Dying Day

by Kory M. Shrum

  And did she need to be completely in love with him to feel a loss? To feel shocked and horrified at seeing him murdered?

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m crying like every five minutes.”

  “I think you have plenty to cry about,” I say, saddened that she feels like she should apologize for showing her feelings.

  “It’s been a hard week for all of us. And no one else seems to be falling apart,” she says, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

  A long moment passes and I don’t rush it. Finally she says, “We only kissed, but he was such a nice guy. I know I sound stupid because I knew him for like hours, but…but…” her voice breaks.

  “I know,” I say and I pull her into my arms and hold her. “Losing someone never leaves you.”

  Was it Eli who first told me that?

  It happened the day after I’d stolen my mother’s blue Buick and had planned to drive it over to Jesse’s house and pick her up in the dead of night. We were going to drive the Buick to my brother’s house in Louisville. Elijah knew all about Jesse’s stepfather situation. When I first told him, he was so angry that he filed the report and launched the investigation himself. First, her mother interfered, defending her husband unwaveringly. Then as things heated up, Jesse retracted her own testimony.

  He told me that they’d never believe me. My mom said she would never talk to me again if I didn’t shut up about it.

  So the only option we saw was escape. Run away. Get the car, get to Louisville, and with our help—mine and Eli’s—Jesse could rebuild a life.

  Only I never made it.

  I swerved to miss an animal in the road—a fox? A raccoon? I can’t even remember. And I hit a mailbox. The tire blew. The cops were called. I was sent home and thoroughly grounded. Not that I was getting on well with my mother anyway, given my recent confession about my sexuality.

  When I told her I was a lesbian, she was so mad that she grabbed a fistful of my hair and cut it off with her sewing scissors.

  If you want to be like one of them, let’s make you look like one, she’d said.

  But as soon as the handful of hair came away in her hand, she seemed to realize what she was doing and froze. She screamed like she’d seen a spider and shook her hand until my hair tumbled down to the floor. Then she ran from the room. She left me standing in my bedroom, scissors at my feet, clutching my mutilated hair.

  I never told Jesse about that.

  Or about how I had to shore it up to an uneven bob. Or about how my mother stopped talking to me for days at a time, and if she had to, it was only short instructions delivered without any emotion.

  Alice, take out the trash.

  Alice, your father wants to talk to you.

  Alice, set the table.

  As much as it hurt that Jesse had forgotten me—and everything we went through together—I considered her forgetting a blessing. Her death replacement had allowed her to forget everything that bastard had done to her. And he died the night Jesse died—eliminating any chance that he could turn on his son without Jesse to abuse. And because she’d totally and completely forgotten, in a way, I could almost forget everything that happened to me, too.

  I pretended that my years without her, hollowed and raw, were a bad dream. It was just something that had passed and would never come again.

  Only I’ve never believed that, have I? I keep waiting for it to come back. I keep waiting for that moment when she leaves me behind. Forever.

  I realize Maisie is talking again. “And if it isn’t that, then it’s just wrong.”

  “What is?” I ask, finding my way back to this moment. Pain, I think. Pain anchors us to a time or place, like placing a bookmark between pages, so that at any moment we can fall right through again—find ourselves in those dark moments by surprise.

  “I mean, he’s like five or six years older than me, and he’s still hung up on her. Even if it wasn’t an age thing, he’s all wrong for so many reasons.”

  “Who?”

  She blinks at me, her eyes still bright from crying, voice thick with those tears. “Gideon.”

  “Right,” I say, forcing myself to be here, now. “I can see why you would be reluctant to get wrapped up with Gideon.”

  “But he’s all tall, dark, and mysterious,” she says.

  “And Gideon encourages it,” I say. He flirts with her even though she’s sixteen. She is still too young. Of course, I was even younger than her when I first realized I was in love with Jesse, that she was the one, and I would follow her anywhere.

  I just hadn’t realized how far anywhere would be.

