It didn’t take me long to retrace my steps to the Confederate Needle, and I found my own way to
The Stars and Stripes this time around. I was crossing like an old Sheer now. Once I got the hang
of it—a certain way of letting my mind do the work for me without focusing on anything at all—it
seemed as easy as walking. Easier, since I wasn’t actually walking.
And once I was there, I knew what to do, and I could do it myself. In fact, I was actually
looking forward to it. I’d done a little thinking ahead of time. I could see why Amma liked
crossword puzzles so much. Once you got the right mind-set, they were sort of addictive.
When I found my way into the office—past Swamp Cooler City—the mock-up of the current
issue was on one of the three little desks, right where it had been last time. I fanned open the
papers. This time I found the crossword puzzle without much trouble.
This puzzle was even less finished than the last one. Maybe the staff was getting lazy, now that
they knew there was a chance someone else would do it for them.
Either way, Lena would be reading the crossword puzzle. I picked up the nearest letter and
pushed it into place.
Four down.
O. N. Y. X.
As in, a black stone.
Nine across.
T. R. I. B. U. T. A. R. Y.
As in, a river.
Six down.
O. C. U. L. U. S.
As in, an eye.
Eight across.
C. H. A. R. I. S. M. A.
As in, charm.
M. A. T. E. R.
As in, my own. Lila Jane Evers Wate.
S. E. R. I. O. U. S.
As in, grave.
That was the message. I need the black stone—the eye of a river, and the one you wear on
your charm necklace. And I need you to leave it for me at my mother’s grave. I couldn’t spell it out
any clearer than that.
At least not in this edition of the paper.
By the time I finished, I was exhausted, as if I’d been running sprints all afternoon on the
basketball court. I didn’t know how much time would need to pass in the Otherworld before Lena
got my message in this one. I only knew that she’d get it.
Because I was as sure of her as I was of myself.
When I got home to the Otherworld—to my house, or my mom’s grave, whatever you wanted to
call it—there it was, waiting for me on the doorstep.
She must have left it on my mother’s grave, like I asked.
I couldn’t believe it had worked.
Lena’s black-rock charm from Barbados, the one she always wore around her neck, sat in the
middle of the doormat.
I had the second river stone.
A wave of relief settled over me. It lasted about five seconds, until I realized what the stone
also meant.
It was time to go. Time to say good-bye.
So why couldn’t I bring myself to say it?
“Ethan.” I heard my mom’s voice, but I didn’t look up.
I was sitting on the floor of the living room, my back to the couch. I had a house and a car in
my hands, stray pieces of my mom’s old Christmas town. I couldn’t take my eyes off the car.
“You found the lost green car. I never could.”
She didn’t answer. Her hair looked even messier than usual. Her face was streaked with tears.
I don’t know why the town was set out on the coffee table like that, but I put down the house
and moved the tiny green tin car farther along the table. Away from the toy animals, the church
with the bent steeple, and the pipe-cleaner tree.
Like I said, time to go.
Part of me wanted to take off running the second I heard about what I had to do to get back to
my old life. Part of me didn’t care about anything but seeing Lena again.
But as I sat there, all I could think about was how much I didn’t want to leave my mom. How
much I’d missed her, and how quickly I had gotten used to seeing her in the house, hearing her in
the next room. I didn’t know if I wanted to give that up again, no matter how badly I needed to go
back.So all I could do was just sit there and look at that old car and wonder how something that had
been lost for so long could be found again.
My mom took a breath, and I closed my eyes before she could say a word. It didn’t stop her.
“I don’t think it’s wise, Ethan. I don’t think it’s safe, and I don’t think you should be going. No
matter what your Aunt Prue says.” Her voice wavered.
“Mom.”
“You’re only seventeen.”
“Actually, I’m not. What I am now is nothing.” I looked up at her. “And I hate to break it to
you, but it’s a little late for that speech. You have to admit that safety might not be my biggest
concern at the moment. Now that I’m dead and everything.”
“Well, if you say it like that.” She sighed and sat down on the floor next to me.
“How do you want me to say it?”
“I don’t know. Passed on?” She tried not to smile.
I half-smiled back. “Sorry. Passed on.” She was right. Folks didn’t like saying dead, not where
we were from. It was impolite. As if saying it somehow made it true. As if words themselves were
more powerful than anything that could actually happen to you.
Maybe they were.
After all, that’s what I had to do now, wasn’t it? Destroy the words on a page in some book in
a library that had changed my Mortal destiny. Was it really so far-fetched to think that words had a
way of shaping a person’s whole life?
“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, sweetheart. Maybe if I had figured it out
for myself, before all this, you wouldn’t even be here. There wouldn’t have been a car accident,
and there wouldn’t have been a water tower—” She stopped.
“You can’t keep things from happening to me, Mom. Not even these things.” I leaned my head
back along the edge of the couch. “Not even messed-up things.”
“What if I want to?”
“You can’t. It’s my life, or whatever this is.” I turned to look at her.
She leaned her head on my shoulder, holding the side of my face close with her hand.
Something she hadn’t done since I was a kid. “It’s your life. You’re right about that. And I can’t
make a decision like this for you, however much I want to. Which is very, very much.”
“I kind of figured that part out.”
She smiled sadly. “I just got you back. I don’t want to lose you again.”
“I know. I don’t want to leave you either.”
Side by side, we stared at the Christmas town, maybe for the last time. I put the car back
where it belonged.
I knew then that we would never have another Christmas together, no matter what happened. I
would stay or I would go—but either way, I would move on to somewhere that wasn’t here.
Things couldn’t be like this forever, not even in this Gatlin-that-wasn’t-Gatlin. Whether I was able
to get my life back or not.
Things changed.
Then they changed again.
Life was like that, and even death, I guess.
I couldn’t be with both my mom and Lena, not in what was left of one lifetime. They would
never meet, though I had already told them everything there was to tell about the other. Since I got
here, my mom had me describe every charm on Lena’s necklace. Every line of every poem she’d
ever written. Every story about the smallest things that had happened to us, things I didn’t even
know I remembered.
Still, it wasn’t the same as being a family, or whatever we could have been.
Lena and my mom and me.
They would never laugh about me or keep a secret from me or even fight about me. My mom
and Lena were the two most important people in my life, or afterlife, and I could never have both of
them together.
That’s what I was thinking when I closed my eyes. When I opened them, my mom was gone
—as if she’d known I couldn’t leave her. As if she’d known I wouldn’t be able to walk away.
Truthfully, I didn’t know if I could have done it, myself.
Now I’d never find out.
Maybe it was better that way.
I pocketed the two stones and made my way down the front steps, closing the door carefully
behind me. The smell of fried tomatoes came wafting out the door as it shut.
I didn’t say good-bye. I had a feeling we’d see each other again. Someday, somehow.
Aside from that, there wasn’t anything I could tell my mom that she didn’t already know. And
no way to say it and still walk out the door.
She knew I loved her. She knew I had to go. At the end of the day, there wasn’t much more to
say.
I don’t know if she watched me go.
I told myself she did.
I hoped she didn’t.
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