He’d been going there every summer since 1974, alone since the summer of 1999, when Bella gave up her ghost by way of cancer in her stomach. He watched the tips of the pines, the falling sun, the way it thickened the water. It brought the surface from its mirror to obsidian. He glanced at the canoe. He’d wanted to take it out last year, to give the twins their first ride, but it never happened. He hadn’t taken it on the lake since Bella. Behind its nose up over the yard, a car door closed and he watched the water darken.

Mick saw him standing at the dock’s edge, his hands in pockets, the figure of him. His father was old now. He’d made the cross-over to the old man, shorter, bald, frail. Mick lit a smoke and thought of something he’d said to Rose last year while he was watching Garrett wait out the sunset from the kitchen window. It was a ritual for Garrett, and had been since that first summer without Bella:

“Christ. He looks like Yoda.”

Rose gagged on her orange and nearly choked herself. Her eyes widened and she slapped his shoulder, “You fucker! I could have choked to death.”

“It’s hard to see him out here. Mom always tried to get him to watch the sunset with her, and now he’s obsessed with sunsets. It’s pure guilt.”

“That’s sad,” she looked to the living room while the twins slept in their dual swings. The timer had stopped the swings and they were out cold. She smiled at them, “Everything is in twos now. Shoes, strollers, appointments, vaccines.”

“These,” he’d squeezed Rose’s nipples, and she’d punched him in the face. Her nipples were sore from the twins, but Mick hadn’t thought of it. She hadn’t meant to punch him in the face—it was knee-jerk from the pain, and she’d felt awful. It was a moment between them they let float out the window, and they laughed. They’d driven to the lake house to stay with Garrett every couple of weeks during summer since Bella had passed. But tonight was just Mick and the old man, because he didn’t want Garrett to be there alone on his first night. The twins were pushing a year and half, soon there would be day care, dentists, school, clothes, periods, and boys calling, all of the horseshit that makes a man glazed over, Mick thought. He stared out to the water over the top of Garrett’s head, the glimmer of Lake Sammamish darkening by the second, Garrett standing there waiting it out.

He smelled Mick’s cigarette. He hadn’t seen him since last summer. He blinked and watched the surface, the last traces of life scattering the blackboard of the lake. Mick tossed his smoke and picked up a piece of cinder block from the fire pit. He chucked it over his father’s head. It kerplunked out in the calm. Garrett watched the circle spread across the lake, “Hey, bitch.”

“Hey, motherfucker,” he wrapped the old man in a bear hug. Garrett crossed his hands over Mick’s forearms, “How are you, Mick?”

“Good, dad. You know Rose couldn’t make it today.”

“I hear you. Twins,” he whistled, “I can’t even imagine. You and Nina were bad enough seven years apart. I can’t even imagine,” he said again.

“Not too bad,” he let go of his father and they sat on the dock’s edge. Garrett gave him a quick glance, but in that second he noticed a spare tire. Mick patted his own stomach, “Yeah, empathy weight.”

“You get that during her pregnancy, dumbass.”

“I’m pacing myself. Don’t worry about it.”

“You brought it up.”

Mick lit another, “But you were thinking it.”

They watched the water silently. Garrett let the Sun become the Moon and nodded ahead.

“You and Nina talking yet?”

“Sort of.”

He smiled. He didn’t want things to change, he didn’t want harmony between his children because that would be unnatural. Nina was the firstborn, had gone through college straight out of high school and become a pharmacist. She detested Mick’s lifestyle, a student of philosophy, mid-30s, twins out of wedlock, all of it. She’d lost her looks and physique over the course of three bad relationships, one failed marriage, no children, no happiness. But she owned her house, had put away half a million dollars already, largely from selling her downtown condominium. She was Mick’s worst adversary, practical and conservative, but Nina had a good heart. She also had a Prozac addiction, as well as the many other meds she took, and it sickened Mick. But they were still blood, and blood ran thick in the Burkett family.

