And she felt that strange lightness fill up her insides again. It felt like it was permanently replacing the darkness and heaviness that had been inside her since Wes had left her for someone else.
It also felt like it was making room for something else.
Something she thought she would never feel again in her life.
Something like what she had felt when she first met Wes. But—different.
East started to take the nineteen pieces of slate out of the bag. And he laid them on his coat.
Glory watched him do this.
And then she looked up—partly because she couldn’t watch what East was about to do, partly because she couldn’t believe he was about to do what he had said he was about to do, partly because no one wants to see their heart laid bare, but mostly because she was looking for answers to questions she didn’t even know how to ask.
And then … she saw them.
The northern lights.
They were hovering and pulsing in the star-filled sky above, filling it with streaks of red and green and yellow and white and even blue and purple.
Glory was stupefied.
“Wow!” she whispered as she took in the otherworldly display. “Wowwwww!” she whispered more quietly, as not to disturb them. “They’re so beautiful.”
And they were—so beautiful that Glory forgot for a moment that they were why she was there. And that they were what—and who—she had come to see.
But she remembered soon enough what and who they were—and why she was there. And when she did, she called out and up into the night sky, “Oh! Wes!” The northern lights seemed to become stiller, as if they were waiting to hear what she had to say. “Wes!” Glory repeated. And then she waved to them, calling, “Goodbye!” And then she repeated the farewell—maybe because she wanted to make sure he had heard her: “Goodbye, Wes!”
And then she did what she had come to Almost to do. And she apologized.
“Wes! I’m—sorry! I’m so sorry!” she said to the sky.
And she was. So sorry.
Because she really did feel partly responsible for his demise.
And she really was sorry he was gone. And that they had parted on such strange terms.
And then she stood in silence as she took in the celestial phenomenon above.
And then she called out one more time, “Goodbye, Wes!”
Glory wondered if Wes had heard her.
And then the aurora seemed to pulsate, as if in appreciation.
And Glory felt sure that Wes had heard her.
And she felt like she had completed her mission.
And then she turned to the man who had said he could repair her heart. Because she felt like she needed to thank him. “East,” she began—but stopped, because he wasn’t there.
And his jacket and the pieces of her heart weren’t there either.
Glory looked around for him.
And found him a few moments later when the motion-sensor lights on the farmstead’s old barn came on and revealed East’s silhouette moving against the white of the snow and the white of the old barn until it disappeared through the side door and into the building.
And then she saw the lights inside come on.
And then she followed East. Because she wanted to know if he was doing what he had said he could do.
She crossed into the pool of light that the motion-sensor lights were throwing.
And she got to the door that she had seen East disappear into.
And opened it.
And she entered the old barn.
And she saw East place the slate shards that were once her heart onto a workbench.
And she watched him examine the pieces of slate for a while. He seemed to be contemplating how he’d be able to make the nineteen pieces into something whole again.
Glory almost stopped him. Because she realized that maybe she didn’t need him to make those nineteen pieces whole again. Because maybe her old heart didn’t need repairing anymore. Because it—or maybe her artificial one—was loving him just fine.
But she didn’t stop him.
Because she didn’t want to interrupt him.
Because he seemed so peaceful.
And he was. Because he liked fixing things for people more than anything in the world.
So Glory stayed where she was.
And watched this man named East do what he said he could do.
3
Ginette passed the old Gallagher homestead and thought about how sad her mom had gotten when East decided to stop growing potatoes on his farm.
And then she thought about how her mom had been talking a lot lately about how so much of northern Maine was full of things that were once something—but weren’t anymore. And that the forest was slowly taking them back.
Things like the ghost locomotives up at Eagle Lake.
And the general store in Dyer Brook.
And the abandoned trucks and farm equipment that can be found all over the northern Maine woods.
And farms—like the Gallaghers’.
As she walked, Ginette wondered if she and Pete were one of the things that had once been something—but now weren’t.
And she realized that maybe they were.
Because, while they were sitting together on the bench in their newly named love, Pete had said that he and Ginette weren’t close to each other at all—that they were actually about as far away from each other as they could possibly have been.
And now Ginette was getting even farther away from Pete with every step she took.
And that made her feel a kind of loneliness she had never felt before.
* * *
It was 7:55 when Ginette reached St. Mary’s, a small white Catholic church a quarter of a mile down the road from East’s house. St. Mary’s didn’t have its own pastor, so Father Tom from Sacred Heart in Caribou went to Almost to say mass once a week—on Saturday evenings at six o’clock.
There was usually a supper or a social hour after mass at St. Mary’s, and then Father Tom would look in on whoever needed looking in on.
And then he’d head back to Caribou so he would be available for Sunday morning services at Sacred Heart.
Father Tom had called Chad Buzza on the night when all the extraordinary things did or didn’t happen, like he usually did. Chad worked part-time for St. Mary’s. He maintained the building and the grounds and the small cemetery behind the church. Father Tom was calling to make sure Chad had plowed the parking lot and that the church was prepped for Clair Gudreau’s funeral the next morning and for mass in the evening.
Chad told Father Tom he had everything under control.
And then Father Tom asked him why he wasn’t out doing something fun on a Friday night, and Chad said he had gone out to dinner with a girl earlier, and Father Tom said, “Good for you,” and then Chad realized he was going to have to go to confession, because he hadn’t gone to dinner with a girl. He was supposed to have gone to dinner with a girl. But she had decided she didn’t want to go to dinner with him at the last minute. So he didn’t go to dinner with her. And, instead, went to the Moose Paddy and got a burger for himself and a turkey club sandwich and a corn chowder for his mom. His mom was surprised to see him home so soon. And Chad said that his date had to cancel at the last minute because there had been an emergency—nothing too serious—and his mom said she was sorry but that she was happy to have him around for dinner and happier about her turkey club and corn chowder.