by Elbel, Joy
After making several loops around Charlotte’s Grove, I finally felt ready to head back to Rosewood. I wanted to re-read one more time the letter my mom left behind for me before she died. She led me this far, this couldn’t be the end. Maybe there was some sort of clue in that letter that I’d overlooked until now. Or maybe I was grabbing at straws because I was desperate and at the end of my rope. As I walked toward the front door of the mansion, I closed my eyes and asked her for more feathers to guide me.
I stopped and looked around before letting myself in but found not a single feather—no firm raven quills, not even a hint of duck fluff anywhere in sight. I sighed heavily before tugging on that massive oak door. Maybe it was time for me to give up and accept defeat.
I trudged past Shelly and Dad with barely so much as a nod when they told me that Dr. Landon had decided not to report today’s incident to the hospital board. Of course I was happy that he wasn’t going to face disciplinary action—but happy wasn’t an emotion that I was capable of showing at the moment. Good news always led to more bad news and I wasn’t able to handle any more negativity tonight.
Pulling out Mom’s letter, I read through it again and again. She spoke not of her bad dreams or anything negative in any way. She wrote of her dreams for me and my future. She offered advice that only a mother could give. I’d read the letter through so many times that I almost knew it by heart. As I went to slip it back into the envelope it fluttered to the floor, and I noticed something that I had not seen before.
The letter itself was hand printed on three separate sheets of crisp, white stationary using only the front sides. They were then folded into thirds to fit the size of the envelope. Once I realized that there wasn’t any writing on the backside of the first sheet, I never checked out the reverse side of the second page. But as I was gathering the pages up off of the floor, I caught a few lines of writing there that had remained hidden throughout so many readings.
Written there in an almost calligraphic script were two sentences. “Life is a dance. It’s all about knowing when to move forward and when to be still.”
Cryptic at best, utterly useless to me at the moment. Which was I supposed to be doing right now—moving forward or staying still? Was this my sign to hang in there and wait? Or was now the time to pick up the shattered remains of what used to be my heart and move on without Zach?
These words of supposed wisdom reminded me of an oft used quote that I’ve always found annoying. “Life is like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re going to get.” I found that phrase to be grossly inaccurate. A box of chocolates usually comes with a guide to steer you away from the yucky ones. You know, like those terrible jelly filled ones that no one in their right mind would willingly eat.
No, life was most definitely a field of landmines. Bad things lurked beneath the surface where you had no chance of identifying them until your leg was half blown off. My brain was kind of the same way lately. No matter how hard I tried to stay positive, some days horrible things crept into my mind when I least expected them to. I snickered to myself when I realized that my own thoughts were actually landminds. At least I knew my wit was still as sharp as ever.
But my body was tired. So very tired. And before I realized it, I was dead asleep. My nap lasted less than an hour but I had the most vivid dream I’d ever experienced.
I was in a room with stark, white walls—bare of anything except for a small wooden table and two matching chairs. One of those chairs was reserved for me. The other one was for my mother. She’d never been in my dreams before so that in itself stuck out at me as an important fact. But once she sat down, I realized something that took my dreams to a whole new level.
This wasn’t actually a dream. Yes, I was still asleep. But no, it was entirely different from anything I’d experienced in the past. I was in a place I’d never been before—and I didn’t mean the room itself. I was in another realm. I was in the small plane of existence where life and death were one and the same. It wasn’t the same place I’d found myself during my near death experiences. This was somewhere different. And I realized that until now, I’d only scratched the surface of what lay beyond the world as we knew it.
There at that table, I had the first real conversation I’d ever had with my mother. Gone was my trademark impatience. No trace of ego could be found in that room either. I was there to learn something important—whether to move forward or be still. I was there to gain clarity and inner peace regardless of how things turned out.
“There comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to give up something they desperately want. You could spend your entire life longing for something or someone only to find that it isn’t in your destiny. How you deal with it is what defines your character, Ruby.”