“She’s just bitter, Mick,” Garrett said. “You have all that she would want in life, and it all fell into your lap,” Garrett hushed him by shaking his knee, “in her eyes.”

Mick stared at the other side of the lake, the shore unreadable, the sounds of bugs created a soft, busy litany that blanketed the water.

“Yeah, well, that’s what you get when you only have a fucking career in mind. If she would’ve stopped to smell the flowers once in awhile she wouldn’t be so goddamned bitter, would she?”

Garrett shrugged, “That’s her nature, Mick. None of us get exactly what we want.”

Mick shook his head. Garrett jabbed his arm, “Fuck all this. Let’s have a drink.”

“I thought you might feel that way, so I picked up a sixer of Redhook, and a bottle of Jack and a two-liter. We’re set.”

Garrett patted him on the back, “Sometimes I’m almost proud you came from my loins.”

“Six-hundred and thirty-one,” he drained half his drink. He took a gulp of beer to chase it, since the coke was only in there for effect. Mick took a drag, “What are you talking about?”

Garrett tilted his beer at him, “I’ve watched 631 sunsets in your mom’s honor.”

Mick leaned back in his chair and stuffed his lighter and smokes in his shirt pocket, “Jesus fucking Christ, dad.”

Garrett shrugged at the fire, “I have a lot to make up to her.”

Mick shook his head and leaned his elbows on his knees. He stared in the fire, “You don’t have to make up for shit, dad. Mom had a good life with you—”

“Good but not great. I could’ve left what I was doing to watch the goddamn Sun go down with her. The few times I did sit out here I was consumed with work. That goddamned cancer took her almost immediately. What I wouldn’t give for one dusk with her, Mick. I’d give my fuckin’ soul.”

Mick swallowed hard. His eyes welled into the fire. Garrett watched the flames, “Whenever I look out the window I see her back toward me, sitting down there while the Sun sets.” Tears pushed out and rolled down Garrett’s face. Mick went to get up, but Garrett waved him off gently. Mick lit another. Garrett stared at the cigarette between his fingers, “Sure wish you’d quit those things, Mick. It’s not worth it.”

“I’m quitting after this pack. Rose has had enough. Plus, I’m ready. She got us a treadmill off of craigslist. I was hacking after half a minute. And then there she is yelling at me because when I come in from the patio holding the girls, their PJs and hair smell like smoke.”

Garrett laughed, “I can’t imagine that girl and her temper. It’s infrequent, but holy shit.”

On the drive down from Bellingham, Garrett vowed that he wouldn’t press the issue of marriage onto Mick this time around. Mick wasn’t hurting for money, that was for damn sure. When Bella passed, the kids received a ton of it. Nina paid off her condominium, and Mick bought an apartment building. Queen Anne Hill had gentrified, and the large rent for new tenants had been good to them. In fact, only two original tenants remained in the building. Rose had made the top floor their apartment, took over the collecting of rent, and Mick decided to go to back to college. Neither of them believed in marriage. They’d met in spring of 1999. Bella and Rose hit if off immediately, and it drew Mick closer to home. Nina felt edged out. Single, bitter, and now having to come home to see her brother, for whom she’d slated a future of coffee house jobs and studio apartments, poor literary circles, goatees and flannel shirts and no desire for achievement–her Peter Pan Syndrome brother, full with a soul mate who had become close as family to her own mother at first sight. It grinded her to the core. Nina loved the twins, but they were another symbol to her: Mick had again managed to waltz into a perfect situation.

