Sign Here(22)

“Are you God?” he whispered.

“I’m here to save you.”

It wasn’t a lie. I was saving him from something.

“I’m not a bad person,” he said. He waved the pistol as he talked and it hit the sleeve of a little raincoat hanging on the hook next to him. The raincoat had ducks on it.

“Of course not,” I said.

“She’s the one who— She won’t marry me because I’m not a fancy lawyer. Because I don’t make as much money as her ex. That’s fucked up.”

I felt outside of myself for Cal in the parking lot. She was talking to the kids’ father. His terror and rage had become one simple annihilating feeling: desperation. He was ready. I sent my mind out farther and caught KQ in Jake’s mother’s kitchen. As KQ explained away the fine print, Veronica’s eyes were as wide and deep as wells, frozen on the news coverage on TV.

It was closing time.

“Listen, Jake. We can sit here and talk religion if you want, but the police are getting ready to storm this place, and they aren’t going to hesitate. You’re holding a woman and two children hostage at gunpoint. The media is here. Your mother is watching the news coverage as we speak. You’re not getting out of this. So you have three options, which will happen whether or not you decide to kill anyone. One: the cops kill you. Or, if by some miracle they don’t shoot you on sight, they arrest you and send you to prison, where, I’ve been told, folks do not take kindly to people who hurt kids. Two: take that gun you’ve got there and kill yourself right now. And I do mean right now, because, like I said, time is of the essence.”

Jake slumped farther down, snot running into his meager mustache.

“Or, Jake, we’ve got option number three. You accept my deal, and I erase all of this. Send you back in time, give you a redo. I can make you forget all about Rebecca, or I can make her love you so much she never talks to her ex, or anyone else, ever again. Whatever you want. I just need you to sign this and poof, you get a second chance.”

I was next to him now, holding out my tablet. I had already scrolled to the bottom; all he had to do was click and sign. I could feel Cal’s and KQ’s deals coming to a crescendo the way you can feel a wave swell while standing in the ocean. The energy between us pulled and tightened. Despite what I wanted to think, we worked well together.

Jake was silent until he let out one sob, rough and broken like wood after a storm.

“I’m not a bad person,” he said again as he took the tablet.

There was the crackle of a megaphone; the negotiator had finally arrived. Then I snapped my fingers and the whole thing disappeared.



* * *



—

“SAY WHAT YOU WANT about humans, but they certainly got this right,” KQ said, shoving another mozzarella stick into the marinara sauce. We’d found a dive in town with blistered red booths and a deal on pitchers. Cal chugged her second glass of water and gestured to the waitress for another.

“To Pey, for leading a successful Grand Slam!”

“We did good work,” I said, smiling despite myself and clinking my beer with hers. Our greasy fingers left smudges on our glasses.

“Did the guy give you any trouble?” KQ asked, as she licked sauce from her thumb.

I shrugged. “Not nearly as much as he could have.”

“He’ll fit right in Downstairs,” Cal said. “Whenever he gets there.”

“Which should be in just about . . . forty-five minutes.”

“Bus?” KQ asked.

“Failed brakes,” I said. “He should’ve paid more attention to that warning light.”

KQ laughed, an unadulterated cackle that startled the couple in the booth across from us.

Cal squinted at KQ and me. “What are you talking about?”

“They aren’t supposed to read the fine print, Squeaks. But you are,” KQ said, a mozzarella stick between her teeth.

“There’s never any guarantee that Rewinds will go the way they did the first time around,” I said. “No matter how bad a day might seem, you take a risk that you’ll get something even worse.”

“Like getting hit by a bus,” KQ said.

“Or driving with faulty brakes,” I answered.

The waitress dropped off another water at the table for Cal. I took a sip of beer, reveling in the combination of salt and fat and bubbles. Everything is flat in Hell. Cal finished the water in seconds.

“What’s up with all the hydration?” I asked. “You know we have water in Hell, right?”

Cal wiped her mouth, looking embarrassed. “It’s just better here.”

“I’ve gotta pinch one out,” KQ said, slamming down her empty glass. “Be ready to go when I get back.”

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked Cal once KQ was gone. “Why pick the kids’ dad over Jake’s mom? That was the hardest one.”

“Hard how?”

“Eternal damnation for wanting your kids not to be shot—it’s just a tough gig, is all.”

“If you think about it like that, sure,” she said, but her eyebrows were higher than the Downstairs’s electricity allowance.

“How do you think about it?”

Cal sighed. “You’re talking like one of them,” she said, and nodded toward the group across from us, who had kept their eyes down since KQ’s descriptive announcement. “Like a human.”