For This Life Only (12 page)

Thera had stayed where she was, her toes curling on the rag rug. Her arm brushed my sleeve, and I could smell
the soft, minty scent of her hair. If she turned toward me, we'd be almost eye to eye. Mouth to mouth.

I took a deep breath. “And your favorite in general?” I asked.

“My favorite in general is the da Vinci bridge. It's a footbridge in Norway.” She moved around me carefully to point at a color print hanging above the rocker where I'd sat, probably exactly where she could see it from bed. “The builders followed da Vinci's original plans on a reduced scale; it opened in 2001. The plans are centuries old, but it looks like something that could have been designed today.” Her voice held awe and admiration.

“So this is your thing,” I said. Like baseball had been for me.

“I want to build them,” she said, raising her chin in challenge.

“Architect?” I asked.

“Engineer,” she muttered. “If I can ever get out of here.”

Thera sat back down on the bed.

I started toward the chair, but she moved a pile of notes to make room for me. “Here,” she said, nodding at the now cleared space.

Careful to keep distance between us, I sank down next to her.

“I miss him,” I admitted, my voice gritty. “So much.
But I can't say that to most people because—”

“You can miss him, no matter what. You're allowed,” she said fiercely.

I nodded, my stupid eyes overflowing again. “You want to tell everyone else that?” I managed, forcing a laugh as I wiped my face with the heel of my hand.

She shrugged. “If you need me to,” she said with a small smile. And it wouldn't surprise me if she did it. She was a fighter.

Lowering my head, I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers against the lids. “I don't know what I'm doing.”

Thera bumped me gently with her elbow. “There's no right way to miss someone. It's a hole on the inside. You can't fix that. You just live through it until one day the edges of the hole aren't so sharp.” The ache of experience resonated through her words.

I opened my eyes to look at her. “Who?”

“My grandparents,” she said. “They were . . . normal.” She gave me a rueful smile. “Mostly, anyway. When they were alive, my life was better. They gave my mom total shit for what she is, what she does, and that wasn't so great.” Thera shrugged. “But regular meals, money to buy a new lawn mower or fix the leaky faucet, a reliable roof over our heads . . .” She sighed. “I don't know.”

I did. She was as trapped by her mother's choices as
I was by my dad's, choices that had been made before we were born.

Against my better judgment, I reached out to touch the back of her hand, half expecting her to jolt away or slap at me, as she had Caleb.

But to my surprise, after a second of hesitation, she turned her palm up and caught my fingers in hers. Her gaze held mine, and that feeling of connection between us pulled tight.

Following it, I leaned in. The warmth of her breath and the minty scent of her hair surrounded me. I brushed my mouth over hers, and her lips were soft beneath mine, shaking a little as she kissed me back.

But she slid away almost immediately, releasing my hand.

It took me a second to process what had happened. “Sorry,” I said, my face hot. “I shouldn't have . . . That was—”

“It's okay.” But she wouldn't look at me.

I'd screwed up. Again.

An awkward silence descended. I could hear a radiator wheezing to life somewhere nearby.

“I should get back,” I said. “Services are shorter on Wednesdays.”

She nodded. “You don't want anyone to know that you're over here.”

I winced, though her tone held no judgment. “Yeah. It's—”

“Complicated,” she said, climbing off the bed. “I know.”

Of course she did. Eli had already told her all about it.

Jealousy clawed at me.

I shook my head. Stupid. It was only tutoring. But I liked Thera. And she and Eli had obviously been close, a closeness I couldn't hope to replicate. Eli was Eli, and that wasn't me. Much to everyone's regret.

Thera led the way out of the room and down the stairs.

I followed, but at the door, I stopped. “Thank you.” The words were completely inadequate in exchange for the first moment in months where I hadn't felt completely alone—before I'd messed it up—but they were all I had.

Thera folded her arms, moving her foot across the floor in the pattern of the faded flowered rug. “You're welcome.”

