After Reed

by Blythe Stone

  I found a baggy sweater in the closet and put it on. It was Reed’s college hoodie and it still smelled like her, chlorine and body wash and that extra Reed smell that couldn’t be bottled away.

  They wanted me to hide my form anyway. I wasn’t really cold but I’d wear this if it helped them to feel safe.

  Reed kissed my forehead and she held my hand.

  She’d gone all invisible somehow and I wondered if she even knew when she was doing something like that.

  When I caught sight of my mom and greeted her she opened her arms and hugged me too tight.

  “Careful,” I had to say. “Skin and bone, here.”

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “Hi Mrs. Grayson.” I heard Reed say.

  My mom pushed me back and looked around.

  “She’s here,” I said.

  I looked to my side and watched as Reed full-on materialized.

  Everyone in the room loudly gasped.

  “Oh My God-” My mom said, reaching out and pulling Reed in for a hug. “I thought you were crazy,” I heard her mumble.

  “I still might be crazy,” I said, watching. “Just not over this.”

  Eleanora walked around next to me and stood behind Reed like she needed to get closer.

  “Hi,” Reed chuckled, pulling Nora in for a hug directly after.

  “This is crazy,” my mother vocalized.

  Nat stood frozen in the kitchen with tears in her eyes. She hadn’t moved. Nat's eyes stared frozen in Reed's direction and I knew why. Other than me, Nat had been affected the most by her absence. She'd let herself feel it the most.

  Reed turned to face her and they both just stared for a second.

  Reed moved and it was such a gift to be able to watch her walk. She was wearing normal street clothes, tight skinny jeans and a plain shirt. Her hair was clean and it flowed. She'd shifted her weight in place before taking that first step and hurrying to take Nat right up in her arms.

  “Thank you,” I heard Reed say all pained.

  As soon as Reed shut her eyes she was invisible again. Nat squeezed her and Reed lifted her up.

  Nat appeared to be floating for a moment. I watched her look down and see nothing in the middle of the air.

  Two seconds later, when Nat's feet made their way down to the floor, Reed was visible again and we all watched as Nat touched her face, cried silently, and stared.

  “Cheer up, will ya?!” Reed teased, shaking her.

  “Shut up,” Natalie laughed. She knew Reed must know most about what she had gone through after her passing.

  “Well,” my mom said, still staying.

  Nat and Reed both looked towards her and so did I.

  My mom's eyes looked down and found mine.

  She pulled me in to hug her again and I fell into her, tucking my face into her shirt.

  She'd been expecting me crazy and Reed forever dead. This was a huge change.

  Mostly though, I knew just seeing me up on two legs, with a brain in my head, must be worth her entire world.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Nat

  Seeing Reed wasn't like anything I could explain. She wasn't a ghost. She wasn't an illusion.

  One second I was standing there alone and the next Reed was holding me, old Reed, human Reed, the Reed who used to ask me to be a bitch to her just to make Leah like her more.

  My life changed in the kitchen.

  I got to let go of a few things, one of which was my actual grief.

  Out of everyone, Reed knew, she knew what I'd been through.

  She'd been by my side through all the sad quiet times with Leah for the past months.

  More than anything, I wanted to talk to her.

  I felt greedy and childish.

  I felt selfish and strange but so happy.

  When there was talk and so much laughter. When Leah's wit and her bite were back along with her love-drunk eyes and her so obvious sense of self, I didn't have to be so alert anymore and I loved it. It was something new, invisible ropes around me being cut loose.

  “Oh no, it was a fight but we lost. Simple as that,” Lily’s voice brought me back to simpler times. I was always invited to holidays and parties. Award ceremonies, tournaments, even lunch dates when the girls were in town.

  To hear Lily at this table with both Leah and Reed's voices mixed in. It was like a trick, the ethereal flicker of a candle.

  My head swam as the wine hit me.

  I felt Nora’s hand resting on mine like she knew.

  “Yea but has anyone seen or checked on him?” That was Reed talking. She'd gone invisible right after all the hugs and stayed that way. I was scared there was more she wasn't telling us about her world and her rules. The last thing I wanted for her was internal damnation. She was bold to be playing with any of this like she was.

  “Henrik has,” Lily said, snapping me back to the conversation.

  “Really?” Leah and I had both said it in unison.

  Our eyes locked and I blushed in embarrassment before taking them away.

  A look from Leah, acknowledgement at all that she was still with me, it all inspired fierce life and joy inside of me.

  “Oh yes. He went up with a private investigator almost right after Daniel was released. We knew you girls were out here alone in the woods just like sitting ducks.”

