The water will be cold.
But first, this.
Patty picks up.
Bea asks for Lo.
She took her meds a little while ago. She’s in no state to talk.
Bea insists. A series of sounds follow. Patty’s voice again, gentler than Bea’s ever heard it, encouraging Lo to open her eyes: That’s a girl, you’re fine … the soft sounds of Lo surfacing, the clumsy transfer of the phone from Patty to Lo’s weak grip and finally, her sister’s voice in her ear, thick as molasses: Hello?
When Bea says, Hey, Lo, Lo replies, Mom?
The silence that follows is painful, but much less painful than it would be if Lo were more aware. It’s better this way, Bea tells herself. Better to have Lo blunt at the edges and open instead of angry and closed off, blaming her for things so far out of her control.
Bea. Lo corrects herself. Is it really you?
She ignores the pang of guilt the question inspires and asks one of her own. She wants to know how Lo is feeling. Lo’s answer is slow to travel the distance from her head to her mouth to Bea’s ear: Tired. She’s so tired. Healing is exhausting work.
Bea swallows hard, an ache spreading outward from her heart. As much as she wants for what’s in front of her, she also wants to stay on the line like this forever, exchanging as few uncomplicated words as she can because it’s been so long since it was easy with Lo.
She feels a reassuring hand squeeze her shoulder and focuses on the warmth of it through her shirt. She thinks of the water past those trees and how it will be cold.
I gotta go to sleep, Lo mumbles and Bea begs her to wait, to hold on, she has to tell her something important. Okay, Lo breathes and Bea steels herself to say it, but what comes out of her mouth instead is, I remember the day you were born.
No matter how far time pushes her from it, Bea will always remember it like it was yesterday. She tells Lo of her anger and fear, how selfishly she resisted Lo’s arrival up until the point she was asked to give her new sister a name. Bea didn’t want to do it but then she heard a voice inside her. Years later, she’d come to understand who it belonged to.
It was you, Lo. You gave it to me, somehow.
Lo, faint over the line: I like my name.
Bea laughs a little, wiping at her face.
They told me you were going to die. They told me I was going to have to bury you.
But I’m here. Lo breathes. She’s fading fast. Why aren’t you here?
Bea closes her eyes. She wants Lo to understand that night in the hospital, what was supposed to be Lo’s last night on earth. How it brought Bea to her knees and how it split her heart in half and how its break called forth a miracle. She wants Lo to understand how it felt to be there, to feel death so imminent, a palpable rot, and then to have Lev stand over Lo’s prone body and take it all away. To see him lay his hands on her, to feel the electricity that filled the small space. It was an electricity that traveled through all of them but none more than Lo. The lights flickered just a little, Bea remembers … didn’t they? She thinks that must be the moment it happened. The moment he gave Lo life and death fled from her.
She never told her sister what happened that day because Lev told her not to; when Lo was ready to know it, God would reveal it to her. But Lev’s energy, God’s energy, must have imprinted on Lo’s unconsciousness. When Lo whispered of the man at the end of her bed, the one she mistook for a nightmare, reaching for her, there was only one person it could have been. Bea wants so badly for Lo to understand that everything now stems from this miracle, but she keeps it tucked safely in her heart. Lev promised Bea that Lo would one day understand.
Bea has to trust in that.
Lo, I need you to know something, Bea says quietly into the phone. This is where I’m supposed to be. One day, you’ll walk the same path. We’ll see each other again. But for now, you need to know that I love you so much.
Lo doesn’t respond. Bea listens to her breathing.
And then Patty’s voice on the line: She’s asleep. Let her sleep.
With a shuddering breath, Bea hangs up the phone and then she starts to cry.
Casey wraps her arms around Bea, her hands meeting across Bea’s chest, resting lightly at the point of her heart.
The water will be cold, she says.
* * *
He stands at the edge of the lake, ice edging its shore, the sun just edging the horizon as it slowly sets. He senses her there and turns. He holds out his hand.
Go to him, Casey says softly at her back.
Bea makes the walk to Lev alone.
She takes his hand. It’s warm. They face the lake together and he silently urges her in ahead of him. As soon as her skin makes first contact with the water, she gasps. Her body arches and her knees almost buckle. The cold cuts into her bones. Lev walks in beside her, the water lapping his clothes. He doesn’t flinch.
Merciful Father, your daughter has heard our calling. She accepts your gift of atonement and renounces all sin. In your name, I shall redeem her, so that she can be sanctified and reborn in our image to take her place among our Chosen—and to do your good work.
He moves closer, pressing his body to her body, pressing his mouth to the side of her face before moving to the shell of her ear. He tells her to repeat after him.
She does.
I believe Lev Warren has been called by God. I believe I am his Chosen. I believe he is my refuge and his faithfulness, my shield, and that to dwell in His shadow is to live in the light of the Lord. The world will fall around his fortress, but all inside will remain untouched—for no evil shall happen upon those under the cover of Lev’s wings. In return for setting his love, grace and protection upon me, whenever he calls, I will answer. I will guard him in all his ways. I will honor, uphold and exemplify my salvation in my commitment to God through the workings of His Unity Project and in obedience of His One True Redeemer, Lev Warren. I free myself of my sins, of my past, and of my life before The Unity Project so that I may allow true faith to take root. I understand the sacrifices this asks of me and will continue to ask of me. Amen.
He cups the back of her neck with one hand, the other pressing gently against her chest as he eases her into the water and holds her there.
Her lungs burn for air.
She realizes, faintly, that she doesn’t feel the cold anymore.
He breathes her name.
She lets him in.
NOVEMBER 2017
The surviving letters of SVO’s motto—ALL GOOD STORIES SERVE A PURPOSE—assert themselves amid haphazard slashes of red paint, telling us something new.
A G OD A R OSE
The office is different since the break-in, in those small and crucial ways that leave you fumbling and unsettled. The doors were replaced, their familiar creaking announcements of all comings and goings, silenced. Surfaces bare where breakables once were; every so often one of us kicks around a stray piece of glass that got missed in the cleanup. A mismatch of plates and glasses now in the kitchen cupboards that I suspect Paul volunteered from home. I keep reaching for his favorite coffee mug, then remembering.
The plants didn’t make it.
Paul’s office was completely trashed, his computer turned to pieces. His hard drive was ultimately recoverable but even if it hadn’t been, it’s all on the Cloud. And then there’s the incongruities: everyone else’s stuff was untouched. It was all the evidence Paul needed to rule out the Halloween-high of some asshole college kids.