  “He wears her hospital bracelet around his wrist. This one side is burnt where he melted the plastic back together so it’d stay. He’ll have to cut it to get it off. You just don’t go falling in love with a man who has another woman’s mental asylum bracelet on his wrist, you know?”

  “Excellent point.” There is a host of other reasons why Gideon isn’t ideal. His worldliness. His rogue tendency to chase adventure. That isn’t what Maisie needs now. She needs peace and quiet. And a chance to heal.

  I am not her mother so I don’t say any of this.

  The elevator opens, and we both turn to see Nikki stepping into the rec room. “The refugees are arriving. Want to see your brother?”

  We stand on the tarmac, Nikki and I, and watch the people deplane. Workers with clipboards give directions about how to enter the facility, where to get their dormitory watches and where they will find their luggage. I search the crowd for familiar faces. Most people I’ve never seen before, but a few I recognize. People I know Jesse has replaced. Several give me a double take as they pass by, surprise parting their lips. I force tight smiles each time our eyes meet.

  “There he is,” Nikki says.

  My gaze falls on the man stepping off the plane. His scarf whips around him in the breeze. He pauses to knot it more tightly around his neck and to do up the button on his dark blue suit jacket. His hair is shorter than when I saw it last, and he’s lost weight. But he still looks like a young Brad Pitt with thick blond hair. A leather suitcase swings in his left hand, a leather knapsack over his right shoulder. He pauses at the end of the exit ramp to help an elderly woman step down onto the tarmac.

  My heart swells.

  I cup my hands over my mouth and scream his name. “Elijah!”

  He turns at the sound of his name and grins. I realize why Maisie’s decision to stay in the rec room, perusing the shelves, might have been a small blessing.

  It would be hard for her to see this—me reunited with my brother. It’s been so long, years since I’ve seen him. I can’t contain my happiness.

  We’re hurrying toward one another, our enormous smiles splitting up our faces. He drops his bags the second before I throw my arms around his neck.

  “Al,” he says. “It’s damn good to see you.”

  It’s true that it feels good. I can’t quite seem to let go of him.

  “Mother isn’t here,” I remind him. “No need to swear just to infuriate her.”

  He laughs. It’s the rich baritone I remember and haven’t realized I’ve missed so badly until now. “Don’t tell me you’ve become sensitive to bad language. I remember the things that used to come out of Jesse’s mouth.”

  I must have made a face, given away some clue.

  His grin falters. I can see the questions dancing in his eyes. Instead, he forces a smile at Nikki and says, “Sorry, how rude. I’m Elijah.”

  “Nikki,” she says and offers her hand for a shake. “Come on inside, and I’ll show you where you’re staying. I put you beside Ally.”

  Elijah nods, sunlight catching his eyes. “How thoughtful. Thank you.”

  I search his face for a hint of sarcasm, which would have come so easily from Jesse’s lips. But his smile remains genuine, if a little more reserved from before.

  But that is just Eli for you—endlessly cheerful. Except in the face of injustice, of course.

  I nev
er realized my brother was brave until he took a volunteer position at an immigrant rights advocacy clinic. He showed up at airports to help keep people from being deported unlawfully and families from being broken apart by cruel legislation. He’s fought for—and freed—three black men who were wrongly convicted of crimes—one who had been in prison for nearly forty years.

  And before his wife Kelly got pregnant, he talked about going abroad to fight for political prisoners. He used to terrify me with his half-baked plans to sneak into North Korea.

  When he informed me that these plans would be postponed until my niece or nephew was in school, I couldn’t have been more relieved.

  I’m a little embarrassed that I had never realized how passionate and determined he was until I was older. I couldn’t be prouder of him.

  The blue light on Nikki’s earpiece lights up. “Tamsin.”

  She stops walking.

  We shuffle to a stop, too.

  Her eyes cut to me. “Are you sure?”

  My heart kicks up. Unable to stop myself, I mouth the word, Jesse?