“You know you could come back to Pussy—to Exempt, if you wanted to,” I said.

She gave an easy shrug. “Nah, the library's okay. I have friends in there most of the time, and more aide hours is better for my college applications anyway. I just couldn't get them to approve it before.”

I nodded. “Okay, so I guess . . . I'll see you.” The idea of not knowing
when
I would see or talk to her again for sure created a hollow space inside me.

She pulled the door open for me and stepped back. “Yeah.”

But as I walked out the door and onto the porch, she drew in a breath. “Jace . . .”

I turned to face her, and an emotion that I couldn't identify flickered across her face, furrowing her forehead, before vanishing.

Then she shook her head. “Good night,” she said simply, and closed the door.

I SHOULDN'T HAVE KISSED HER
. Stupid.

I thumped the back of my head against the exposed brick wall of the narthex.

After Thera had closed her door, I'd slipped back into the church. Judging by the prayers in progress, the service was about ten minutes from the end. The ushers had long since entered the sanctuary, and with any luck, no one would know how long I'd been gone, or where.

Listening to the beginning notes of the final hymn, I leaned against the wall and shifted my weight off my bad leg, which was throbbing from effort and the cold.

It had been worth it, though. Just saying the words aloud—
I died
—had lifted an enormous burden. And Thera hadn't taken offense at my questions or doubts. Hadn't seemed even vaguely threatened. If anything,
doubting and questioning appeared to be a regular part of her thought process.

You hear about people being described as a breath of fresh air, but I'd never understood how much that actually meant in the context of suffocating slowly in a thick, stale, unbreathable atmosphere.

With Thera, I could breathe. I could ask. I could argue. It made me almost shaky with relief, the pressure relieved, if only temporarily.

And then I had to mess things up.

There was nothing like asking a girl if she was secretly involved with your brother one day and then trying to kiss her the next. God.

I'd have to find her tomorrow, try to apologize again. I didn't want to lose . . . whatever that was. However you defined it, those few moments with her had been the easiest, least complicated minutes of my life in months.

The ushers came out and opened the doors to the sanctuary, and I straightened up, pretending to have been there for a while. Like I'd left to use the bathroom and hadn't wanted to disrupt the last of the service by going back in.

“Jace! There you are,” my mom said when she emerged from the crowd, relief written on her face. “You were sitting with Leah?”

“Uh . . .” Leah hadn't joined them? “I didn't . . .”

But my mom was giving me a warning look. “I told Sarah that's where you were,” my mom said, with that “don't mess this up” tone in her voice.

My gaze dropped to my sister, who was holding my mom's hand and carefully avoiding making eye contact with me.

“Yep. I sat with Leah.”

Hopefully my mom and Leah wouldn't compare stories about where I was and was not.

Huh. Maybe Eli and I were more alike than I realized.

•  •  •

“Come on, Sarah!” my mom called in the direction of the dining room. “We're having late night special, and I need
you
to pick out which cookie cutter we're going to use.” It was a bribe, an obvious one. Then she turned to me. “Jacob, bowls.”

Late night special was a tradition on Wednesday nights during Lent. Usually tomato soup and grilled cheeses, cut into shapes.

When Eli and I were younger, we'd fought over whose turn it was to choose the shape. But once Sarah turned four, we'd handed over that responsibility to her. She'd taken it on with glee, choosing the most ridiculous cookie cutters.

But I doubted that making everyone's sandwiches look like ghosts or candy canes was the enticement it had once been. Still, my mom was trying.

The familiar smell of toasting bread was comforting, as was the clank of the skillet against the burner. It could have been a scene from any night in my life over the last few years.

I crossed to the cabinet and pulled down four bowls. I was halfway to the dining room before I realized what I'd done: grabbed four automatically and without thought, as I used to grab five. It was the first time since Eli's death that I'd done that.