But Mick loved Nina intensely. He took most of her sneers, digs, and backstabbing with good humor. Often, when he stumbled upon a deal or found a good shirt in a thrift store, or when he and Rose were able to buy a new Jeep Cherokee, he would stare at her, “How bad would this piss Nina off?” And Rose would laugh every time. Mick thought about Rose over the fire, her long brown hair, her almost Roman nose, an elegant nose, really. Her perfect shoulders and big, blue eyes. She’d stayed in shape during and after the girls. She’d named them: Layla and Mia, and the subject was closed. Rose had a tattoo down her side, a vine with bright purple flowers from the inside of her left arm down to her foot. She still made Mick hot, still kept his eye on home. She also did it for Garrett. Whenever he called Mick from Bellingham, Garrett started the conversation with “How’s my girlfriend?” And every time Bella would laugh. But the joke, like a lot of Garrett’s shine, died with her.

Mick closed his cell phone and set it on the side of his lawn chair. Garrett looked in the fire, “Everything good on Queen Anne?”

“Rose’s brother is crashing over,” Mick made a limp-wristed slap at the air in front of him, “with his boyfriend.”

“As long as they’re not getting any shit on the sheets.”

Mick shrugged a shoulder dismissively, almost remorsefully, “He’s a good guy. I don’t know, I hope I’m not homophobic, but sometimes it gets annoying, like when the cocksucker corners me and bitches about his fella. It’s awkward.”

Garrett laughed. Mick tossed his cigarette in the fire, “Or when the motherfucker calls the landline, and Rose fakes me out and hands me the phone like it’s important, and it’s him up in arms talking about some gay bullshit.”

Garrett roared this time. His shoulders shook and he doubled over for a moment, then regained himself. He wiped the tear from his eye and laughed again, “You’ve got a hell of a life, Mick.”

Mick laughed with his father. It was good to see the old man laughing. His face looked familiar again. The fire cracked and popped, sent orange embers and flakes of ash up and over the water. Mick stared over the fire and realized that he was Garrett’s age now, back when he was in grade school.

“Huh,” Mick said.

“What’s amusing?”

Mick told him. Garrett opened another beer and nodded, “Yep. Welcome.”

Mick’s thoughts went back to Rose. She’d become instant family for Garrett and Bella. When Bella asked her if tattoos hurt, Rose stared at her, “Hell yes, they hurt. Especially on the ribs. Straight over bone.” She poked Bella’s ribs, and Bella jumped and laughed. Nina sat there dumbfounded. It hadn’t been three hours since they’d shown up in Bellingham for Easter, and she was already the headliner. The men leered, the women flocked, the wine poured. During the night, Nina found herself with Rose out back. Rose was drunk. Nina shot her an evil stare. It was cold. But Rose walked over to her chair, sat on her knees and hugged her. Nina didn’t know what to think. Rose whispered in her ear, “All your love just burning to waste. I know.”

Nina returned the embrace mechanically, and the two parted. Rose’s eyes were full with tears, but worse, they were full with life. They were strong. She was strong.

“There’s still so much you have to still give and get. Don’t let it get away like this,” She hugged Nina again, Nina froze and looked out over the rail of the deck, and she realized that she had given off that much hatred, to make Rose break tears. Hatred for Rose. And Rose was selfless enough to expose herself, to open her heart without hesitation because Nina was her man’s family, to risk it all there. Or maybe Rose had looked into her being and it made her pity Nina so sorrowfully. Nina wondered if she could really be that awful, if she could be so embittered by the ones who had let her down, if it could visibly leak out for others to feel. The answer was yes. Long and short, it was yes.

Rose pulled away, wiped her face and sorted herself out before the deck flooded with people, refills and laughter, heads of wine and liquor. Mick had been hiding out in a dark corner of the deck getting ready to hotbox another cigarette, because he was supposed to be down to three per day, and the limit had already been folded by four. He’d stood further in the shadows to escape Rose’s wrath, but what he got was what he saw, that exact moment that he’d decided to get her name tattooed on his forearm, big in old scroll and undeniable. He reached down in the fire’s light and rubbed the tattoo. Garrett was taking a piss off in the yard. He called over his shoulder to Mick, “Nothing like pissing outside.”

