When the Sky Fell on Splendor(98)

“It was really an accident then?” Remy said.

“Why weren’t you there?” Nick demanded.

Wayne’s forehead creased as he studied Nick’s expression. “You had someone there . . . at the mill, the day of the accident.”

Nick shifted minutely between his feet. “My dad.”

“Nick Colasanti,” Wayne said. “You look like him.”

Nick’s shoulder jerked like he was trying to bat away a fly without using his hands. “Why weren’t you there?” The wind was picking up again, rising to a fever pitch, and Nick had to shout to be heard over it.

Wayne’s brow wavered. His voice cracked on her name. “Molly.” It took him a moment to say anything else. “She was a sleepwalker, real bad. Would do things like turn on the oven and try to climb the ladder to her tree house. My wife and I, we started keeping locks on everything, but if she knew where the keys were, sometimes she’d just take them off anyway.

“We even turned her doorknob around so we could lock it from the hallway at night, keep her inside. She had her own bathroom, though.” He paused, eyes scrunching shut. “My wife woke up to the sound of the tub running.” His voice rose as he forced out more. “When we got there, she was lying in the tub, still in her pajamas. But we thought we got there in time. She coughed up the water. She woke up, and we were so happy. So relieved. But a few days later, Molly was sick, burning up. She had a fever of 103.”

He let out a gusty breath, drew another in. “I called in to work sick. Took Molly to the hospital. But it didn’t matter. We lost her anyway. We lost her. And then six months later . . . my wife was gone too. Cancer.”

No one spoke for at least a minute as Wayne gathered himself in the renewed vengeance of the storm. Nick was staring at the floor. Levi stood beside him, a hand clamped on his back.

“It’s not like I think two bad things cancel each other out,” Wayne said. “People always say they don’t want anyone to feel bad for them, but is it so bad to want that? Is it so evil to want anyone on this earth to love, or even like, you, enough to care that—that”—he clamped his hand hard over his heart, and his voice came out threadbare—“you hurt too.

“I never felt like I deserved forgiveness, and I knew no one would ever love me like my kid did. I just wanted anyone to know me well enough to know how sorry I’d always be. It’s selfish, but I wanted someone to know I’d lost her.”

Nick’s wiry arms crossed. He stared down at the crown of scraggly hair bent in front of him. “What did the song mean?”

Wayne lifted his face and blinked against the tears clouding his eyes. “I wrote it when she was born. Was as close as I could get to explaining how she made me feel.”

Nick’s lips pressed together as he considered. “Then I do know you,” he said. “I know you pretty damn well, Wayne.”

Art touched the last blot of his scar. “And I love you.”

“And I forgive you,” Remy said.

My throat felt tight, a physical resistance to saying the words I needed to get out. The tears kept spreading out across the drawing I was holding with a death grip. “I don’t believe there’s a reason all those bad things happened,” I whispered, forcing my gaze up to Wayne. “The accident, or your daughter’s death. Sometimes shit just happens. Horrible, cosmic-level shit.

“But maybe sometimes things do happen for a reason too. In the gaps between all that. Like maybe the world tries to repair itself, to heal or just, like, adapt. What happened wasn’t your fault. A million different things had to go just wrong for that accident to happen, and I don’t have a good reason it worked that way. But a million different things had to happen just right for us to be here right now too. For me to be standing next to this”—my voice broke—“piece of Mark. For us to have him back for even one minute. And that’s . . .” I searched for a word that would capture it, that even stood a chance at gesturing toward the enormity of it all.

“Extraordinary,” Arthur whispered.

All around the room, chins dipped in solemn agreement.

“Do you think there are others?” Nick asked, turning his eyes to the ceiling as if he could see the stars far above the green-glowing sky. “Out there? Or maybe even others that crashed here.”

I knew what he was thinking, knew that it must hurt for him and Sofía and Remy and Levi to be in this room without the people they’d lost.

“Yes,” I said.

Wayne’s eyes glazed; he was half listening at most. “She went to Jenkins. She went right home.”

The wind screeched through the house, and the walls bowed outward, like an inflating balloon. Overhead, a beam snapped, and a collective scream went up around the room as it speared the floor beside the spiral.

The door ripped off the hinges and flew past Levi, clipping his side before smashing up against the hole in the roof then dropping back down.

“Get out of here!” Wayne screamed just as half the roof peeled back like aluminum foil.

Outside, the woods looked like a shag rug beneath a high-powered vacuum. A shovel flew past the window, followed by a sheet of red-painted wood that might’ve been a wall from our shed.

“IT’S HAPPENING,” Remy screamed. “THIS MUST BE WHAT I SAW.”