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My mom took a breath, and I closed my eyes before she could say a word. It didn’t stop her. “I don’t think it’s wise, Ethan. I don’t think it’s safe,
and I don’t think you should be going. No matter what your Aunt Prue says.” Her voice wavered.
“Mom.”
“You’re only seventeen.”
“Actually, I’m not. What I am now is nothing.” I looked up at her. “And I hate to break it to you, but it’s a little late for that speech. You have to admit
that safety might not be my biggest concern at the moment. Now that I’m dead and everything.”
“Well, if you say it like that.” She sighed and sat down on the floor next to me.
“How do you want me to say it?”
“I don’t know. Passed on?” She tried not to smile.
I half-smiled back. “Sorry. Passed on.” She was right. Folks didn’t like saying dead, not where we were from. It was impolite. As if saying it
somehow made it true. As if words themselves were more powerful than anything that could actually happen to you.
Maybe they were.
After all, that’s what I had to do now, wasn’t it? Destroy the words on a page in some book in a library that had changed my Mortal destiny. Was it
really so far-fetched to think that words had a way of shaping a person’s whole life?
“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, sweetheart. Maybe if I had figured it out for myself, before all this, you wouldn’t even be here.
There wouldn’t have been a car accident, and there wouldn’t have been a water tower—” She stopped.
“You can’t keep things from happening to me, Mom. Not even these things.” I leaned my head back along the edge of the couch. “Not even
messed-up things.”
“What if I want to?”
“You can’t. It’s my life, or whatever this is.” I turned to look at her.
She leaned her head on my shoulder, holding the side of my face close with her hand. Something she hadn’t done since I was a kid. “It’s your life.
You’re right about that. And I can’t make a decision like this for you, however much I want to. Which is very, very much.”
“I kind of figured that part out.”
She smiled sadly. “I just got you back. I don’t want to lose you again.”
“I know. I don’t want to leave you either.”
Side by side, we stared at the Christmas town, maybe for the last time. I put the car back where it belonged.
I knew then that we would never have another Christmas together, no matter what happened. I would stay or I would go—but either way, I would
move on to somewhere that wasn’t here. Things couldn’t be like this forever, not even in this Gatlin-that-wasn’t-Gatlin. Whether I was able to get my
life back or not.
Things changed.
Then they changed again.
Life was like that, and even death, I guess.
I couldn’t be with both my mom and Lena, not in what was left of one lifetime. They would never meet, though I had already told them everything
there was to tell about the other. Since I got here, my mom had me describe every charm on Lena’s necklace. Every line of every poem she’d ever
written. Every story about the smallest things that had happened to us, things I didn’t even know I remembered.
Still, it wasn’t the same as being a family, or whatever we could have been.
Lena and my mom and me.
They would never laugh about me or keep a secret from me or even fight about me. My mom and Lena were the two most important people in my
life, or afterlife, and I could never have both of them together.
That’s what I was thinking when I closed my eyes. When I opened them, my mom was gone—as if she’d known I couldn’t leave her. As if she’d
known I wouldn’t be able to walk away.
Truthfully, I didn’t know if I could have done it, myself.
Now I’d never find out.
Maybe it was better that way.
I pocketed the two stones and made my way down the front steps, closing the door carefully behind me. The smell of fried tomatoes came wafting
out the door as it shut.
I didn’t say good-bye. I had a feeling we’d see each other again. Someday, somehow.
Aside from that, there wasn’t anything I could tell my mom that she didn’t already know. And no way to say it and still walk out the door.
She knew I loved her. She knew I had to go. At the end of the day, there wasn’t much more to say.
I don’t know if she watched me go.
I told myself she did.
I hoped she didn’t.