“Goddamn right,” Mick called back, then he flashed to the summer of 1999, when he and Rose left her apartment on First Hill for the summer in Lake Sammamish, where even Nina came down for a week with her then-boyfriend, a quirky little fucker named Frank. Frank was the regional manager for the chain of medical centers where Nina worked. Frank had a trimmed mustache and a business haircut. He wasn’t handsome but he was there, and the family was grateful for him. Nina almost resembled happiness in brief spurts, like when Frank had drank too much and leaped over the fire pit on a bet from Mick. Frank landed, spun and came up with his hand over his upper lip, “Did I burn it off?”

It took him six months from meeting her to leaving her, because of her attitude. Frank leaving was just the first blow, the buffer to the big one, before Bella died that winter.

Garrett sat back down, “I’m going for a thousand,” he said. Mick was taking a piss in the other direction. He walked to the fire and sat back down, “A thousand what?”

“Sunsets. A thousand sunsets for your mom.”

“You’ll be close after this summer.”

“One more summer after this, Mick.”

“Then what?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Figure I’ll sign the house off here to you and yours and go see Egypt, touch the pyramids, check out Italy, Greece, all of it. I was always afraid to fly, but you knew that. I’m going to do the thousand sunsets and fly off into my own.”

Mick nodded. Garrett sighed, “I’ll give Nina the house in Bellingham. God fucking knows I’d better.”

Mick laughed. Garrett poured a whiskey neat and sipped the edge off the top, “She came by last week, your sister. She’s talking about working out and shit. She looks better, too. I think someone’s finally giving her a little, or someone aims to.”

“That’s good to hear. God, she’s so fuckin’ uptight.”

“Tell you what, though. She’s a good kid, Mick, been a damn good kid, in spite of her self-created oppositions.”

“Good point,” Mick tossed his bottle into the fire. He belched, “I’d like to see her let the air out once in awhile. When that Frank dude was here, I almost thought she’d been resurrected.”

Garrett smiled, “Even that little pecker couldn’t stand it.”

Mick’s phone rang. “Hang on, dad. Hi, babe.”

“Hi.” There was a pause. Mick knew the pause. He smiled, “Tell me.”

“Wells. Fucking Wells and David. It’s like two women fucking and fighting. You know how irritating it gets sometimes.”

Mick stared at the fire, “I’m not saying anything. I say something bad about him, you two patch it up, then you remember what I said and so on. Pass.”

“Oh, fuck you. You mind if I head over tonight with the girls?”

“Of course not.” He rolled his eyes at Garrett. Garrett laughed. He knew what was happening. He was excited to see Rose and the girls.

“We’ll be there before midnight.”

Garrett made a drinking motion. Mick nodded and pointed to him.

“Bring wine, babe, and whatever else.”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Mick closed the phone and put it in his pocket, “Good thinking.”

“Trouble in Fagsville?”

“Always is.”

Mick drained his whiskey. Garrett reached down for the bottle and filled his glass. Mick took a good pull and went for a smoke. The pack was empty. He crushed it and tossed it into the fire. He raised his eyebrows, “And that’s that.”

Garrett reached over and squeezed Mick’s shoulder. Mick stared into the fire’s core.

“I don’t get it, dad. I mean, do we ever stop paying?”

“No.”

The answer was definite and resonant, but Mick already knew the answer. He’d known since Bella had died. They had her so wiped out on morphine and oxycodone for her passing that she didn’t feel a thing, but she died consciously and graciously, surrounded by her family in her own home. Rose couldn’t eat for almost a week after. Nina went the other way. Garrett became obsessed with sunsets and Mick lived in a confused state of fatigue and sleeplessness. Like his father had said, the cancer took her almost immediately, just a season after diagnosis. Aggressive, pure evil and life-killing, it took without prejudice, without a second glance upward. It destroyed and changed life wherever it touched. It blackened bright life into a tar of guilt, of sorrow. It shamed life into a recess, pulled what it picked and left nothing remaining.