  “In fact, I recall Eleanora and I having a lunch date just to talk about it, the precarious situation.”

  I looked to Nora and felt the heat of anger cross my brow.

  I kept wanting to think the worst of her.

  I kept having this unnatural urge to find disapproval in her and I knew it wasn't right.

  I was scared to trust. Scared to love.

  I was starting to understand my emotions a little more now that Leah had come to.

  “So what happened, Lily?”

  My eyes closed softly and I felt Reed’s voice pet my brain.

  Hearing Reed’s voice was like hearing beautiful music after months and years without instrumentation or song.

  Nora’s fingers squeezed my hand and she stole it into her lap. She pulled my chair closer to hers and pulled me in to lean onto her.

  “I know,” she whispered, caring for me.

  “They waited a month,” Lily nodded her head and looked around. She even looked to the space where she knew Reed must be sitting. We all just tried to act like it was completely normal so that one day it might be. We loved Reed. We wanted her here. Asking WHY served no point. I was sure Reed didn’t know.

  “After that Henrik went out to find him and he didn’t just go to his door. We had a couple P.I.’s on the job and Henrik himself set up in a hotel across the street from where Daniel’s stuff was sent.”

  “How is Dad?” Leah asked. I could tell she felt nervous that her mother was here and not him.

  “He’s fine,” Lily shook her head grumpily. Her eyes closed, she had been lost in the story. It was a hard one to tell.

  “Daniel apparently got a job up in Vancouver. He took on his brother’s name. His brother’s identity. He’s teaching kids again, teens,” Lily said.

  “Jesus…” I heard the contempt in Leah’s tone.

  “So… What? What do we do?” Leah asked, helpless.

  “I dunno,” Lily shrugged, looking down at her sadly. “It’s a horrible thought but Daniel being up there with his new life and his new job, it means he’s not looking for you.”

  “Oh…” Leah said. That thought hadn’t occurred to her. She looked down at her hands in her lap. I knew Reed must be touching them.

  “Anyway,” Lily said. “We do have a P.I. following him and a few coworkers we communicated with. It’s a little risky. It’s hard to say if it's better to leave that man up there or report him.”

  “If I hadn’t been through what I’d been through I’d say report him,” Leah muttered, all that strength in her had gone. Attempting to report that man once had only inflated the problem.

  “With you the w
ay you were, we knew Daniel wouldn’t have interest in hurting you anyway,” Lily said.

  A small silence took over all of us at those words.

  They burned in me though. What would Leah’s current living state do to dissuade Daniel? That was bullshit.

  I was angry at those words. She was still Leah. Still my Leah. Even during those months, she was still her.

  I got up from my seat and pushed out from the table rather abruptly.

  “You okay?” I heard Leah’s voice.

  “Yeah,” I lied, turning to see her and feeling the onset of tears. “I just, think I’m gonna go lay down for a while.” My words came out stunted.

  Leah nodded solemnly, probably thinking things I didn’t like.

  I turned to Nora and tightened my lips together. I couldn’t say anything here. Not without being a jerk.

  I walked to Leah’s room and went inside. I missed holding her at night. Nora had been holding me most of the nights now that Leah was back. I didn’t want to be a weirdo or an asshole and ask Leah to let me sleep with her.

  I crawled up onto her bed and buried my face in her pillow, feeling the tears start to escape as her smell invaded me again.

  A hand on my back made me stop and look up.

  “You okay?”

  It was Reed and I could see her.

  I shook my head, no, and kept my mouth shut because it was easier than talking.

  “Come ‘ere,” Reed said, pulling me to lay on top of her. She had no smell but I tried to imagine it, remember.

  Her soft fingers pulled my hair back from my face and she held me quietly.

  “What’s going on with you?” Reed carefully wondered.

  “Leah wasn’t dead,” I choked out. “Everyone was acting like she was but she wasn’t. She wasn’t dead.” I couldn’t stop myself saying it. “Why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you help me?”

  “I tried,” Reed said. “I did try.”

  I wanted to believe that but seeing her here so easily now made it hard.

  “Nat, I was so helpless. Just watching everything, unable to change it or affect it.”

  “That makes two of us,” I cried.

  “You helped,” she said. “Leah would be dead now if it wasn’t for you.”

  “It doesn’t make me feel any better,” I admitted. “Leah probably wants to be dead.”

  “No, don’t say that,” Reed still had her own beautiful anger. For a moment it made me smile.

