In an Instant(67)

She offers a kind, sympathetic smile, gives his hand an encouraging squeeze. “We both know the truth,” she says. Then she pulls her hand from his, closes the screen of her laptop, pivots, and walks away, leaving him alone.

I watch as he stumbles to his feet, out the door, and back to his miserable life. He deserves this, I remind myself. But somehow I can’t entirely convince myself, my love for Oz not equaling my hate for Bob. Because in the end, nothing is absolute. Bob is not all bad, and when he was with my mom, he was mostly good. He loves her and is a better person when he is with her, and had she been there, he wouldn’t have done what he did.

My mom only knew the better Bob, the one who stood beside her in the blizzard and used his bare hands to pack the windshield with snow, who helped pull people from the camper, and who tended to Chloe and Jack. The Bob who stayed at her side during the rescue mission and who championed the search for Oz. Until this afternoon, when she received the call from Burns, Bob had been a good man, not pretending, but actually good because she made him that way.

I watch him staggering down the street and tell myself again that he deserves this, but instead, I find myself hoping Karen is waiting for him, that he will manage to get some sleep, and that in the morning he’ll figure out a way to get his life back.





79

It’s daybreak. Through the window, the granite peaks of the mountain lighten to pale gold as Mo and Kyle sleep curled together. Mo yawns awake and rolls to face him, a naughty, knowing smile on her face.

His eyes flutter open, then startle with pleasant surprise when he sees her. He pecks her on her nose. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” she says, then purrs and wriggles closer as if it is the most natural thing in the world and as if they’ve been together forever. He wraps his arms around her and brushes a kiss across her hair, inhaling through his nose as he does, and I pretend to inhale with him. Mo always smells like expensive shampoo, and her breath is high pitched and sweet, even when she hasn’t brushed.

I miss being able to smell. It’s like a dimension is missing, as if I am viewing the world in black and white rather than color. I don’t know what Kyle smells like. I try to imagine it and decide he is odorless, and I’m impressed. It’s very difficult for a man to not smell.

This is the new game I play, remembering or making up smell. It almost works. I can look at the ocean and remember the salt and the taste of brine or see a toddler and think of the baby smell that only exists on the very young. I hope wherever I’m going there is taste and smell.

“It’s strange,” Mo says.

“Hmm?” he says, breathing her in again.

“This feels so right, like I’ve known you forever. But I actually know nothing about you, and you know nothing about me.”

His fingers caress her back. “Yeah, I thought about that a lot after the accident. How strange it was to have shared such an intense experience with people I didn’t know and who I never saw again. I thought about you all a lot—mostly you, but also Oz’s mom and dad. Is his dad okay? I didn’t think he was going to make it.”

“He did, barely. He wouldn’t have if we’d had to stay out there another night.” She pulls away so she can look at him. “Which reminds me, I never thanked you for what you did. After all, you did save my life.”

He gives a toothless smirk, the left side of his mouth higher than the right. “I’d say you thanked me pretty well last night, but if you want to thank me again . . .” His eyebrows arch in invitation.

“Mmm,” she says and then, with amazing assertiveness, rolls on top of him so she is straddling his legs. The sheet falls away to pool around her nakedness, and I blush wildly, though Mo seems entirely at ease.

Kyle sits up partway, wraps his hand around the back of Mo’s head, and pulls her into a kiss, and zap, like being struck by a bolt of lightning, I am jolted away.

I startle and look around to find myself in my room at home, Chloe on the bed across from me. For a moment I’m confused, until the reason I’m no longer with Mo rises like the sun along with an uneasy feeling in my stomach.

Suddenly I know why I am here. Lingering. Just as suddenly I know now, with certainty, that someday soon I will be gone, the two epiphanies colliding in my brain to make me dizzy. A future beyond this one exists, the revelation almost as startling as my death. The thought of leaving those I will be leaving is still as horrifying as it was the moment my life ended, but its inevitability can no longer be denied. I feel it. The bright light of death, a persistent glow and warmth just out of reach. It has been there since the day I died, but until this moment, I have paid it no mind, distracted by the world from which I came and the people who remain.

I look at Chloe, her earbuds plugged in and her foot tapping to the beat, and then I close my eyes and focus on the distant glow. I feel the gentle tug between the two, between this world and the next. It does not scare me. Quite the opposite. Whether it is heaven or merely peace, I know what waits is better than where I am, and my heart quickens with the thought of it.

I return my thoughts to the present, and my pulse resumes its steady pace. Chloe, my mom, my dad—the three precious threads that remain. And I realize this state I am in is not hell or some sort of purgatory. I am not here as punishment for my sins. But rather, I remain to assure peace in my future. My life was violently ripped away and the lives of those I love torn apart. I had no time to prepare or to say goodbye, and I was not ready to leave. Rest in peace is not merely an epitaph for a tombstone; it is the best we can hope for in death.