The car doors closed behind them.

“I’ll go.” Garrett got up from the chair, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep it in my pants.”

Mick threw a branch in the fire, “Fifty bucks and she’s on all fours.”

“Bitch can’t afford fifty.”

They laughed. He walked off. Egypt, Mick thought, Greece. The old man couldn’t lie to save the nose on his face. But Mick had noticed the slip in the Freudian mud. I’m going to do the thousand sunsets and fly off into my own. He looked around for a long butt. He smoked them down to the filter. But he found one. He lit up and inhaled.

“Fuck.”

Behind the kitchen, where the window over the sink faced the dock, a large dining room opened up into a larger family room, with a hallway shooting off from the right. The hallway led to two rooms on either side, a downstairs master bedroom at the end, full with a claw-foot tub. Garrett slept upstairs, where the staircase veered up the opposite direction of the hall. Upstairs he had an alcove that hung above and to the right of the kitchen window, but a high pine obstructed the view of the dock, which was fine with Garrett. Up there he had his computer and work station, which had defaulted, with much compensation, to consultant status. Garrett had been a criminal defense attorney, infamous for taking the cases that were sure losers, and winning them. If a scorned woman cried rape, Garrett was the lawyer to go after. If a cop forced a man, or a woman, in one famous case, to shoot back, Garrett was ready. He had taken a few jobs from the consortium as a public defender a few to four times a year to give back. But apart from the very occasional innocent man, he basically wheeled the least painful convictions for men he’d rather spit on.

The large ratio of scumbag to falsely accused, and his strong nose for the innocent had made him leave the consortium pool for good and focus on his firm. For Garrett Burkett to lose at trial was a rarity. Often, the district attorneys would reach outside to a criminal prosecution specialist for private counsel if Garrett was involved on any level.

Busy as he was, Garrett still took one or two cases from the state each year, a case that one of his friends in public defense would hand to him. It was his way of still serving the law purely, and became a source of consternation for other firms around Seattle. Garrett was a mystery to them, because he became a lawyer to actually use the law for its intended purpose. He’d decided to move his practice to Bellingham, to start fresh and to be near Bella’s family when Nina was 15 and Mick was 8. At his send-off in a bar in Bellevue, the attorneys were there in groups, and one of them, Dysart, made a crack about Garrett’s throw-back to the working man. Dysart was another criminal defense attorney, and another piece of trash under Garrett’s moral heel. Dysart had the law down pat, probably more than Garrett, and he could be heard laughing with his colleagues if a stranger were to walk into the office:

“Greenfield bet me 2 Gs that I couldn’t spring the fucking pedophile. I got him out of there with three years’ probation and a five-year suspended sentence. I was like, ‘pay up, asshole.’”

Dysart sat the table in the bar, happily drunk, “Hell, Burkett, you could’ve put a million more in your kitty if you hadn’t gone slumming for the state.”

The table grew quiet. Dysart talked to talk, period. Garrett raised an eyebrow at him.

“And there would have been households damaged, wives to get welfare, and children to get abused by the dirt you set free for a lunch tab at the country club. I’ll raise a million dollars for you right now if you quit the practice for good.”

Dysart left the party. Garrett looked around the room and talked into his drink, “Fucking parasite.”

It was no secret that most attorneys were after-hours, closet, or full-blown alcoholics. Garrett made no attempts to hide it, but he finally managed it to a weekend occurrence with the help of Bella, and with seeing the livers around him hardening in plain view. As far as him slumming for the state, Garrett slept like a baby at night. To his best, he didn’t get personally involved with his clients, because that burns out a defense attorney fast and certainly. The few cases he’d lost still stuck in his mind, but the jury is a weird animal, and no attorney or DA fully knows what they’ll do in the end. It was always up to the jury. All Garrett could do was cut through the swath of accumulation from the DA, and hope that he’d made it clear for them to base a clean verdict upon. District Attorneys, in a lot of cases, were more crooked than Dysart.

