“Well, now we know why he’s mad at you tomorrow in the cemetery,” she says. She shakes her head at me. “I would feel a lot better if you didn’t go around antagonizing Black Wings.” Then, without me even having to ask her, she walks me back to my bedroom and lies down beside me in the dark, sings a low song that matches the cadence of the wind outside, like I’m a kid again. And she holds my hand until I fall asleep.

Chapter 20

Loving Memory

There are a lot of things the dream didn’t prepare me for. Like seeing Mom’s body so still and waxlike lying in the casket. They put too much makeup on her. Mom hardly ever wore more than mascara and lip gloss. In the coffin she looks like a painted doll. Beautiful. Peaceful. But not her, you know? It’s hard to look at her like that, but I also find it hard to look away.

Or for the line of people who file by to look at her, and then expect to talk to me. It’s like a reverse wedding reception. First, see the corpse. Say your good-byes. Then say hello to the family. They all think Mom died of cancer, so they keep talking about pain. “At least she’s no longer in any pain,” they tell me, patting my hand. “She’s beyond the pain now.”

At least that’s true.

Or the actual funeral. The church part. Sitting in the front row with Jeffrey and Billy, a few feet from Mom’s coffin. Dad’s still a no-show, and part of me feels betrayed by that. He should be here, I think. But I know he’s in a better place, literally. With Mom.

“He is with Mom, right?” I’d asked Billy as she braided my hair this morning, a long clean plait that miraculously stays in place all day. “He has been all this time?”

“I think so. Funerals are not really for angels, kid. Your dad would unsettle everyone if he came. He knows that. So it’s best if he stays away. Plus, he wants to be with your mother now, help her through the transition.”

Tucker’s at the church. He comes up to me after the service, stands in front of me with his hands folded together, looking lost. I stare at his black eye, the cut on his cheek, the scrape on his knuckles.

“I’m here,” he says. “You were wrong. I’m here.”

“Thank you,” I say. “But don’t come to the graveside. Please, Tucker. Don’t come. Samjeeza will be there, and he’s angry, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I want to be there,” he protests.

“But you won’t be. Because I’m asking you to stay away,” I whisper. I would say the same thing to Wendy, ask her not to come to the cemetery, but I already know she won’t listen. Because she’s there, every time, in my vision.

“Please,” I say to Tucker. “Don’t come.”

He hesitates, then nods and files out of the church.

So finally, after a day that seemed longer than any other, like it could really have stretched a thousand years, I get out of the car at Aspen Hill Cemetery. I blink in the sunshine. I take a deep breath. And I start walking.

I thought I knew how this day would go, this day that finds me at last standing in a black dress in the grass at Aspen Hill Cemetery. I have seen it so many times. But this time, the real time, it doesn’t feel the same. I’m future-Clara now. There’s an ache in the middle of my chest that makes me want to cut my heart out and chuck it into the weeds. But I bear it. I walk. Because there is no other choice but to put one foot in front of the other.

I see Jeffrey ahead of me, and I say his name.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he says.

The color of his tie didn’t matter, after all.

Everyone’s here. The entire congregation, every single one of them, that I can tell, even the Julia lady. No one chickened out.

Funny that it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, my dream. I drive myself crazy trying to figure out why Tucker isn’t there. Thinking he’s dead. Thinking there shouldn’t be a force on earth that would keep him away. But in the end, he’s not there because I asked him not to be.

That’s what we call irony.

The ache really gets me then. This is it. My destined time. My gauntlet to run, and I was meant to do it without Tucker. It gets so bad I have trouble breathing. I stop to catch my breath.

Someone takes my hand. Christian, as I knew it would be. I take in the sight of him, his neat black suit, pressed white shirt, silver tie. His gold-flecked eyes are red-rimmed, like he’s been crying too. In them, a question and an answer all in one.

And this, I realize, is the moment of decision, what my vision has been warning me about all this time. I could break away now, pull my hand from his, tell him again that I don’t need him. I could hold on to my anger, my frustration at this hopeless choice. Or I could accept him. I could face what’s between us, and move on. It’s such a big decision to ask of me now. It’s not really fair. But then, it never has been fair, this entire fiasco, from start to finish.

The thing is, with him holding my hand, touching my skin, the ache in my chest eases. It’s like he has the ability to take on some of my pain. I feel so much better around him. Stronger. And he is willing to take my pain. He wants to bear it with me.

I can see it shining in his eyes. I’m more than a duty to him. I’m more than his literal dream girl. I’m so much more.

I think back to that morning in November, in my kitchen in California when I first saw him standing there in the trees, waiting for me. My heart pounding, my mouth opening to call his name, even when I didn’t know it yet, that irresistible need I felt surging through me to go to him. It all plays out in my mind like a movie reel, every moment I’ve spent with him since then, him carrying me to the nurse’s office on my first day of school, Mr. Erikson’s history class, the Pizza Hut. Riding the chairlift together. Prom. Sitting on the front porch looking at the stars. Him coming out of the trees the night of the fire. Every night he sat on the eaves, the meadow, the ski hill, this cemetery where he kissed me, every single moment that’s passed between us, I felt this force pulling me toward him. I’ve heard this voice, whispering in my head.

We belong together.

I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until I let it out. I gaze down at our joined hands. His thumb strokes slowly over my knuckles. I look up again, at his face. Has he heard all this, the babbling of my heart? Has he read my mind?

You can do this, he says. I don’t know if he’s talking about Mom, or something else.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

I meet his eyes, tighten my hand in his.

Let’s get up there, I send to him. People are waiting.

And together, we keep walking.

I expect the circle of people, the gaping hole in the ground with my mother’s coffin poised over it, but the shock of seeing it has worn off some. I know the words Stephen will say. I expect to sense Samjeeza there. But I didn’t know that I would feel sorry for him in that moment. I didn’t plan to go to him afterward, after the prayers are said and the coffin lowered into the ground, dirt layered over it, after the crowd scatters and leaves Jeffrey and Christian and Billy and me standing there. I feel Samjeeza, his sorrow that doesn’t come from being separated from God or going against his angelic design, but from finally accepting that he’s lost my mom for good. And I know so clearly what to do.

I let go of Christian’s hand. I walk off toward the fence at the edge of the cemetery.

Clara? Christian calls after me, alarmed.

Stay there. It’s all right. I won’t leave hallowed ground.