my hand. He was moving closer to the bed, looking down at the body that lay there, barely breathing.
"I don’t understand," Jesse said. "How did this happen?"
I bit my lip. There was no time for explanations. Not when, any minute, I knew we were going to have to be saying good-bye . . .
"I did it," I blurted. "I didn’t mean to. I meant to save you, Jesse, not . . . not this. But I was still touching you when I shifted back to the future, and you . . . you just got caught."
Jesse finally looked at me like he was really seeing me, maybe for the first time since he’d come into the room.
"You really went back?" He stared at me. "To the past? My past?"
I nodded. What was there to say?
He shook his head. "And Paul? I went to the basilica to look for him, but he was gone. You followed him?"
I nodded again.
"I wanted to stop him," I said. "From . . . from keeping you from dying. But in the end . . . I couldn’t, Jesse. It wasn’t right. What Diego did to you. I couldn’t let it happen again. So I told you. And you killed him. You killed Diego. But then there was the fire and . . ." I looked down at the figure in the bed. I couldn’t stifle a sob. "And now I think this is good-bye. I’m sorry, Jesse. I’m so, so sorry."
My vision clouded over again with tears. I couldn’t believe any of this was happening. I had always thought of my "gift" as a curse, but never, never had I hated it as much as I did just then. I wished I had never heard of mediators. I wished I had never seen a single ghost. I wished I had never been born.
Then I felt Jesse’s hand on my cheek.
"Querida," he said.
He placed his other hand on the bed to balance himself as he leaned across it to kiss me. One last kiss before he was ripped from me forever. I closed my eyes, anticipating the feel of those cool lips against mine. Good-bye, Jesse. Goodbye.
His mouth had barely touched mine, however, when I heard him gasp. He jerked his head from mine and looked down.
His hand had touched his living body’s leg.
Something seemed to jolt through him, then. He flared more brightly for a second, his gaze on mine more intense than it had ever been in all the time I’d known him.
And then he was sucked down into his body, like smoke pulled into a fan.
And was gone.
Oh his body was still there. But the ghost of Jesse—the ghost I had loved—was gone. In his place was. . . .
Nothing. I reached out, desperate to grab some small
piece of him, but my hand clutched only air.
Jesse was gone. He was truly gone. He was back inside the body he’d left so long ago . . . the body that, even as I watched, shuddered all over as if to reject the soul that had just entered it. . . .
Then went still as death.
I knew then what had happened. Jesse’s body had come forward through time, yes. But not his soul, because two of the same souls could not exist in the same dimension. Jesse’s body had been without a soul just as, for so many years, Jesse’s soul had been without a body.
Now the two were united at last. . . .
But too late. And now I was going to lose them both.
I don’t know how long I must have stood there, holding Jesse’s hand, gazing down at him in utter despair. Long enough, I know, that Father Dominic came back, and said, "Don’t worry, Susannah, it’s all taken care of. Jesse will get the tests he needs."
"It doesn’t matter," I murmured, still holding his hand . . . his cold hand.
"Don’t give up hope, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "Never give up hope."
I let out a bitter laugh. "And why is that, Father D?"
"Because it’s all we have, you know." He placed a hand on my shoulder. "You did what you did because you loved him, Susannah. You loved him enough to let him go. There’s no greater gift you could have given him."
I shook my head, my vision still blurred with tears.
"That’s not how it’s supposed to go, Father Dominic."
"What’s not, Susannah?" he asked gently.
"The saying. It’s supposed to be, If you love something, set it free. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you. Don’t you know? Haven’t you read it?"
When I looked up at Father Dominic to see what he thought of this, I saw that he wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring down at Jesse on the bed. Father Dominic’s blue eyes, I noticed, were as tear-filled as my own.
"Susannah," he said in a strangled voice. "Look."
I looked. And as I moved my head, felt the fingers of the hand I was holding suddenly tighten around mine.
Color that hadn’t been there a minute before had flooded Jesse’s face. His face was no longer the same color as the sheets. His skin was the same olive tone it had been when I’d first seen him, back in the O’Neils’ barn.
And that wasn’t all. His chest was rising and falling visibly now beneath the blanket that covered him. A pulse thrummed visibly in his neck.
And, as I stood there, staring down at him, his eyelids lifted . . .
. . . and I was falling, as hard as I did every time he looked at me, into the deep dark pools that were Jesse’s eyes . . eyes that weren’t just seeing me, but knew me. Knew my soul.
He lifted the hand I wasn’t clutching, plucked aside the oxygen mask that had been covering his nose and mouth, and said just one word.
But it was a word that set my heart singing.
"Querida."
chapter twenty-one
"Suze!"
I heard my mothers voice calling from downstairs.
"Suze!"
I was sitting at my dressing table, admiring my blowout. CeeCee and I had spent the afternoon getting our hair and nails done. CeeCee hadn’t needed a blow-out . . . her white-blonde hair is straight on its own. But she’d gotten an updo, then fretted all afternoon that it wouldn’t hold.
My blow-out, however, apparently had staying power, because my hair looked as dark and shimmery as it had when I’d stepped from the salon.
"Suze!" my mom called a third and final time.
I glanced at the clock. I’d made him wait nearly five minutes. That seemed long enough.
"Coming," I yelled and grabbed my evening bag and the filmy white stole that went with my dress.
I went to my bedroom door and threw it open. Coming up the stairs as I was about to head down them was Jake, carrying a heavy backpack filled with books. From the library.