Garrett looked around the upstairs of the lake house while the downstairs was being settled with Mick, Rose, and the girls. He stared at his desk from the edge of his bed. Sure, he could have made Dysart’s money, and he could have ended up how Dysart did in 2003, a .38 bullet lodged in his brain on a slab of marble—the result of a crazed father whose eight year old daughter’s rapist/murderer was set free by Dysart’s defense, followed by the murderer fleeing the state immediately after walking out of the courthouse.

Eight nights later, Dysart’s bloated body surfaced on the littered shore of Alki Beach during a high-school party. The county coroner reported that before Dysart ate the bullet, he was tied up, his finger and toenails pulled off with pliers, his four fingers taped as two and spread into a V, then sliced from the webbing to his wrists, then pulled apart from a V to an M, as were his toes to his ankles. The girl’s father had shot him up with enough crystal meth to keep him wired for the session. Traces of salt were found in the pulled-open wounds, also traces of rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide and whiskey. Tissue samples also showed high concentrations of sodium pentothal to keep Dysart honest during surgery. But the rabbit hole went deeper. By the time the bullet had entered his brain, Dysart had been separated from his eyelids, ears, six teeth, testicles and nipples, half of which were found in his stomach, mostly digested. Also, his right eye had been literally siphoned with a straw.

The father of the little girl refused to testify on his own behalf regarding any of it, and received fifteen years. Apart from being a hero in prison, he’d probably get paroled in less than seven. When Garrett heard about Dysart, he stared at his paralegal, “Jackass couldn’t even wait to wash up on the shore until the kids went home. Even in death he was a fuck-up.”

Garrett could have retired long ago, maybe even before Bella died, but the job was in his blood, like the bottom of a stream, and until the water became still and dried to dust, the bottom of the stream remained. It still did, but now he was a consultant, the new firms or attorneys handling high-profile criminal cases called on him. Since the passing of Bella, he’d become less obsessed with his work out of guilt, but he worked anyway because he was addicted. At this point money was neutral to him. He’d made enough. Now his money was being funneled into accounts for Layla and Mia, who he was now watching sleep in the living room. Rose was unpacking the tote bag, diapers and formulas, baby booties and little shirts with snaps. Mick watched her ass while she bent over the kitchen table, “Goddamn, you’ve got an ass on you, woman.”

She smiled. The more whiskey, the more fun she had with him. At least up until a certain point. He put his hands on her ass, but she reached back and grabbed them. She turned and kissed him with a peck, gave his cock a quick squeeze and handed him his drink, “Later, darling.” She walked into the living room. He stood there holding his drink, watching it go.

Rose patted Mick’s cock, “Goodnight sweet prince.”

He was sweating on his back, snoring quietly. Her ride had lasted less than a few minutes. She’d fed him too much whiskey, and teased him too long before the bedroom. She checked her phone, 1:30 a.m. She’d be flying solo in five hours when the girls would awake like clockwork. Mick would be in the throes of a hangover, a big one, and Garrett would have his face in the computer screen upstairs, his phone wedged between ear and shoulder, his coffee stone cold. He had his own maker upstairs, but he wasted more than he drank, dumping it cold down the bathroom drain and brewing another pot. The smell of it alone was good for him. She walked down the hall to the kitchen, filled a glass of water and fished out four aspirin. She checked on the girls, then walked back into the room, over to the night stand and set the water and aspirin down. If Mick was lucky, he’d stir awake at some point soon, slam the water and tablets and keep his head down until noon. She got into bed and turned her back to his, touched asses and grinned. For it all, life had been good to her. She kept her eye on the doorway across to the twins’ room, then faded out.

