Keystone (6 page)

I want to fall over.

Pass out. Expire. Vanish.

Something.

But I just sit on the folding chair, hollow. It wasn’t enough that she lost her dad, but she had to watch what happened to my mother too. And here I am tonight, with a big, stupid smile on my face, thinking she was just going to run into my arms and hug me. Heal
me
. I never expected that I would mean death to her. That I might need to heal
her
.

Garrett’s hand slips to my knee. While his touch usually sends a curly wave of bubbles through my stomach, all I feel now is his actual touch, rubbing tiny circles that insist, over and over again, that this is all going to be okay.

“Time.” Nok’s voice is quiet again.

Chapter 3

ADDO DOESN’T LET US SIT and stew on what just happened.

“Okay,” he says, pointing his sling toward the living room. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s get ready for the Memory, shall we, kids?”

“How many are coming?” Sean asks.

“Well,” Addo rubs his chin gingerly, grunting as he passes over the bruises. “It won’t be the cavalry, boys. Everyone wants to be here, but considering the circumstances, we really need them to stay out there as long as possible. They’ll be here afterward, for the Totus.” Addo pauses, giving me a wink. “It’s like a good, old fashioned town hall meeting.”

“Of course,” Sean and Garrett say at the same time.

“Will the burial be today too?” I ask. A lump logjams itself in my throat. I want to be there. I need to be there. Even if it means letting The Fury know where I’m at.

“Uh…hmm.” The Addo opens and closes his mouth. He grimaces. “That’s not quite how we do things, kiddo.”

His response hits me like a can of beans. I’m not going to be allowed to stand at my mother’s grave and say goodbye? It sounds like maybe something has already happened, without even talking to me about it. I don’t know what I expected, but I know that I wanted to have a say in it. I deserve to know which graveyard they’ve put her in, what her headstone will say, if the dress she’s laid to rest in will be her favorite color. A loose wave of panic rolls through me. My guts push against my bones, making it hard to breathe.

“Where is my mom? And Garrett’s dad?” I ask. Garrett shifts beside me. I won’t say bodies. Garrett drops his eyes. He knows what I mean.

“They’ve been given the ceremony of Terra Rota,” Addo says. “The Ianua believe in nourishing the Earth with their emptied bodies.”

“What are you talking about?” I whisper, my stomach turning. “You can’t do that.”

Addo doesn’t argue and he doesn’t explain. He looks away, trying to blink back his own tears. The beautiful clear sky of Garrett’s eyes has gone gray. Sean turns his head so I can’t see him as he rubs his eyes. I feel the divide that separates everyone in this room from the people we’ve lost. Sean and Garrett and the Addo are all standing on the same side as I am. There is no one to be angry with.

“But I want her to have a gravestone,” I cry. “Somewhere that I can go and see her.”

Garrett reaches out as I put my face into my hands and try to choke back what’s coming, but can’t. Suddenly, Nok’s hand is on my shoulder and Sean’s hand is on my arm. Addo joins near my elbow. I should be embarrassed about blubbering in front of them, but instead, the circle they form around me feels safe. Garrett’s arm encircles my waist, but his head is down and his eyes are closed. Without any of them looking at me, the grief rushes out, crushing the leaky wall I’ve been using to hold it back. My shoulders buckle and it feels like I will never be able to stop. Their circle stays locked around me until my bawling finally slows to hiccups and then I hold my breath to stop those too.

“She’ll be everywhere you look, Nalena,” Addo gives my arm a gentle squeeze before he moves away. “So be sure to keep your head up instead of staring at the potholes.”

And then, as if my hysteria was only a passing cloud, Addo says, “Ok, enough with the sad. Let’s get the tables and chairs set up. This Totus is bound to be a doozy. And don’t forget, Garrett, stick by Sean like I mentioned, eh?”

“Who’s sticking by you?” Garrett asks.

“I’ve got your Mom to answer to,” Addo grins.

As if on cue, Mrs. Reese silences everything just by walking into the living room. She goes to the little card table with a tired grin and Sean pulls out a chair for her. She kisses his cheek before dropping onto the seat.

“Iris is out cold,” she says with a sigh.

Her eyes are like runny egg whites and I am ashamed to even look at her. We did this to Iris. To Mrs. Reese’s family. I did it by talking to Garrett, my mom did it by showing up on the Reese’s doorstep, Roger did it by showing up with a gun…but it all started because I received the wrong sign and I couldn’t stop any of it. Without my family, Garrett would still have all of his. I can’t drag my gaze off the floor, but Garrett takes my hand and rubs his thumb over mine as if it belongs there.

“We’re going to start setting up for The Memory,” Sean says and I glance up, only to land right in Mrs. Reese’s gaze. She smiles.

“You’re going to need a dress, Nalena,” she says. “Nok brought something...I don’t know if it’ll fit, but anything would probably be better than those sweats, wouldn’t it?”

I nod, my retinas stinging. When I close my eyes, I can almost believe she is my mother too.