  Did they find her? Is she dead? The hammering in my rib cage makes my arms feel weak and heavy.

  Nikki shakes her head. “I’m coming. Give me five minutes.”

  The blue light disappears, and her eyes refocus on mine. She pulls the pod watch from her pocket and hands it to my brother. “Ally will have to show you how to use this. I’m sorry, but I’m needed in the control room.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  Quietly I’m relieved, as it means that I’ll get to talk to him without having to find an excuse to dismiss her.

  “I hope you’ll be comfortable,” Nikki says. “If you need anything, just let us know.”

  “I’m sure it’s more than adequate,” he says. “Anything will be better than the goat cart I slept in in Baghdad. That was hell on the back.”

  They exchange polite smiles before we watch her duck into the shelter and disappear through the door on the left of the service desk. I’ve only seen Jeremiah go that way.

  I point at the door. “That must be the way to the control room. The medical ward is through that door on the right.” We pass the queue of people lined up at the service desk. The elevator opens, and we step on.

  He turns to me then and opens his mouth to speak.

  “Not yet,” I say. “This whole place is under surveillance. I’m not sure that I can find a place where we won’t be on camera or recorded, but I can at least make it harder to eavesdrop.”

  He shuts his mouth and nods. “Can we talk about Jesse? She’s far from secret.”

  I give a tight nod as the elevator descends.

  “Is she okay?” he asks. His voice is heartbreakingly tender., and I feel the tears well up immediately.

  “I have no idea,” I say, my voice tight.

  “Will she be okay?” he asks again, in that same low, steady voice.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “No.” I don’t realize how desperate my own need to cry is until my brother has his arms around my shoulders, and I’m sobbing into his blue suit jacket. “No, I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. Nothing else. No patronizing there, there…

  “Even if she survives whatever—supernatural thing is happening to her—the world wants to tear her apart. I’ve seen them with my own eyes, Eli. Almost everyone wants to hunt her down and kill her.”

  He just listens to me. He doesn’t give me advice or offer platitudes. He just listens. Once my crying settles down, we step off the elevator into the third floor sleeping chambers.

  With a thick voice and blurry vision, I show him how to use the watch to open the pod. First, I tried the pod to the left of mine, and it didn’t work. So I try the one on the right.

  We step in, and the lights come on. The small, stuffy room lights up, looking exactly like the one I’m to share with Maisie and Gloria—should she ever get out of the medical ward.

  He barks a laugh. “Maybe I shouldn’t have made the joke about the goat cart so soon.”

  “Small, I know,” I say, sitting down on one of the lower cots.

  He sets his briefcase down on the floor and presses the mattress with his hand.

  Once he’s sitting across from me, staring into my eyes, searching my face for some kind of instruction, I say, “Did you bring the recording I asked you to bring?”

  He nods and pulls his briefcase into his lap. He opens it, rummages through it for a moment before pulling out an old-fashioned tape recorder.

  He pushes play, and a strange static comes through the speakers. He places this on the mattress beside him. I’m hoping the white noise is enough to distort our voices on any recording devices that may be hidden in the room.

  I’m not even sure where to start. So much has happened since I saw him last—when he came to Nashville to help me get Jesse out of jail for a murder she wasn’t guilty of—god, that was a lifetime ago.

  “I haven’t told Maisie that I’ve enlisted your help yet. I don’t want her to panic at the idea of a lawyer digging around in her past.”

  “A very nice lawyer,” he says with a genuine smile. “Did you know that the word lawyer in French is ‘avocat’? As in ‘je suis avocat.’ It also means avocado, so I suspect it depends on one’s mood if they are a lawyer or an avocado.”

  I spare him a smile because he’s trying so hard to cheer me up.

  “She’ll need help getting access to her finances and keeping her identity secret. Objective number one is to make absolutely sure she isn’t found and dragged through the press.”

  “Yes, because that kid has been through hell already,” he agrees.