Many of the dives and haunts didn’t exist in Seattle in 1961, when Garrett was 21. The buildings were further apart, the cranes weren’t in constant motion building commerce. Kennedy was still alive, the Moon still untouched, and Garrett had already knocked back three years of law school. He worked in the market icing and selling fish for old man Dignum, who had been anti-pinko in the second world war, stationed up on the Russian border, Morse code flying between him and the Russian soldier on duty across the divide, both in the same job of dispatch, relay and communication for their infantries. When the lines became crossed, Dignum and the Russian engaged in hostile and unyielding war in Morse code, throwing punches at each other from their stations: Pinko Commie Russkie Bastard, American Dog Swine, on and on. Many years later, Dignum owned a good business back home. He was a big, bald man with a mole on his cheek. When left unkempt, the mole sprouted hair like whiskers, and he reminded Garrett of a fat catfish, a channel cat that had aged and bloated, then evolved into an angry man that showed no mercy on his workers or the customer. Dignum always knew when it was time for the mole to be plucked, when the customer’s eye lingered hypnotically.

Garrett was there when the new owner of the oyster bar next door to Dignum started a fight with him, because he said Dignum’s salmon display obstructed the board’s view of foot traffic. The new owner was Russian, so he had far to go with Dignum. He pointed to the mole and yelled, “You have no right to interfere with my place of work!”

Dignum squinted and laughed, his tongue pressed against his bottom lip, his arms folded, “Look here, shitski, or shitface, or whatever your shitty name is, my employee here is in law school. Burkett, who’s right here?”

Garrett stepped back and eyed the storefront, “I’m sorry, Mr. Pulvnichek, but Dignum here is within his own proprietary border. There is no law against his display being higher than your board.”

The two men yelled back and forth, going on about the war, about everything that maddened them. Dignum thought about how if they were just twenty years back, he could have essentially killed the Russian, and Pulvnichek thought the same, and they were more than happy to verbalize that fact. Dignum glared at him, “Pinko commie Russkie bastard.”

Pulvnichek’s eyes narrowed, “American dog swine.”

The men walked away from each other, then stood like statues. Garrett watched them. Pulvnicheck turned his meaty head over his shoulder, “Where was your station in the war?”

Dignum looked at him squarely, “No, where was yours? You’re in my country now.”

Jesus, Garrett thought, what were the odds? Pulvnichek sighed, “Dispatch. Bering Strait. About seven kilometers inside our line. I ran code to infantry from command.”

Dignum looked the Russian up and down, “Son of a bitch. I had the same job twelve miles from the other side of the line, the Russian sector 17, 1940.”

The two men stared at each other. Garrett starting calculating the odds, which were impossible, but proven beaten, and he watched the bizarre movement of the two men bursting into embrace. From that moment on, Dignum became Pulvnichek’s fresh fish supplier, and Dignum let Pulvnichek’s sandwich board fly free. Garrett learned there that by removing the legal confusion first and swiftly, the truth would surface. The speed of knowing the rules and explaining them without space for refute brought the truth to the surface, bare to see. It was his first lesson in law.

In a large way, the truce between Dignum and Pulvnichek is how Garrett met Bella, who was the only non-Russian employed by the oyster bar. Before discovering the mad Russian was his war-time nemesis, Dignum had forbade Garrett from going next door, not that Garrett cared much. He was happy with his job. It worked out well with school and his room down the street was cheap. Garrett’s parents had moved to Venice, Florida, during his first year of pre-law. He was excited to live on his own in Seattle. Garrett had an older brother, but he died from polio when Garrett was six. His name had been James. Garrett vaguely but fondly remembered him throughout growing up, but by then James was a passing fog.

When Garrett first saw Bella, it was two days before the two men had spoken, and when she smiled at him he was too shell-shocked to smile back at her. She was the new waitress at Pulvnichek’s place, and each time she walked by, Garrett trembled. Dignum would shake his head.

“Yep, she’s a honey alright, but if she works at pinko’s, she’d bad news. Forget about her.”

