Ahn held up her arm, showing it to Thomas.
“It was our fate.”
Late that night Thomas came awake suddenly. In the corner of his hospital room stood his mother. She was wearing her white slip and the house shoes that Minas Nolan had given her. She was silent, staring at Thomas, and he was just as quiet returning her gaze. As he watched her the color slowly drained away from her image. She turned gray and then slowly became transparent, like glass. When she was almost completely clear, her form began to sparkle from the inside. The cloud of iridescent light then drifted toward the window, out through the glass, and away into the dark sky. The lights kept moving until they covered the nighttime horizon, becoming stars.
When Thomas awoke in the morning, he was exhausted and felt more alone than he’d ever been. It was as if his body had been cut away from his soul and he was floating somewhere above himself on the bed. He knew that he’d been crying, that he’d lost everything that he’d held on to since he was a boy, running like Ahn had taught him to do. He knew that his mother was dead and gone, and that he was a criminal, a murderer.
He looked out the window into the light-filled sky and thought about dying. Then he was filled with wonder at all of the pathways that came together in him on that day in grace.