Everyone gets to work the minute Mrs. Reese is finished eating. Mark and Brandon seem to vaporize out of nowhere after Sean calls for them. I peek around the corner of the living room at a long corridor, lined with four doors, and a pair of swinging doors at the farthest end. Nok blasts through the swinging doors, pushing a wheeled platform that is piled high with teetering stacks of banquet tables and folding chairs.

Mrs. Reese and I are herded into the back of the room, near the kitchen, as the Addo supervises and the Reese brothers unload the tables and chairs.

“Leave room at the front,” Addo says, using the toe of his sandal to push a chair back to where he wants the rows to begin.

The chairs shriek when they are opened and a few accidentally collapse. Mrs. Reese and I stand quietly against the wall, but watching the boys set up the rows of chairs makes asking for details about the Memory or the Totus completely unnecessary. This room is filling up for a funeral, no matter what it is called.

Mrs. Reese lets out a heavy sigh and dabs at her eyes.

“Okay,” she says, as if she’s getting ready to climb a mountain. “I’m going to go get that dress I told you about.”

She leaves me and slips past Sean, who clears her path by lifting a stack of chairs overhead. The way Mrs. Reese’s shoulders hunch as she hurries away makes me sure that she’s not just leaving to retrieve a dress. She’s escaping to cry and I wish I could follow her. But I know we can’t chance Iris seeing me again. I’m on my own.

I wait until Garrett’s back is turned to slip away down the opposite hall, past what has been my bedroom, to the bathroom. I sit on the toilet lid and cry. It takes a while to stop and even longer before Mrs. Reese’s knuckles tap softly on the door. I smash myself behind it to let her in.

She’s been doing more than crying after all. Her eyes are still glassy, but she looks amazing.

She’s wearing a gown, the color of sand, which spirals around her like a soft seashell. Her hair is gathered in a twist that makes it look like she’s going to a party instead of a funeral and she’s holding a dress box in her arms.

“You look stunning,” I say. Her shoulders drop and her eyebrows form a sad, little steeple.

“Oh.” Some tears surface even though she’s smiling. “Thank you, Nalena. Basil must be whispering in your ear. He always made a point to tell me, at least once a day, that I looked stunning.” She dabs her eyes. I smile back at her.

“That’s beautiful,” I say. She sniffles and giggles at the same time.

“You know, the one I remember most was when we were rushing out of the house to have Iris. It was three in the morning when I woke Basil and told him we had to go to the hospital. He knew the drill, but he was still so nervous that his baby girl was on the way that he dropped my bags going down the stairs and they all flew open at the bottom. It woke up all the boys and the house just erupted. I was still getting dressed and I could hear them all rushing around and throwing my things together, frantic to get me out of there.” She chuckles. “But Basil stood up, when I came down the stairs, and he had that look on his face. He looked at me like I was a sunrise, and he said,
You look absolutely stunning, Miranda.”

She laughs and brushes the tears across her cheeks. “You’d think that by the fifth baby, it’d become a joke or that there’d be no way I could believe he actually meant it anymore, but the way Basil would say it, it gave me goose bumps every time. I could never doubt him. I was so lucky to have him as a husband.”

She sniffles, her eyes focused somewhere too far back in the past for me to see. After a moment, she blinks and smiles and holds out the dress box to me.

“Nok did the best he could,” she says. Standing there in my florescent orange outerwear, a wet mitten lodges itself in my throat. I take the box from her and she slips back out the door.

“I hope it’s perfect.,” she whispers before she disappears down the hall.

I open the box on the counter top and my breath catches in my throat. I lift out the gown and it spills down to the floor, like a silent waterfall. The material is the same blue as Garrett’s eyes and it sparkles silver when the light catches it.

It’s the kind of thing I’ve never owned. Elegant and expensive and amazing. I slip the material over my head and it flows down over me like air. It might be a simple gown with spaghetti straps, but nothing about is simple. I step back and take a look in the mirror.

Oh my God.

I’m beautiful.

I turn and look at the open back. My skin is dark against the shimmering blue fabric. The back is a little lower than it should be, but I don’t care. It’s perfect. I am some other girl in this dress. Taller. Prettier.

Happy.

Almost.

Mrs. Reese didn’t bring me any shoes, so I drift into the dining room soundlessly, even though the white tile freezes my bare feet. The banquet tables are lined up to make one huge table that stretches from the dining room wall to the middle of the living room. At the end of the table, the chairs are lined up in rows with a short aisle in the center. The card table we’d eaten at is sitting at the very front, beside the opening to the staircase.

Mrs. Reese sits in the front row with Iris’s face buried against her. She leans back to see me when I walk in, her gaze floating over the dress. She continues to string her fingers through Iris’s hair, but her chin quivers through her smile to me. She winks instead of getting up or speaking to me, but it still doesn’t do any good. Iris looks up at me and howls.

I freeze in place. Part of me wants to hug Iris and apologize for what she saw. Part of me wants to shake her until she understands that
I saw it too.

Mrs. Reese stands up to shepherd Iris from the room, but Nok steps forward. He puts out his hand to Iris.

“Allow,” he says with a reassuring grin to Mrs. Reese and she nods, handing Iris over. Nok sits down with Iris beside him, their backs to me, and he leans over to whisper something in her ear that seems to calm her.