The Law of Moses(82)

“Is he still here?” Georgia asked, interrupting my thoughts.

She didn’t have to tell me who ‘he’ was, but her question took me by surprise. I didn’t know when she’d started believing me, but I wasn’t going to argue about it. I looked back where Eli had been perched and discovered that he was gone. He had the attention span that was probably typical of a four-year-old, and he flitted in and out without warning. I shook my head.

“No.”

Georgia almost looked disappointed. She gazed beyond me, past the corral to the hills that squatted west of Levan. And then she surprised the hell out of me.

“I wish I had your gift. Just for one day,” she whispered. “You can see him. And I’ll never see him again.”

“A gift?” I choked. “I’ve never thought of it as a gift. Not ever,” I protested. “Not once.”

Georgia nodded, and I knew she hadn’t considered it a gift either. Not until now. In fact, she hadn’t ever known what to think. I’d guarded my secret and let her believe I was crazy. Deranged even. The fact that she now seemed to believe me, at least to some extent, made me giddy and nauseated all at once. And I owed her as much honesty as I could give her.

“For the first time in my life, I’m grateful that I can part the waters. That’s what Gi called it, parting the waters. I’m grateful, because it’s all I’m going to get. This is all Eli and I get. You got four years, Georgia, and this is all I get.” I didn’t say it angrily. I wasn’t angry. But she wasn’t the only one who was suffering, and sometimes there is comfort in the knowledge that you don’t suffer alone, sad as that is.

Georgia bit her lip, flinching, and I knew what I was saying wasn’t easy to hear.

“Do you remember that girl I painted on the underpass?” I said, trying to be as gentle as I could and still explain.“Yeah.” Georgia nodded. “Molly Taggert. She was just a few years older than I am. They found her, you know. Not long after you left town. Someone killed her.”

I nodded too. “I know. She was Tag’s sister.”

Georgia’s eyes widened, and she stiffened abruptly, as if she had suddenly put it all together. But I didn’t want to talk about Molly. Not right now. And I needed her to listen. I reached out and tilted her chin toward me, making sure she heard. “But you know what? I don’t see Molly anymore. She came . . . and she went. That’s how it is every time. Nobody hangs around very long. And one day, Eli will go too.”

Georgia flinched again, and her eyes filled with tears that she valiantly tried to hold back. We stood there, neither one speaking, each of us battling the emotion that had buffeted us from the moment our eyes met in a crowded elevator nearly a month before. Georgia was the first to give, and her voice shook as she gave me honesty in return.

“I cry every day. Do you know that? I cry every damn day. I never used to cry. Now, not a day goes by that I don’t find myself in tears. Sometimes I hide in the closet so I can pretend it isn’t happening again. One day, I’m going to have a day when I don’t cry, and part of me thinks that will be the worst day of all. Because he will truly be slipping away.”

“I never used to cry either.”

She waited.

“In fact, that was the first time.”

“The first time?”

“Out there, in the field. The first time I remember crying . . . over anything, ever.” I’d pulled the waters down to make it all stop, to hide the image of Georgia’s horrified face screaming Eli’s name, and for the first time, the waters had spilled from my eyes.

Georgia gasped, and I looked away from her incredulous face, and felt the waters tremble and shift inside me and start to rise again. What was happening to me?

“You think your tears keep him close?” I whispered.

“My tears mean I’m thinking about him,” she whispered back, still standing so close to me I could have leaned forward and kissed her without taking a single step.

“But all your memories can’t be sad. None of his are. And you’re the only thing he thinks about.”

“I am?”

“Well, you and Calico. And Stewy Stinker.” She laughed, a wet hiccup that she swallowed back. She stepped back abruptly, and I knew she was getting ready to pull away.

“So do what you used to do. When you need to cry, do what you used to do.” There was a desperate note in my voice.

“What?” Georgia asked.

“Give me five greats, Georgia.”

She winced. “Damn you, Moses.”

“I’ve been thinking about it since you told me Eli was showing me his favorite things. You would be surprised how many times I caught myself making little lists of good things over the last seven years. And it was all your fault.”

“I was such a pain in the ass, wasn’t I?” She laughed again, but there wasn’t much mirth in the short expulsion of air. “I drove you nuts. Buzzing around you like I had it all figured out. I didn’t know anything. And you knew I didn’t know anything. But you liked me anyway.”

“Who says I liked you?”

She chuckled, remembering the conversation from the long ago day by the fence.

“Your eyes said you liked me,” she answered bluntly, the way she would have once. And then she nervously tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear like she couldn’t believe she was flirting with me.