The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(36)

I was shivering so hard now my teeth began to clatter. I tried to rub the gooseflesh from my bare arms, but my fingers were icicles. The fact was, I remembered reading something about Olam HaEmet, a long time ago. Except the writer had called it the “World of Truth.” It’s a place observant Jews believe waits on the Other Side. A place for reflection.

A place for departed souls.

“No,” I whispered.

“You never know about expectations,” Olin said mildly. “Everybody’s got his own, I guess. When they first cross over.”

Cross over? What the hell . . . ?

A faint ringing started in my ears and my body felt as weightless as balsa wood.

“You’re crazy,” I said. “Or I am. This isn’t happening.”

“Give me your hands, Joanna.”

I glared back at him as if this—all this—were somehow his fault. Some cruel prank.

He said it again, this time more firmly: “Give me your hands.”

His tone was still soothing, but there was a note of command in it, too. I found myself reaching for him, my hands now shaking so violently they looked palsied. I shuddered as he took them. The infusion of warmth I felt the first time he ever touched me—that first morning at breakfast, at this very same table—was nothing compared to the jolt of heat that coursed through me now, driving out the bone-chill. The shivering began to ease.

“This can’t be.” Tears were sliding down my cheeks. “I can’t be.”

“Go ahead; cry it out if you want. Won’t make it any less so.”

“But how? I don’t know how . . .” An accident on the road? Had I hit another car or careened off the highway to escape that speeding cruiser? Another realization struck, and I pulled my hands from Olin’s to stare in horror at the house. “Oh, dear God . . . Laurel . . .”

“Now, now. It’s all right. Don’t she look all right to you?”

All right? Since we’d come here, Laurel had never looked healthier. Or seemed happier. Suddenly I thought about that night in her room when she’d asked if we were here forever. If this were our forever . . .

“Does she know?” I asked.

Olin considered for a moment. “Not exactly. She’s workin’ it out—children, they catch on when they’re ready. But she ain’t quite there yet.”

Five minutes ago, I would’ve said I wasn’t quite there yet, either. Not ready to catch on. Not ready at all. But I had been suspicious, asking questions and grasping for answers, and Olin had only been obliging me.

Now he was regarding me with sympathy, as if another shoe were about to drop.

“Joanna, when we first met, you recall what I said? That you had the look of a gal who wouldn’t be stayin’ long.”

“A short-timer. I remember.”

He nodded. “Now, that’s the thing. Near all the folks who come through, they go on eventually. But there’s some, a few—they up and turn back.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It ain’t their time. They ain’t fixed in one place yet, nor the other. So they got a choice to make. To stay or go back.”

“Are you— Olin, what are you saying?”

“Near as I can tell,” he continued, “you’re here for a reason. You were in a bad way, and for a long time. Back in Wheeler.”

I ducked my head, unsure how much Olin knew, even without my telling.

“This here—” Olin glanced up and down the valley, nearly eclipsed now by the gathering dusk. “Think of this as a place to rest. To get strong and straight inside. Think of it like your own Place of Truth. To consider where you come from, and what you might do different if you go back.”

Jim’s face flashed in front of me, and I shuddered involuntarily.

“That man of yours,” Olin said knowingly. “Seems to me he was bleedin’ the life out of you for a long time before you ever made it here.”

“And he sure as hell won’t stop if he gets the chance to do it again.”

“No, he won’t. It ain’t in him to stop.”

“So why would I ever want to go back?”

“That ain’t for me to say.”

I leaned on the table, burying my face in my hands, anxious for the moment to be over. More than anything I wanted to look up again and find no trace of Olin or the farm or that Mountain. I wasn’t ruling out insanity, either—his or mine. I’d sidled up to it often enough over these last few years. But when you’ve finally lost it—lost it good and proper—do you even realize it? Do you know if you’ve given up, crawled inside your own head and pulled the ladder up after you? Die Gedanken sind frei, my Oma used to sing. Thoughts are free . . . The darkest dungeon is futile, for my thoughts tear all gates and walls asunder . . . For all I knew, I was still out there staggering in the desert, just as Simon had said, my broken brain cooking up this mirage . . .