I leap off the highway and scramble up the embankment and crash into the forest. I make a token effort to shield my face from the trees but their claws rake me mercilessly. Go back, they tell me. You’re a fool. There is nothing for you here.
I swat their branches aside. I kick through thorny vines that wrap around my ankles. Julie’s scent grows stronger, a tendril of rich perfume guiding me through the woods.
Get out of our world, the trees snarl. You don’t belong here.
They’re right, of course, but I don’t belong anywhere. So I guess that means I belong everywhere.
I burst through a knotted mass of brush and stumble forward into daylight.
A meadow.
Tiny daisies dot the lush field. That uncharted river gurgles in the trees. Julie and her mother sit in a circle of flattened grass, like they planned a picnic and forgot everything but each other. They haven’t noticed me. I stay where I am, absorbing the painterly beauty of the scene, its classicism marred only by the black blood on Julie’s tank top. She sits cross-legged next to her mother, speaking softly while Audrey rocks back and forth, hugging her knees to her chest, draped in a baggy white overcoat. Both of them are filthy and ragged, but the sun glows in their matted hair.
Julie sees me. Her eyes are raw, drained of tears, and her reaction is muted. She stands up. She takes a step toward me. She looks at the bite in my neck, then the cuts on my hands, ears, face, the warm dew of blood seeping out of me.
She whispers, “Are you alive?”
I nod.
“Say it.”
“I’m alive.”
She blinks a few times, lets out a shuddering breath that might be relief or something beyond it, but no smile, no embrace.
She sits down next to her mother. “Mom,” she says. “Do you remember R?”
Audrey nods. Her skin is pale but no longer gray, closer to porcelain than concrete. Her eyes are leaden when shadowed but there’s a glint of blue when the sun hits them. “I remember R,” she says, straining only a little to find the syllables. “He loves you. You love him.”
A wall of tension appears between Julie and me, but it feels trivial in this sacred meadow. It collapses. Without meeting my eyes, Julie pats the grass. I step into the circle and sit.
Something is happening in her mother. Beyond the physical signs, there’s an electricity in her aura. Her fingers twitch. Her eyes scan from side to side. I think of Nora’s patient, Mrs. A, lying on a table in a pool of her own blood, reviving herself and killing herself with each hard-won breath. I remember the ferocity in that woman’s eyes as she fought to exhume her soul just in time to send it on. I wonder if Julie is ready.
“I remember…” Audrey continues, squinting at the ground, “…someone who loved me. Who I loved.” She looks up. “Where’s…John?”
Julie’s lips tremble. “He’s gone, Mom. Dad’s gone.”
Audrey lowers her eyes again and watches an ant navigate a blade of grass. She shakes her head. “Not gone. I hear him.”
“What?” Julie says, her voice cracking.
Audrey’s face is tense like she’s listening to an infinitesimal sound, the breath of an ant or the hum of the planets. “Parts of him,” she says. “Scattered through…the books.”
Julie is not as drained as I thought. Her eyes well up with some hidden reserve of tears.
“I’m…reading,” Audrey says. “Books about him. And you. All the years after I…” Her eyes rise to meet her daughter’s and she has tears of her own. “Julie…” Her voice spasms. “I’m so sorry.”
Julie finally breaks. She buries her head in her mother’s lap and sobs.
“I couldn’t hold on,” Audrey whispers. “Not even for you.” Her words come almost smoothly now. What a force she must have been in life, that it all comes back so quickly. “So many reasons to fight…but I couldn’t see them.”
Julie pulls back to look at her, a spike of anger jabbing into her grief. “So you did do it on purpose?” She makes no attempt to stop the quaver in her voice. “You weren’t just stupid? You really walked out there to die?”
“Julie…” Audrey reaches out to touch her hair but Julie pulls away, sitting up straight, her face reddening.
“How?” she demands. “How could you do it? You ruined Dad! I couldn’t hold him together. I couldn’t hold myself together!” She thrusts out her palms, exposing the scars that criss-cross her arms and wrists, none quite deep enough to be a true invitation to death but each one a conversation with it. Shallow cuts to distract from a deep one.
Audrey stares at her daughter’s wounds. Her tears begin to flow freely, falling into Julie’s hands like raindrops.
“How could you do it, Mom?” Her rage sputters down to a whimper. “How could you make that choice? To just walk out and leave us there?”
Audrey shakes her bowed head, dropping her eyes from Julie’s arms to the ground. “It wasn’t a choice,” she says. “It just happened. Like falling asleep when you’re very, very tired.”
Julie watches Audrey’s tears fall into the grass. Slowly, her face softens. Her stiff spine sags. She leans back into her mother.
Audrey holds her daughter’s head against her chest. A tiny sound leaks from her throat, wet, broken, maybe words, maybe just breath. But if it’s words, they might be, “Thank you.”
The two of them remain like this for a moment. Then Audrey’s body shudders, and she begins to speak again. “You were always stronger than me,” she murmurs. “And your father. You were stronger than anyone I knew. I hope you see that.” She strokes her daughter’s hair in slow, rhythmic motions. “I hope you take that with you.”
Julie straightens abruptly and feels her cheek. There’s a smear of blood on it. Bright red spots are blooming through Audrey’s coat.
“No,” Julie moans, shaking her head. “No, Mom, not yet.”
Audrey takes Julie’s hand and presses it against her heart.
“Mom, wait! Please not yet!”
“Julie.” A bittersweet smile touches her face. “I died a long time ago. I only came back to tell you…that you did all you could. That you deserve to live.”
Julie throws herself against her mother and empties deep wells. Her tiny body shakes with rattling sobs.
Audrey rests her head on Julie’s shoulder. She looks weary and old, like her years are returning as the plague departs. But the gray in her eyes is gone. I see their true color for the first time, blue like her daughter’s but lighter, a clear sky to Julie’s deep water. Her body begins to sag, and Julie shifts to support her. “They’re waiting for us,” Audrey says. “Everyone’s waiting.”
She slumps against her daughter.
A distant bird trills.
Leaves whisper in subtle breezes.
Blades of grass tick as they straighten, shrugging off the weight of yesterday’s rain.
Water trickles in the soil. Roots drink. Earth hums.
Silence.
Julie clings to her mother’s body until her shoulders finally stop shaking. Then she lowers its limp weight to the ground.
“She never wanted to be buried,” she mumbles. “I always figured cremation, but…she said to leave her here.”
She folds the body’s arms over its chest and straightens its legs, like tucking a child into bed.
“Said she wanted to be like the sun. Give her life to the grass and animals.” She brushes the hair off the body’s forehead. “She said, ‘I want to be heat and light.’”
Audrey’s body looks serene. A trace of her last smile remains on its lips. But Julie addresses her farewell to the sky, squinting into the noonday radiance. “Goodbye, Mom.”