"Has hell frozen over?" I asked him as he went by me on his way to his room.
"Don’t start with me, I’ve got finals," he growled. Then, just as he was to the door of his room, he turned and, with all apparent sincerity, said, "Nice dress," and disappeared into the confines of his bachelor cave.
I couldn’t help smiling. It was the first compliment I’d ever managed to wring from Jake.
I started down the stairs, one hand lifting the hem of my gown. They were the exact same stairs, I realized, as the ones Mrs. O’Neil had chased me down about, oh, 150-something years ago. I wondered if, in my current ensemble, she’d have mistaken me for a hoochie mama. Somehow, I doubted it.
It’s nice, I thought, that we have stairs like this. Stairs a girl can really make an entrance on. I got to the last landing, the one that basically served as a stage for girls who were going to their first Winter Formal to pivot and show off their dress to the people waiting in the living room, and paused, preparing to do just that.
But it was no use. I saw that at once. My stepfather was running around with a spoon filled with something green, urging everyone he encountered to taste it, just taste it. My mom was trying to figure out how her new digital camera worked and not doing the world’s best job at it. My youngest stepbrother, David, was talking a mile a minute to my date about some new advances in aeronautics he’d seen on the Discovery Channel.
And Max, the family dog, had his nose buried in the front of my date’s tuxedo pants.
I guess it was a pretty typical familial scene, one that I’m sure occurs in millions of homes every night.
So why did tears spring to my eyes at the sight of it?
Oh, not at Andy and his spoon, or my mom and her camera, or David and his complete conviction that anyone wanted to hear the entire transcript of the show he’d watched.
No, it was the fact that the family dog kept thrusting his nose into inappropriate places on my date, and that my date had to keep shoving Max away, that made the tears well up.
Because Max could smell my date. Max could finally smell Jesse.
David noticed me standing there on the landing first. His voice trailed off and he dried up, and just stood there staring. After a minute, everyone was staring.
I hastily blinked my tears away. Especially when Max rushed over and tried to thrust his big furry head beneath my skirt.
"Oh, Susie," my mom cooed and to everyone’s surprise—especially her own—managed to snap a picture. "You look beautiful."
Andy, spying another victim, raised his spoon toward me, but my mother cut him off at the pass.
"Andy, don’t you go near her with that stuff while she’s in that dress," she warned.
That made me smile. When I looked at Jesse, I saw he was smiling, too. A secret smile, just for me—even though now, of course, everyone else could see it, too.
It still took my breath away, same as ever.
"So," I said as casually as I could with a giant lump in my throat. But this one was from joy. "I see you’ve met Jesse."
Andy summed up their introduction in two words before heading back to the kitchen with his spoon. "He’ll do."
My mother was beaming. "So nice to meet you," she said to Jesse. "Now come down here, I want to get your picture together."
I came down the rest of the stairs and went to stand by Jesse’s side in front of the fireplace. He looked so tall and handsome in his tux, I could hardly stand it. I didn’t even care that my mother was completely mortifying me in front of him. I guess those kind of things don’t really matter when you nearly lose your reason for living, then get it back again, against all odds.
"This is for you," Jesse said when I came close enough. He handed me something he’d been holding. It was a single white orchid, the kind you usually only see at funerals. Or on graves.
I took it from him with a wry smile. Only he and I realized the flower’s significance. To my mother, who came rushing over to pin it to my dress before she took the picture, it was just a corsage.
"Now, say cheese," she said a
nd took the picture, thankfully without actually making us say it.
Andy reemerged from the kitchen, this time without his spoon, and started looking parental.
"Now, you have her home by midnight, understand, young man?" he said, clearly enjoying being father to a girl instead of a boy for a change.
"I will, sir," Jesse replied.
"One," I said to Andy.
"Twelve thirty," Andy countered.
"Twelve thirty," I agreed. I’d only argued because, well, that’s what you do. It didn’t really matter what time Jesse had to bring me home by. Not when we had our whole lives together ahead of us.
"Suze," my mom whispered as she fussed with my shawl, "we like him, don’t get us wrong. But isn’t he a little, well, old for you? After all, he’s in college—Jake’s age."
If only she knew.
"That makes us about even," I assured her. "Girls mature faster than boys."
Brad chose that moment to come barreling in from the TV room, where he’d been playing video games. When he saw we were still in the doorway, his face twisted with annoyance.
"Haven’t you guys left yet?" he demanded and stormed back into the kitchen.
I looked at my mother.
"I see what you mean," she said and patted me on the back. "Have a nice time."
Outside in the crisp evening air, Jesse looked over his shoulder to make sure my parents weren’t watching. Then he took my hand.
"Between doing that again and an eternity in hellfire," he said, "I’d take the hellfire."
"Well, you’ll never have to do it again," I said with a laugh. "Now that they know you. And besides, they liked you."
"Your mother didn’t," Jesse assured me.
"Yes, she did," I said. "She just thinks you’re a little old for me."
"If only she knew," Jesse said, voicing, as he so often did, exactly what I’d been thinking.
"Your stepfather, on the other hand, invited me to dinner tomorrow night."
"Sunday dinner?" I was impressed. "He really must like you."
We’d reached Jesse’s car—well, really, it was Father Dom’s car. But Father D was letting Jesse borrow it for the occasion. Not, of course, that Jesse had a license. Father Dom was still working on getting him a birth certificate . . . and a Social Security card . . . and school transcripts, so he could start applying for colleges and for student loans.