  “Objective two is to transfer custody to Gloria Jackson.”

  My brother’s face screws up in thought. “They’ll both require heaps of cleverness.”

  I squeeze his knee. “You’re the cleverest man I know. And more importantly, I trust you.”

  My brother shakes his head. “If you don’t trust these people, why are you here? It’s never a good idea to surround yourself with foes.”

  “Foes,” I laugh.

  When we were children, we played a game: friend or foe. It was just one of those games that siblings have when they’re young. We would classify nearly everyone we saw as either friend or foe. The mail carrier. Cashiers at the grocery. A teacher. It didn’t matter if they’d actually done anything, or if they were just the object of speculation. It was guaranteed to add humor to almost any situation.

  If he asked me to classify Jeremiah, what would I say? Nikki? Friend. Gideon? Friend. Maisie and Gloria? Friend. Jesse…Gabriel… Others just aren’t so clear cut.

  “I ask myself that all the time,” I confess, tugging myself out of my thoughts. “I trust Nikki, and I couldn’t physically stop them from taking Gloria or Maisie, and I didn’t want to leave them behind either. Nor do I honestly think they’d be safe with anyone outside of the compound. Jeremiah cleared their names at least.”

  I brace myself for my brother’s judgment. This is where he’ll say something about settling or taking scraps.

  Instead he says, “These objectives signify your plan for Gloria and Maisie. But what about you?”

  A lump forms in my throat. I can’t look at him when I say, “Jesse is in Antarctica. As soon as I can, I’m going there.”

  His face is remarkably calm. Too intentionally calm. “You don’t think you’ll be coming back.”

  I search his face, looking for the right thing to say. A simple “no” would do, I guess. Or even, if we survive at all, we’ll have to go so deep undercover that I can never chance seeing you again, or at least not for a long, long time. I think of the niece or nephew yet to be born. Of never meeting my brother’s children.

  Finally, I settle on, “You told me once that Jesse was a target, that there was something about her that invited trouble. And it’s obvious that you were correct. But you said something else
.”

  “Al—”

  “You said that if I was going to be her friend, that I would be a target, too.”

  I search his face. I see his fear, his worry.

  The lights click off. And Eli curses.

  I wave my hand and the lights return.

  Eli doesn’t let any of this distract him. I know he’s building his argument against me.

  Before he can launch said counterargument, and heaven help me, my brother has always had a counterargument, every day of his life, I say, “I love her, Eli.”

  I can see him swallowing all the words he wants to throw at me. He runs a hand through his blond hair and lets out a long, controlled breath.

  “What would you have me do?” I ask him. “Because if you can see some miraculous escape route out of here, some hidden trap door that I’ve overlooked, I’m open to suggestions. I’d give anything if someone could tell me the way out that keeps Jesse alive, and free, and happy, and with me.”

  And with me, a little voice whispers. My marvelously hopeful self.

  He grips his knees through his jeans. “You still love her.”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugs. “Then it doesn’t matter what I would have you do, does it?”

  I smile. “No, not really.”

  He sighs again, a weary, resigned sound. He offers his hand, palm up across the small stretch of aisle between the bunks. I slip my hand into his. “I won’t pretend to understand what is going on with the weird superpower shit. We didn’t cover that in law school.”

  I crack a smile.

  “But I won’t lie, Al, I’m scared shitless for you.”

  “Me too,” I say. I’ve never hidden my feelings from my brother, and I’m not about to start now. “Do you remember what you said to me when you went to Baghdad?”

  His lips quirk a smile. “Don’t be surprised if I come back with three wives?”

  “No!” I twist his hand in mine and rap on the knuckles until he pulls back wailing. He probably regrets teaching his little sister that. “When I told you that if you came back in a box, I’d never forgive you, you told me: ‘Al, if I come back in a box, then it means that I died for something I believe in, something I love.’ You said I shouldn’t be mad about that. That I should be proud of you.”