So if Zach wasn’t mine to keep in the end, why did destiny allow me to get so close to the prize? No, I had to stop asking myself that question—it didn’t really matter why. What mattered now was how I was going to move on after all I’d been through. I needed to pick myself back up as gracefully as I could and leave the past in the past.
“Were you ever in love before you met Dad? Or did your dreams of him lead you past all of the others that could have come before him?”
“You’re missing the point, Ruby. You need to go back home now,” she said as she opened a door that was practically invisible until that moment. “Oh, and read the other letter already, won’t you?” And then she was gone.
I thought it was a relevant question. My dreams and even signs from Mom herself led me back to Zach every time. Was this all just a long, heartbreaking lesson on where to draw the line between love and something that masqueraded around so convincingly that anyone would swear it was true love? People often use the phrase “you’re too young to know what real love is”. In my selfish little world I always looked at that as one more way that adults belittled people my age. But maybe the wisdom card was a legitimate one to play here.
Maybe they were right. Maybe one day Zach would be a distant and nearly forgotten about memory. Maybe he was nothing more than a placeholder until the real man of my dreams was ready to find me. Maybe thirty years from now, I would be grateful that I walked away when I did instead of staying stuck in a time loop of watching Zach lose more of his sanity every day until there was nothing left for him to lose. But for now, it hurt like hell. Zach was past the point of living a normal life but I wasn’t.
It was a terrible choice to have to make—one I’d agonized over for far too long. But there in that room I felt stronger than I’d ever felt before. The decision was made. My decision was made. But first, I had to read the letter she intended to be for my sister. There had to be words of wisdom regarding letting go of someone you weren’t meant to have in the first place. I needed to wake up so I tried the advice from the old wives’ tale and pinched myself hard.
I don’t know if it was that pinch or the ringing of my cell phone that actually woke me up. I reached for my phone knowing instinctively that it was an important call. When I saw that it was from Detective Bailey, every nerve in my body began to tingle with sparks of electricity. This was the moment I’d been waiting for.
“You solved the mystery didn’t you?” I shouted into the phone bypassing any sort of greeting altogether.
“Yeah, I think I did. At least enough of it to help you save yer fella anyway.”
And that was all I really needed. Gone were the days when I longed for every detail, every tiny nugget of information. Enough truly was enough for me now.
“Tell me what I need to do.”
I expected to hear detailed instructions of some sort—dance naked in the light of the full moon while chanting some curse backwards to reverse it. Or something weird like that. But weird wasn’t what I got. What I got was something that I had a hard time hearing. And knowing Zach the way I did, he would have found it even more disturbing than I did.
“The arrowhead must be passed to an innocent man. Once it changes hands, Zach will be free from its p
ower. The curse cannot be stopped it can only be exchanged.”
My heart sank. How could I inflict this kind of torture on an innocent man knowing how bad he was going to suffer? And how would Zach feel about it?
“Are you sure?” I asked, hoping that there was some other way of ending Zach’s suffering and mine too.
“Yeah, this Micah kid’s sister tried everything else imaginable but that was the only thing that worked. Sorry kiddo.”
Sorry kiddo indeed. Zach obviously wasn’t able to make this decision himself so I was going to have to make it for him. And for that, I needed time to think.
42. Burning Questions
My moments of clarity grew shorter and further apart as time went on. In those rare seconds when I felt like myself, I lay in bed praying for something—anything—to make it all go away. I would stare into that stone unblinking yet definitely thinking. Was Ruby still out there somewhere trying to help me? Or had she already moved on by now? I didn’t know how long I’d been in that hospital.
My last memory of her was vague but I did remember hearing her scream, seeing her cry. My recollections told me that I was the cause of her pain that day but I couldn’t recall why. That was last time I saw her—at least that I knew of. But her—I saw her every day. She wouldn’t go away. I would have done anything—anything—to make her go away.
