She’d met the mother and father at parents’ weekend back in the fall, when Sissy had brought them to the art department’s facility and showed them her wonderful pencil drawings.
It was so eerie to think back to when Cait had shaken those hands and smiled and offered sincere praise. In that moment, if someone had told her the girl would be dead six months later? Inconceivable.
But it had happened.
When she’d gotten the call, it had been from the department head. He’d told her that Sissy had gone missing the night before, not returning from a quick errand out. Her parents had called her roommates on campus in case she’d gone there instead, and then the police had been brought in. They’d found the car she’d taken to the supermarket, but no trace of her.
Vanished.
Until she’d been found in the quarry.
Cait had been the one to clean out her things from the locker and storage compartments Sissy had used in the art building. The duty had been done after hours, when the only people in the department had been the cleaners and the security guard.
She had cried so hard that she’d needed to go to the bathroom for paper towels.
After packing up all the supplies, drawings, and paintings, and then boxing up the sculptural pieces, Cait had taken everything to her own house and called the emergency contact number listed in Sissy’s files—but she’d gotten voice mail and, after leaving a message, had never heard back.
Then again, that family had so much more to worry about.
She supposed at some point she was going to have to mail everything to the home address. She’d prefer to hand-deliver it all, but she didn’t want to intrude—and knew for sure she wouldn’t be able to hold herself together if she saw those parents again.
She couldn’t imagine what they were feeling. Having lost her brother at an early age, she knew something of the pain, but she had to imagine if it was your own child, it would be so much worse.
Sitting back down at her drafting table, she rearranged her Prismacolor markers, and double-checked the points on her lead pencils, and made sure her watercolor brushes were super-clean.
Such fragile things, all snappable, the tips easily ruined. In her hand, though, they were powerful instruments, capable of making something out of nothing. Without her guidance? Just inanimate objects collecting dust.
That was the beauty of life, though. It created purpose and meaning in that which was otherwise void. In its absence, however…
So strange, the thoughts that occurred to her now. Her knack for making three dimensions out of two had been parlayed into a very nice living for herself. But she had never thought further than paying for her mortgage and her heat and food, had never considered the real implications of not having children … had not, until this instant, confronted the idea that what she left behind on paper might be the extent of her contribution, such as it was, to the human race.
Not exactly a groundbreaker, was it. Not very lasting, either—because without a doubt, people would eventually stop reading the books she’d illustrated, and her drawings would fade or fall apart, and she would be, as we all were, forgotten by the living and breathing.
Children were the only immortality mortals got—and even then, two generations later, three at the most, no one knew you in person anymore.
Strains of that song from last night at the café wound through her mind.
G.B. might have a point about wanting to live forever.
It certainly seemed more meaningful than the short time and game-over you got otherwise. And p.s., a seventy-five- or eighty-year-old situation was the best-case scenario.
It wasn’t what the Bartens were dealing with. It wasn’t the violent, out of sequence, senselessly horrible death of a daughter—who’d been stolen from them by a madman—
Cait stopped and pulled herself back from the depressing rabbit hole.
She was going to feel badly about Sissy for a long time, and that was appropriate. But she still had to get her work done.
Bringing over the next blank sheet, she tacked the drawing paper in place, checked the notes and text the author had provided … and once again put pencil to page in the lovely morning sunlight.
It was so much better than thinking; it truly was.
Sissy Barten sat on the porch she’d woken up on the evening before. In front of her, rising through the still-spiny trees of spring, the sun was coming up, its rays gold and peach and potentially warm.
She’d never expected to see this again.
Pulling the blanket she’d brought down with her more tightly around her shoulders, she blinked as the light intensified. Behind her, the house was silent, those two men no doubt asleep in whatever beds they’d finally fallen onto. Through the course of the night, she’d heard them walking the floors for hours—either that or there were ghosts in the old place.
It was when the pair had finally stopped, when there had been no more creaking, no more muttering, no further scent of cigarette smoke, that she had come out of the room she’d been given.
The only thing on her mind had been seeing her family. And that was still true.
She just wanted to go home, be home, stay home.
The trouble was, she didn’t know if she could trust this version of reality—and what if all this was just a cruel joke, a further facet of where she had been for an eternity, an illusion created specifically to increase suffering when it was stripped from her?
Then screw that. She’d rather not go back to her parents’ house.
She wasn’t going to give that woman, demon, whatever she was, the satisfaction—
Sissy glanced over her shoulder. Standing in the open doorway, the man who had rescued her filled the jambs, looking like a harbinger of doom rather than anyone who’d protect somebody. His dark blond hair was standing straight up, as if he’d been pulling at it, and his brows were down so far, she couldn’t see his eyes beneath the overhangs.
Under other circumstances, she probably would have steered clear of him. But not now. Not here.
It was a relief to see him.
“You okay?” he asked.
She looked back to the sun. “Is this real?” To emphasize the question, she knocked on the floorboards she was sitting on—then had to brush the paint chips off her knuckles. “Is any of this real?”
“Yeah.”
“How much of it?”
“All.”
For a moment, she wasn’t sure she could trust him. But then images came to mind, the vivid horror of them giving him a credibility that no words or pledges could have ever done.
“What am I?” she blurted.
“You’re … you.”
She shook her head. “I need a better definition than that.”
There was a long silence. Then she heard his footfalls.
He sat down beside her, his big, bare arms bunching up as he put his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know what to tell you beyond that.”
“Am I a ghost?”
“No.”
“Are you?”
“No. Do you need a coat? It’s cold out here.”
“I have my blanket. Or … yours, I suppose. That’s your bedroom, isn’t it?” When he didn’t answer, she shrugged. “It smells like you. Cigarette smoke and shaving cream.”
It was a nice scent, actually. The only thing she’d liked about the room.
Sissy pushed her hair over her shoulder, feeling it shift across the baggy button-down shirt he’d given her. “Is she the devil?”
When he didn’t answer, she glanced over. His eyes had a killing light in them as he stared out at her sunrise. “Is she?”
“Yeah.”
“So that makes you … an angel?”
“Don’t know about that sometimes. But it’s part of the job description.”