  “It’s true,” I squeaked, still feeling the weight of my words. “You know how she thinks. This is science. This is rational. If you’re still around in the afterworld she’s thinking if she dies she’ll get to be with you, really be with you. But she doesn’t know the rules.”

  “I know,” Reed said. “But not knowing the rules will keep her alive for a while at least.”

  It was weird to be having this conversation as our first.

  “Why are you scared of Nora?” Reed asked. Her hand was in mine and she was playing softly with my fingers.

  “I’m not scared,” I said, bitterly.

  “Ooookayy,” Reed teased darkly. I was making things hard but not on purpose.

  “No one’s tried to touch me in a long while. Leah doesn’t count. She needed me, that’s different.”

  “Sounds like I haven’t been the only one living as a ghost,” Reed said.

  “Exactly,” I laughed through tears. “Everyone just left Leah to die,” I choked out.

  I pushed myself off of Reed’s body and laid back.

  “You should go to her,” I said. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  “She’s fine out there,” Reed said. “You’re not fine.”

  “Yeah, well, I haven’t been fine for a long time but I’ve been managing on my own.”

  “I have been here,” Reed said, pulling me back and making me hold her.

  I let my hand fall onto her side and I hugged my body to hers as I cried into her neck.

  “It’s gonna be better now,” Reed said.

  That only made me cry harder and I hated it. I didn’t like confusing promises that seemed open-ended and arbitrary at best but Reed’s body under mine felt so right and I’d missed it so much that I fell right to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Leah

  I felt glad that Daniel wasn’t looking for me but I also felt skeptical.

  If he wasn’t looking it meant he was really broken. He’d already been a monster and I wondered what prison had done to him but not enough to want to see.

  I was shocked, the story my mom told. I was shocked that they spent so much time and went and watched him just like he’d done to me.

  When Nat left the room I knew why. My mom’s words about me had hurt her and she disagreed but she didn’t want to be horrible.

  I should’ve said something but I kind of agreed.

  Why would Daniel want comatose me? My mental break was starting to seem like a good thing. Daniel liked hurting people, comatose me couldn’t be hurt. My mother’s words made sense but I know why Natalie took them the way she did.

  Everyone else gave up on me…

  “I’m gonna go check on her,” Reed whispered, sweetly.

  “Thank you,” I said. She squeezed my shoulder and my own hand chased hers touching her fingertips as she drifted away.

  “Is she okay?” My mom asked about Nat.

  “I think she’s finally getting time to deal with all this,” I said. “She’d been too caught up in trying to get me back. She hadn’t been letting herself dwell on anything else. This whole week’s been really hard on her, especially with Reed…”

  “You seem.. So healthy, baby,” my mom’s fingers touched down under my chin and lifted my face up.

  “I’m alright,” I shrugged, trying not to feel sad.

  I’d really done a number on Natalie. It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t know what I’d done.

  Tears tumbled out of my eyes and my mother smiled and wiped them away as I laughed.

  “Do you like it here?” She asked.

  “I do,” I nodded, gathering myself up. “I love it.”

  Nat and Reed. The lake? The house?

  “I’m thinking about turning the old shed into a dark room. I took some photos today.”

  It was old me. I was back.

  My mom would want to know. That’s why I was saying these things.

  “What about you?” My mother’s voice squeaked a little on accident as her eyes switched to check on Nora.

  “It’s nice,” Nora smiled. “Complicated,” she laughed, rolling her eyes a bit. “But nice.”

  “Natalie’s done an impossible job,” my mother recognized.

  “You should tell her that,” I said, sniffling. “She needs to hear it some more. From all of us.”

  “I will,” my mom smiled. “I’ve been telling her. We’ve talked often. She won’t take my money though which is stubborn and stupid.”

  We all laughed.

  “She’ll take mine,” I laughed. “Which is yours,” I bobbed my head embarrassed.

  “Good,” my mom smiled.

  “We’ve been thinking about putting up cameras around the property here and having someone monitor them. It wasn’t necessary before but now that you’re awake…”

  My mother’s voice trailed off.

  “It’s a good idea,” I said, alleviating her of strange guilt I couldn’t quite understand.

  We had money for bodyguards and fences and panic rooms. Things like this weren’t farfetched at all in my situation. I hoped my mom knew I wasn’t as naive as I looked.

  I could be stubborn but I wasn’t stupid.

  “That’d make me feel better,” Nora laughed, lightening the mood.

  “Me too,” I said, smiling over her.

  “Things with Reed, are you two just… Living like nothing’s changed?”

  “Uhh, a little bit,” I laughed awkwardly. “That thing she did earlier where we could all see her, that’s new.”<
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  “Is it?”