Tsusai. Dakaledati igohidv asginadisdi. Ulvnotisgi adonvdo. Oyohusa ulisgita. Die. Tsusai. Dakaledati igohidv asginadisdi. Ulvnotisgi adonvdo. Oyohusa ulisgita. Die. Tsusai. Dakaledati igohidv asginadisdi. Ulvnotisgi adonvdo. Oyohusa ulisgita. Die. Tsusai. Dakaledati igohidv asginadisdi. Ulvnotisgi adonvdo. Oyohusa ulisgita. Die
43. Pooling My Resources
A decision this big required time and advice. Lots and lots of advice. I started by discussing it with Dad and Shelly. I walked away from that conversation more confused than I was to begin with. They disagreed with each other vehemently which wasn’t something I expected.
Dad looked at it from a medical perspective, comparing it to stealing a healthy man’s heart to give it to someone needing a transplant.
“It’s simply not ethical, Ruby. You can’t sacrifice an innocent man to save Zach. You just can’t. It would basically be murder. And I don’t think he would want you to do it either.”
He had me completely convinced that he was right until Shelly loudly threw out her opinion which was the complete opposite of his.
Shelly looked at it from the perspective of the romance author part of her. “No, Jason, you’re wrong. Zach will thank her later for going to the ends of the earth to save him. It isn’t murder and whoever ends up with the curse has every opportunity to pass it on to the next guy. You need to do it, Ruby—soon.”
I walked away and let them bicker it out between themselves which they did for the rest of the evening. Meanwhile, I sat in quiet contemplation of the terrible decision I needed to make. As I slept that night, the dream of Zach and me in the theater crept back into my unconscious mind. I awoke from it sobbing and wondering if it was an omen that our time together was about to end the same way the movie did—with us going our separate ways.
The clock was ticking and I needed to make a decision. So what I decided to do was drag myself out of bed and get as many opinions on the matter that I could possibly get. I started with paying Rita a visit, then went directly to the shelter to get Andy’s opinion. Like Dad and Shelly, they each gave me a completely opposite take on why I should or shouldn’t save Zach the only way I knew how.
I started a tally sheet in a small notebook so that I could track how many pros and cons I came up with. Two for, two against. Once I had more opinions, I would go with the majority. Needing more views on the subject, I ran around town all day asking everyone I ran onto “the burning question”, as I now called it. Should I or shouldn’t I?
By late afternoon, I’d grilled everyone from that cranky old librarian, Mrs. Tuttle, to the geeky young kid manning the drive-thru at the Chicken Shack. I didn’t have to count the votes to know that it was a dead heat between yes and no. I’d questioned nearly fifty people and I still had a tie. Looks like Charlotte’s Grove was every bit as torn as I was on the subject.
My next tactic was to call the few people I knew outside of this small town. That didn’t get me very far either. Addie and Derek were at odds on the dilemma just like every other couple I’d questioned. By the time I was finished, I was afraid I was going to be responsible for at least one breakup. Roxanne and Queen Elva both gave me opposite responses as well. The last person on my call list was the only one who gave me any new insight. Well, after thoroughly confusing the hell out of me, that is.
Elijah—I mean Grandpa—silently listened as I explained my quandary. When I was finished speaking, the other end of the phone continued to be still for so long that I thought I’d lost the connection. As I was about to ask if he was still there, he spoke one word that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
“Linguini,” he whispered then followed it with more silence.
“What? Linguini? Is that what you just said?”
“Huh? Oh. Yes. Linguini. I just remembered that I forgot to pick some up when I was at the grocery store.”
“Oh. Okay,” I said, somewhat disappointed that he was thinking about his shopping list throughout my entire monologue about ethics. But I was patient with him. He was pretty old and I had no idea what his health was like. He was my grandfather but he was still a stranger to me in many ways. Suddenly, though, he snapped out of his brain fog and gave me a fresh way to look at the situation.
