The Love That Split the World (30 page)

Grandmother’s shoulders are shaking from the effort of
holding tears in, or maybe it just looks that way because time is pulling against me even now, trying to drag me back into my present. It settles in me then, the thing Grandmother can’t bear to say aloud, at least not as plainly as it hits me. “You think seeing his world like that means that I’m going to go back,” I murmur, “that I’m going to change what happened the night of the accident, and that will create Beau’s world.”

But we’re not
both
in Beau’s world.

He saw my family in his world. All of them except me.
Happy,
he said,
they looked happy
.

And I saw my name on a piece of stone there too.

“You think he survives instead of me,” I whisper.

Grandmother buries her face in her hands as she starts to cry. “I can’t get back,” she says. “I can’t go back, or I would. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried. I thought maybe I could stop the accident altogether, but, Natalie—the tug and pull, the physical evidence of time travel—when we saw that headstone with our name on it, we were in the future—not the natural one but the chosen one. We
felt
the pull. I don’t think you can stop the accident completely, but you can change it.”

“You think I choose—” My voice breaks, and a sob wrenches my words. “To die.”

She looks up at me. Despite her thick wrinkles and age spots and cataracts, she looks young, tiny. Like Little Me in home videos, a puny frame in too-big clothes. “I think you do what I couldn’t,” she whispers.

I open my mouth but can’t make any sound come out except a high-pitched groan. “The orb,” I finally say. “I saw it tonight.”

She nods but can’t look at me anymore. She slumps to the
ground and curls her thin arms around herself. “It’s tonight. It feels exactly like the first time. Like it’s all being sewn up. The tear in time is closing tonight.”

The first time.

Today I got in the first real fight I’ve ever had with my mother. I fainted for the first time. I lost a friend for the first time, my first boyfriend. I thought about my own death for the first time when I saw my name written somewhere it shouldn’t be. And I told Beau I loved him for the first time.

And the second.

And the third.

I had meant to make love with him for the first time.

Now, he’s waiting back in Megan’s bedroom as his world crumbles. I feel the imminent fall in my stomach. Something’s trying to cement me back where I belong, and when it does—
if
it does
—
Beau will be trapped under the rubble of a world that never happened. “I haven’t lived yet,” I say because I’m helpless. Because all I have to protect me now is words. Because it’s an impossible choice to bear, but I don’t
feel
there’s a choice to make, and I think saying that I don’t want to do this is the closest I can get to not doing it.

Grandmother reaches a hand up toward me. I take it as I lower myself to the floor in front of her. “It should be me,” she says. “I could do it and have no regrets. It’s what
I
would choose, but that doesn’t mean it has to be what you choose. I can’t ask that of you. I know you haven’t lived yet. I know the life you can have, and how full it will be even without Beau, all the people you’ll affect, and those who will change your life forever.

“I know all the stories you should know someday. I know both of your mothers, and how much they both love you. I know secrets about Coco that would make your toes curl in delight, and I know Jack’s kids and how much they love him. I have all the answers, and you have none.”

She squeezes my hand. “All you have are the stories I was able to tell you and the love in your heart for Beau right now. I know all that, Natalie, and I’m still here, asking you to do something I should
never
ask of someone your age, especially not someone I love, whose every heartbreak and joy I’ve also known. I’m asking because it’s what I wanted to do, and you have the choice now.”

“I don’t have a choice,” I lash out. “You
know
I don’t. You practically raised me for this. You spent years drilling it into my head. You taught me that to love was to die.”

“Oh, honey. You misunderstand. I didn’t tell you those stories just to change your mind. I told them because I remember how badly it hurt, not being able to see the truth, feeling like I was going to be swallowed up by the dark. What is love,” she says, “other than putting someone else before you? Our birth mother gave us away because she hoped we could have a better life away from her. Our parents kept the car accident from us because Mom suffered from PTSD for years. She worked so hard to make the pain manageable for herself, but she also protected us from that pain. Love is nothing
but
putting someone else first. I didn’t teach you that so you’d save Beau. I told you so you’d see how this whole world was made for you, how it warms when you smile and aches when you hurt. I told you so you could stop being afraid.”

