“I never realized you were so uptight.”
Had Rick always been this much of an asshole? Perhaps Sandra hadn’t seen it before?
“I gotta go,” said Sandra, grabbing her purse and keys. “The room is paid up. Can you find your way home?”
“Sure, baby.”
While Sandra started the truck, Aurora stepped out of the motel room, held her finger up for Sandra to wait, and walked around to the driver’s door. Sandra rolled down the window.
Aurora pulled Sandra close to her and kissed her long and tender. Sandra felt something deep and sad coming. “I think this is the end of the road for us.” Aurora had tears in her eyes. “Let me go this time, okay?”
Sandra stared at Aurora’s brown eyes. She could see Rick in them, but this wasn’t her Rick. Rick turned.
“Hey,” called Sandra. Rick turned back. She decided something and as she did, it came to her: the proper phrasing for something. “It’s a good idea that you not remember me anymore or your life as Rick Nash.” Aurora stared at her for a moment, blinking.
“You shouldn’t remember Rick Nash or me.”
“Can I help you?” Aurora looked puzzled.
Sandra didn’t say a word—she couldn’t. She simply nodded, numb.
Aurora walked into the motel and shut the door behind her.
When she got back to Pangea Ranch, she found Luke stacking firewood.
“You knew he would be different.”
“I knew no such thing. These things are fluid.” He sighed, his voice monotone as he kept stacking. He sat down next to her and pulled her legs over his, peeling off his work gloves. “I didn’t know anything, but I figured. It’s usually the case.”
“That thing wasn’t Rick.”
“Oh, it was him all right, but a different body or different circumstances can alter the version.”
“You mean like Nora and me?”
He met her eyes. “I didn’t do it to be mean to you, if that’s what you think.”
“It’s exactly what I think. Look around this place. You brought me here, not Paris. You haven’t changed one thing about this house since she died. Since I died… You’re mad at me because I didn’t come back like her.”
He leaned back in the seat. “True.”
“You were teaching me a lesson.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“No ‘maybe’ about it. You wanted me to know what it felt like to be you,” Sandra said and pointed to him. “Well, for starters, I can’t keep a girlfriend.”
“You weren’t that bad.”
Sandra looked at him, horrified. “How do you know?”
“I know everything you do. Part of my job.”
“You’re an asshole.” She kicked him lightly with her leg. “Doesn’t it bother you? What we do? Because it bothers me. After seeing all of this. We interfere with nature. People die. We’re bad people.”
“You’re cursed; you have no choice.” He paused before continuing. “I’m aware of what we do. It’s not that I don’t know right from wrong, but if it’s wrong and it protects you, then, no, it does not bother me. You can hate me for that if you want, but that is my purpose here.”
“Your purpose is long over, Luke. We need to end this thing,” said Sandra. “You need to help me.”
He walked away from her.
At nightfall, there was a frantic knock on the door. Privately, Sandra groaned. They’d had two people show up tonight with illnesses, needing healing. After the last one, she’d gone back to her room to discover that her nose had started to bleed. She’d kept it from Luke, like she did most things these days, but it had taken most of the night for it to stop. She wasn’t sure she had it in her to heal anyone else tonight.
Opening the door, she found the porch empty. She stepped out and looked around, but no one was there. Uneasily, Sandra stepped back into the foyer. She turned and found Mr. Garcia standing near the kitchen, having come in from the side porch.
“Mr. Garcia.” Sandra laughed. “You scared me.”
The man kept his right hand at his side and was turned so she couldn’t get a look at what he was carrying. As though he had been practicing English, he formed the following words: “What kind of devil are you?” He raised his hand and aimed a shotgun at her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sandra’s voice rose.
The commotion on the porch brought Marie, who spoke the most Spanish. She began to plead with the man. “He says his daughter didn’t come back to him. Some monster came back instead.”
“Tell him no monster came back,” said Sandra. “And I didn’t know.”
Marie began arguing with the man.
“He says you play with people’s lives. You are a witch.”
Sandra was surprised he’d been so correct in his assumption.
The man shook his head. He was animated, and the gun was moving between Marie and Sandra as he spoke.
“Oh no,” said Marie, her face pale. “He says he killed his daughter tonight. So he could send her back.”
“No!” Sandra exhaled. Not Rick. Not again.
“You are the devil.” Mr. Garcia said in broken English as he walked two steps toward her. Instinctively, Sandra backed away.
“What did he do to Aurora?”
Marie asked him the question in Spanish. She seemed pained to tell Sandra.
“Tell me.”
“He drowned her,” said Marie. “He said he drowned her like a dog then burned her body like a witch so you can’t bring her back again.”
“You came to us,” said Sandra, trying to reason with the man. “You brought Aurora to us.”
The man spoke in animated Spanish. Sandra knew what he was saying not by his words but by his expression. Sandra could see that the gun was heavy and unfamiliar to him.
“You…” Sandra didn’t even get the words out of her mouth before she saw the man pull the trigger. It was so fast that there was no time to react. Just like Rick had said, at first, she felt no pain, only a sense of faintness and the dripping of blood. Then, searing pain. She looked down. For a man with little experience with guns, Mr. Garcia’s shot had been oddly accurate between her ribs. Sandra felt a heaviness over her body and fell to her knees. Next, breath wouldn’t come easily. She felt as if she were underwater. Blood was pouring into her lungs, and she was beginning to drown. She started to laugh, wondering if she could heal herself by touching the wound. Then she heard another shot and knew it was Mr. Garcia. He couldn’t live with what he’d done, either.
“No, no, no!” Luke was running and she heard his boots slip on the worn wood, sliding on her blood. Grabbing Sandra’s head, he lifted her up in an attempt to help her breathe.
While it is said that your life flashes in front of your eyes when you die, what Sandra noticed was the indignity of the moment. With the knowledge she was dying, Sandra took a ten-second accounting of her life, the biggest moments rising—the checkout at the A&P, Ford Tremaine staring at her at the door, holding Ezra’s lifeless body in Laurel Canyon, the band on stage at Gazzarri’s, kissing Rick and Luke, of course. This was all she got? Like a written obituary, the fact that it ended here and now was such a disappointment.