“You need to take more time to think things over. You told me you were good at math, right? Analyze it with your keen mathematical skills. Take yourself out of the equation and see what facts you have left. Once you find the solution, give me a call. I have to go now. Bye.”
His plan was brilliant enough to distract me from the rudeness of his abrupt hang up. I’d consistently been trying to find the majority of opinions but I was going about it the wrong way. I needed to analyze the data in other ways. Eagerly, I sat down and began crunching the numbers in every other possible way. I went at it for hours yet ended up with nothing new.
That was the moment that I already knew the answer. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t save Zach by destroying someone else. He wouldn’t want me to do it either. It would end our relationship anyway when he found out what I had to do to save him. Both of us would carry an unimaginable burden of guilt for the rest of our lives. And I couldn’t simply pass that task onto someone else, either. It was time to say goodbye to Zach and move on with my life. It wasn’t going to be easy but it was the right thing to do—not just for me but for him as well.
Drained from this realization, I fell back onto my pillows and instantly drifted off into a dreamless sleep. I slept well into the day. When I woke up the following afternoon, my mind was unchanged. I showered and got dressed like it was any other day. I ate lunch like I hadn’t missed breakfast. I told Shelly where I was going yet not what I was about to do.
Overwhelmed with sadness yet overcome by relief at having finally made a decision, I drove straight to the hospital with that arrowhead in my hand the whole way. If it was going to destroy him, it needed to hurry up and finish the job. I, too, felt cursed—cursed with the fate of having to watch him suffer. I needed to give him the arrowhead and hope that its close proximity would speed up the process.
I walked up to the front desk and asked to speak to Dr. Landon. I knew that I had a better chance of being eaten by a shark on dry land than I had of getting in to see Zach—especially after the stunt my dad pulled there recently. But if he would at least let me put it back into the pocket of his duffle bag where I originally found it, I could walk away knowing I’d done my best.
When the nurse told me that the doctor was gone for the day, I knew I was in luck—for once in my life. She seemed like the type of woman who would sympathize with the kind of loss I was facing. And all I really needed was for her to put that a
rrowhead back into Zach’s bag where it belonged.
“Are you here about a patient?”
“Yes,” I said quietly, huge tears spilling from the corners of my eyes. The gravity of my mission was hitting me all at once. I wasn’t there to break up with my boyfriend. I was there to say goodbye before sending him to the supernatural gallows. I couldn’t speak his name out loud so I whispered it instead. “Zach. Zach Mason.”
That’s when I lost it. My knees started to buckle beneath me and the nurse rushed out from behind her desk catching me seconds before I would have hit the floor. I couldn’t explain the real reason for my devastating breakdown. She would never believe me anyway. And anyone who would believe me couldn’t know what I was about to do. I knew what was right and I didn’t want anyone else to try to change my mind.
“Oh, honey! Is he your boyfriend?” she said while helping me into the nearest chair.
Unable to form any sort of verbal reply, I nodded my head instead and sent fat tears rolling down both sides of my face. She tried her best but I was inconsolable for a solid ten minutes. Then I saw it. The framed picture on the wall behind her desk.
I’d been in this office multiple times, why hadn’t I seen it before? It was a simple yet stunning lithograph of—you guessed it—feathers. Two of them were a deep cobalt blue, the third was a metallic gold. Penned at the bottom was the phrase, “Use your wings and fly.”
There it was. The final sign I needed to know that I was doing the right thing. And that someone was by my side as I did it. The waterworks stopped as though the faucet had not only been turned off but permanently disabled. I stood up and pressed the arrowhead into her palm.
“This belongs to Zach. Please see that it gets put with the rest of his things. I know that I’m not allowed to have direct contact with him, but is there any way that I could see him one last time—from afar?”
Hesitation on her part was brief. She knew the rules yet she also understood what I was going through. It was no secret that Zach wasn’t getting better and that he probably never would. His coherence was slipping away fast. I’d stood by him this long; I deserved any closure I could get in the matter.