Lilah started. It wasn’t just Marie’s words that caught her off-guard, but her appearance, as well. Her face had grown even paler since they’d started talking, now almost as white as the fresh layer of snow that was coating the ground several yards behind her.
“How… how do you know all of this?” Lilah asked, taking a tentative step forward. Marie might not have believed that she was a ghost, but she certainly looked a bit like one. “I mean, Dad doesn’t even really understand any of it.”
“Since the diagnosis, your father has spent hours poring over books, trying to find a way to beat my illness. He’s become – rather, he became – borderline obsessed with it – pH diets, juicing, supplements, you name it… and I let him throw his grief into that, because I knew he needed the distraction. But I believed what you had shown me and had already resigned myself to my death – oh, please don’t feel bad about that!” she added, seeing Lilah’s withering expression. “Truly – it would have been so much more painful if I had fought, kicking and screaming, to my grave.”
Lilah nodded, but said nothing.
“Anyway, while Stan had his nose in medical textbooks, I spent most of my evenings studying theoretical physics, or, more specifically, relativistic time… I’ll confess I got a little carried away myself. That’s why I’m not surprised to see you,” she added with a smile. “I often wondered if we’d see each other again, well after my death. After all, if you could bend time forward, why not backward as well?”
“That’s actually kind of cool that you figured all of that out on your own,” Lilah confessed. “Especially because everyone else just seemed creeped out by me when I was a baby.”
“Well, I was always a science fiction buff, and hey – a dying girl can dream, right? Besides,” Marie added with a wink, “you were just too darn cute to be ‘creepy’. Even your father was smitten with you. And he was terrified of babies from the start.”
Lilah’s eyes grew wide with an idea. “What if... What if I brought Dad here? So you could see each other again?”
Marie’s smile faded. “I died many years ago, Lilah. I can’t begin to imagine what that must have done to your father. If you were to bring him here, he would have to deal with my death all over again. It would be like an old gunshot wound tearing open.”
“But we could come back – every day,” Lilah pressed. “We could all spend time together, the three of us. Dad and I could tell you everything that’s happened since you left. Maybe I could find a way to take you back with us, to bring you home—”
Marie shook her head sadly. “I’m cold, Lilah… Tired… I don’t think I’m meant to linger here, my darling. I don’t think… I can stay for much longer.”
“But we’ve only just started talking!” Lilah cried. “I think about you all the time. We miss you every day – every birthday, every Mother’s Day, every Christmas! Couldn’t you stay just a little while longer? Please?”
“My sweet Lilah,” Marie smiled, opening her arms. “Come here.”
Lilah ran to her, burying her face against Marie’s neck as they embraced. Her mother’s skin felt warm, comforting, but it smelled strange. Like sulfur.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but there’s a reason for your gift,” Marie whispered against the top of her daughter’s head. “I love you, Lilah.”
“I love you too,” Lilah whispered back.
Her arms fell to her sides as Marie’s body once more dissolved into ashes, swirling alongside the clusters of snowflakes that had only now begun to fall on Lilah’s nose and cheeks. With a pang of longing, Lilah watched the ashes as they soared up toward the gray clouds above, watched until her face was covered in a layer of snow and her mother’s ashes were long out of sight. She remained rooted beside Marie’s headstone, eyes skyward, for the rest of the afternoon. When the clouds began to darken, and gray afternoon faded to night, she suddenly smelled the familiar scent of her father’s aftershave, felt the heavy warmth of his fleece-lined jacket, which he gently placed upon her shoulders. Without a word, Stanley wrapped his arms around his trembling daughter. He held her tightly, the way he did when she was small, and the two of them wept together, underneath the frost covered branches of the young maple tree.
· · ·
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PART
II
· · ·
Chapter 14
That Hideous Orange Truck
Jace McKinnon sat in the driver’s seat of his old hand-me-down Chevy pickup truck, pressing his forehead against the steering wheel. He was parked at the end of the road, about a block away from Lilah Quinn’s house, and at present, trying to convince himself not to drive away for the third time that week. Part of him worried that she’d already seen him driving by her house, since the rusted orange paint on the truck wasn’t exactly camouflage against the deep drifts of snow that had covered the entire town since Christmas Eve.
It had been over a week since he’d finally gathered enough courage to wait by her locker after the last school bell rang, signaling the start of winter break. At the time, he wasn’t sure what exactly he was going to say to her – most likely, it would have been some combination of “How are you?” “Can we talk?” and “What the hell happened last Friday night?”. In the end, he didn’t say any of that because Lilah never showed up at her locker. Benny, whose locker was right across from hers, informed Jace that Seth had told him that Katie Price was loudly gossiping to anyone with ears about how Lilah stormed out of Biology the day before. And the next day – the last day of school before break – she didn’t show up to class at all. As far as Jace knew, no one had seen or spoken to Lilah since last Thursday.
What if something happened to her? he thought, worrying at a hangnail. Like what happened at the concert? He shivered, trying to push the discomfiting thought from his mind.
Jace quickly turned off the engine and got out of the truck before he could change his mind yet again. Then he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and made the long, arctic trek towards the end of the cul-de-sac, where Lilah and her father lived in an old ranch-style house. There was no car parked in the shoveled driveway, but that didn’t mean much. Everyone knew that Chief Quinn spent half of his life at the fire station. And Lilah’s father didn’t allow her to drive because of her epilepsy.
When Jace knocked on the Quinns’ front door a few minutes later, his hand was shaking, but not from the cold. Something had happened at that concert, and he was fairly certain it wasn’t from the pill someone had slipped in his drink. At the very least, he knew for damn sure that he’d never jump off a balcony – not willingly. Sober or drunk, he’d never do anything to jeopardize his shot at a baseball scholarship. But how was he going to ask Lilah about it without sounding like a complete mental case?
When she finally answered the door, wide-eyed and obviously caught off-guard, Jace felt as though a golf ball had lodged itself in his throat. She looked absolutely beautiful in her red knitted sweater, with wisps of auburn hair tumbling from the ballpoint pen that held her hair in a wild knot atop her head. She was so pretty, in fact, that Jace momentarily forgot the purpose of his impromptu visit. At the same time, he suddenly realized that he had no reason to know where Lilah lived. He’d gotten her address from Benny, who had gotten it from Seth, but as Jace stood on her front porch, shivering from his nerves and the cold, it occurred to him that he must have looked like a total stalker.