“If that’s true, then there has to be another way,” I snap. “How can you tell me the whole world loves me and in the same breath tell me I have to die? I want to know. I want this secret knowledge you have that has you so confident that
this is it,
that you’re willing to ask me to go to the past and lie down in the road in front of my own car to kill my child self. Because I don’t buy it. There
has
to be another way.”

“Why?” Grandmother challenges. “You’ve seen evidence of exactly two presents. I’ve seen evidence that Beau died that night in our world. Beau’s seen evidence that you don’t exist in his. You’ve looked at your own memorial in the same place as his. So
why
does there have to be another way?”

“Because this is happening,” I shout. “This doesn’t happen every day, Grandmother, or at least not to everyone. There has to be a better reason for why I can change things. Why Beau and me out of everyone in the world? Why do we get a second chance? What makes us special?”

“Maybe nothing,” Grandmother says. “Maybe chance. Or maybe someone thinks the choice is just the kind of gift you would appreciate.”

“Or maybe it’s because the world would be better with both of us in it,” I counter, “or because things are broken and when we’re together, they’re less broken. Maybe it’s because we’re connected or we fit or we’re right together, and if time is really flat, then maybe it saw all of that. Maybe, even though Beau died, time itself saw every possible world where we could love each other and that was as good as us having loved one another. Because we could’ve loved each other anywhere, in any world, and maybe the reason we can change things is
because the thing between us is big enough to reach through every branch in time. Maybe our love couldn’t die, even when we did. Something’s pulling us together, Grandmother. Something brought him
back from the dead
to me. Even if I go back to the night of that accident and die, why would death and time be any stronger this time? It has to mean something. It
has
to mean a future.”

“Maybe there is another way, Natalie. But I’m not going to promise you something I can’t give you.” Her words are stretched taut and shivering with tears, her voice wild and round, a meniscus about to flood the lip of a glass. “I’m not going to tell you that you get a future with Beau because I don’t know that. I
won’t
be the one to tell you that you can have it all, no matter how badly I want Beau to have a chance to live. I want to believe in that future, Natalie, but I don’t. You say you saw it? Well, I never did. Even if you
can
make a future, who’s to say it’s really
you
in it? I mean, look at us. We’re the same person, but we’re living different lives. If you can create a world with you and Beau in it, it’s still not quite you, just like you’re not quite me.”

It feels like she’s dropped a weight on my chest. “Then lie to me,” I beg. “Because I’m doing this, and I need you to tell me it’s going to be okay. I need you to lie to me.”

When her mouth shifts into a smile, tears break and slip down her cheeks. “It’s not a lie,” she whispers. “It will be okay.”

I shut my eyes against the tears, and Grandmother’s stories flash through my mind, a warm current of electricity woven throughout my life, like Grandmother Spider’s web and Alice’s trails of light, guiding me and teaching me everything I know
about love. But that whole web hurts, like it’s growing through my veins, all the life I want to live pulsing alongside the one I want to give Beau. The things I want to lay out in front of his eyes and place in his hands and sing into his ears and the places I want him to be carried, the thousands of golden sunsets on that day-warmed porch.

“I saw it,” I rasp. “I saw how all of it would be.” How we would fit, what would be built between us. “I was there. What do I do with that?”

“Sweet kid.” Grandmother reaches out and swipes a piece of tear-dampened hair away from my eyes. “I may have never seen it, but it never left my heart, this whole time. You take your hope with you to the end, just like I’m doing.”

I look up into her face, searching for her meaning, and she presses her finger to her lips, eyes dipping toward the ground. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse and rough. “I’m dying.” Her confirmation is little more than a squeak, and she takes a long second to build her voice back up. “This isn’t about me anymore. It’s about you, and what
you
want.”

“Dying?” I whisper. “How?”

She closes her eyes. “I won’t tell you that. I don’t want to ruin any surprises, or give you any fears. Everyone dies, honey, and you already know that now, at eighteen.”