I froze, teetering on the sharp edge of relief and a double-portion of guilt. Relief that maybe Thera was right and that Eli's death wouldn't always hurt this much, that one day it wouldn't be the central focus of my life. Guilt because Eli was dead and it should hurt. I was alive; I didn't deserve relief.

“Jacob, honey?” Mom asked. She was watching me closely, the spatula in her hand. “What's wrong?”

“I'm fine, I just . . .” I held up the bowls. “I only took four.”

Her expression softened.

“It's all right,” she said gently. “Life goes on eventually. It's supposed to happen that way. He wants that for us, I'm sure.”

I wasn't sure Eli wanted anything anymore.

The garage door went up, and we both automatically looked toward the mudroom.

“Dad's home early,” my mom said with surprise. “Sarah, I need you to come now! Otherwise I'm going to make them all circles.”

I took the bowls into the dining room, and was heading for the silverware drawer in the kitchen when my dad's footsteps sounded behind me, too loud and too close. I moved to get out of the way, thinking I'd crossed in front of him accidentally.

But then his hand caught tight around my collar, hauling me backward. My arms windmilled as I tried to keep my balance.

“Micah!” My mom sounded shocked.

“What is wrong with you?” he demanded through clenched teeth, his voice right next to my ear.

“I don't . . . What?” I asked, my heart catapulting into triple time. My dad had never laid a hand on any of us.

“Are you trying to make things worse?” He shook me a little and then let go.

I stumbled to the side, catching myself on the edge of the island to keep my footing, and then turned to gape at him. His face was flushed above his blue shirt and white clerical collar, and his dark hair was rumpled.

“What is going on?” my mom demanded, rushing around the island to stand next to me.

“Would you like to explain to me where you were during service tonight?” he asked in a too calm voice that
was somehow more frightening than when he'd grabbed me a moment ago.

Crap.

Instinctively, I looked to my mother for help, but she was staring wide-eyed at my dad, like she'd never seen him before. “He was sitting with Leah, Micah. I don't think that's cause for
this
.”

“Is that right? Because Leah told me she saw you go across the street,” he said.

My mom sucked in a breath. “Across the street” was code for Psychic Mary's.

“You're lucky it was Leah,” he said, jabbing a finger in my direction. “She stopped me after service and told me in confidence. If she'd told her father instead, do you have any idea how much trouble that would have caused?”

I grimaced. Mr. Hauer was definitely the most conservative of the church council members, and he was the president. My dad would never have heard the end of it.

But why was it always about everyone else? It wasn't that my dad didn't want me over there, though I was sure he didn't, or even that he believed all the stupid whispered rumors about “consorting with dark forces” or whatever.

It was about Mr. Hauer and the church. As always. It didn't matter if we were struggling or falling apart or pushed to desperate measures. Appearances were all that mattered.

My temper flickered to life and, for the first time in months, caught hold. “Yeah, because that's the worst part about all of this, what everyone at church will think.”

“Jacob—” my mom tried.

“It's not a big deal,” I argued. “Thera and I are in the same class at school.”

“And you felt the need to go over there in the middle of service because . . . ?” my dad pressed.

“Thera's not the devil incarnate, no matter what Mr. Hauer might say,” I said, avoiding the question. “She and her mom . . . they're just people.”

“It doesn't matter,” my dad said. “At a minimum, they're criminals and con artists, and by going there, you're undermining my authority. I'm trying to convince the council and the congregation to push against the city and commit millions of dollars for this expansion based on my vision and my leadership, and my kid is across the street, chatting up the enemy.”

The enemy?

“After a loss, I think it's normal to look at the world a little differently,” my mom offered tentatively, making eye contact with me for the first time and giving me an understanding nod. “And the desire to reach out to a school friend, as odd as she may be, or maybe the temptation to seek confirmation from a source that might be outside the accepted norm, is—”

“Carrie, this isn't about grief,” my dad said with an irritated edge.