“And even Jesus was scared to die,” I remind her.

“He was.”

“You can’t tell me anything? Give me any hint?”

She folds her hands together to steady her trembling. “I can tell you that the pain of living is worth it. That if you live, your life will be as full of love as it is darkness, and for every
moment of pain, you’ll have one of joy too. The one thing you won’t feel is what you feel now with Beau, and that doesn’t make your life any less worthy of being lived. But then again, worthiness isn’t a factor in whether we’re alive or loved.

“You have the choice to either appreciate the impossible and unwarranted gift of being alive or to give it to someone else. To use your love to remake the world. Whether you give it to Beau or keep it, Natalie, the world’s going to keep right on being terrible and beautiful all at once.”

I’ve been so afraid of those terrible things, of everything falling apart and of never knowing who I am or finding the place I belong. But here I am, looking at myself at the end of time, and she was never alone, not really. God, it’s a painful sort of relief, seeing that some version of me has already lived and that all those fears eventually fell away, unrealized. I still want the whole picture all to myself, to get to the end of my world and slip quietly from there, but there’s no real choice to make. I don’t know for sure what will happen when I go back to the night of the accident, but I know I’ll go. Not because Beau’s future is so big or because mine is so small, but because love is giving the world away, and being loved is having the whole world to give.

“How much time do I have?” I ask.

“Hours,” she says. “Minutes. I don’t know, Natalie. Not much.”

“I’m so scared.”

She pulls me into a hug and smooths my hair away from my face, exactly as Mom has a billion times.
Mom
. The last thing I said to her was
I don’t have a mother
. There are so many things I need to do. See my parents, Jack, Coco. Tell my mom to stop
carrying around her guilt and promise her it’ll be made right. Say goodbye to Megan, tell her how much I love her. Comfort the Kincaids, who will have their son back, if this works. Thank Rachel for loving me brutally, enough to hate me for leaving her behind.

And I need to be held by Beau. To make sure he understands how deeply I really do love him. How kind and gentle and soft he is. How safe and cared for he makes people feel, and how much brighter the world is for all he does and gives. How good he is, and what kind of life he deserves despite the one he’s been given.

But there may not be time to say these last words. I can’t risk it. This is my only chance. I’ll never get to tell him how I think that if it were an option, I could love him well until I died.

I guess I
will
love him well until I die. I have to believe the world will pick up where I leave off. I have to believe that, whether I’m there at the end of the world with Beau or not, love is bigger than death.

“I’m scared too,” Grandmother whispers in my ear. “But we’re so brave, girl.”

I give a phlegmy laugh. I’m minutes from death and nonexistence, and I’m laughing. Suddenly, I’m laughing hysterically, and Grandmother’s laughing too, and we’re both rocking on the floor of our bedroom, tears of laughter streaming down our faces, snot dripping from our noses.

She regains composure first, gritting her teeth, smiling forcefully, and nodding at me. “You can do this. I should know. I was a surrogate mom
twice
for Jack and his husband.” She responds to my surprise with a dramatic wink. “We can do anything.”

I nod because I can’t speak. Harsh sobriety has set in, and yet my head and breastbone feel as light as balloons, like all the weight of anxiety is gone now that the choice has been made, and I’m full of something bright and warm, a gift for the boy I love. I stand up, and Grandmother stands too, then pulls me into a bone-crunching hug. She steps back but grips my upper arms with surprising strength. “Because of you,” she says, “a whole new world’s about to get born.”

She lets me go, and I walk toward the closet door, catching its frame in my hands and pausing. I look back to where she stands, back straight, hands clasped in front of her stomach and chin tipped up. “Grandmother,” I say.

“Yeah, honey,” she says.

“Do you think . . . I mean, is it possible . . . that there
is
a God?”

She smiles that same smile I recognize from childhood, the mysterious one that makes our eyes sparkle. “Girl,” she says, “how do you think
any
of this is possible if something didn’t want it to be? Something tore a hole in time just over our bed all so
you
, lucky bitch, could know what it is to
love
. Someone tore up a tree and let us look through and decide to fall.”