Garrett swept the floor behind the display counter. Forget about her dirty blonde hair and blue eyes, her nose and full lips, the way her ears sat on her face, the way she was sculpted. Her legs not thin but not fat, her breast not flat but not huge, her profile while she walked by. Garrett had to meet her before some chump did, if some chump hadn’t already.

The sky alone is orange, it hangs over the market and Bella is waiting at the counter. The truce between Dignum and Pulvnichek has been a week ago, and Garrett is facing her. Garrett is 21, Bella is 19. Her face is beautiful. Her smooth skin and blue eyes, sky blue, really, the light sky of an Indian summer. She’s there to order for Pulvnichek. Garrett’s throat constricts, but he’s holding it together. Bella’s been aware of him since she’s first seen him. A tall, built young man, dark busboy hair, his jaw clean and his smile wide. She sometimes watches him during her shift. The boy next door, the girls next door watching him work, smiling to each other and making remarks around her.

“He can fillet my yellow fin anytime,” one of them says. The waitresses at her work, cackling like fat hags–fat but pretty Russians, two daughters and a niece of Pulvnichek’s, who has recently defected.

“Yuri wants a king salmon,” are the first words from Bella to Garrett, who digs around the ice. He knows there are no kings there, they wouldn’t see a fresh king until the end of next week.

“All out,” Garrett stares at her. He stands and presses his hands on the counter, and the sky crackles behind her.

“Garrett,” she says, afraid again of the moment ending, as the sky forms two orange hands far beyond her shoulders, far up past 1st Avenue to Capitol Hill. Behind her he can see the entire way up Pike, where the hands are pushed forward by enormous orange arms, and they reach down under the market’s entrance and grip Bella’s shoulders. Upon contact, her skin ages, and the hands pull her back, lift her, and she’s five feet away at 30, five more at 40, until she floats backward and upward at 59, pale, her hair gone, her face mixed with confusion and sadness, crying without tears for leaving Earth. All that she would miss, she reaches out too late for him, and his hands stretch for her, but when they return to him, she’s gone and his hands are full of dark blood. A dark, thick mass, a lump, slides off the side of his palm and thumps on the counter. It pulses and writhes there squirming, making sickening sounds of cracks and moans. It stops, then flops over and almost prostrates itself, raises from the middle into a hump, then it forms into a black ball that stares him down. The ball begins to hiss and undulate, and he watches it intently. It had killed Bella, sent envoys out from her stomach and killed her. He stares at the mass on the counter. It goes motionless, then leaps at him with sickening speed.

He jumped awake. 5:30 a.m. on the nose. His head was slightly pinged from the whiskey, Red Hook, and a full glass of wine from a bottle in his stock he’d been saving for a special occasion, and had last night proclaimed the occasion to be as such, because another year had passed. He sat on the edge of his bed. The dream wasn’t new to him. Bella had appeared in nightmare form beneath the orange sky for years now. He started a pot of coffee and flipped on his monitor. His screensaver was a shot of the twins, in the apex of laughter while they swung in the dual-seats. Their hands over their heads, a roller coaster pose, and they laughed like loons. The photo never ceased to make him laugh, or at least smear a grin across his face. He crept down the steps and closed the door to Mick and Rose’s room, then wheeled the cribs out into the kitchen, readied two diapers on the table and started the twins’ breakfast. He set the high-chairs up with apple juice and chunks of fruit, warm oatmeal and a half cookie for each of them. By the time Mia had stirred awake, Layla was changed and eating. After Mia was all set up, Garrett sat with the girls and sipped his coffee. He hadn’t been a father to a baby in 34 years, but it was exactly like riding a bike, or a tandem, as it were. He played the radio, the classic country station, and lucked into a block of Roger Miller. He sang to the girls, who watched their gramps, almost stupefied. He refilled their juices, “Dang me, dang me, they oughta take a rope and hang me, high from the highest tree-heee, woman would you weep for me, doo-doo-dip-dip-do-doo-doo-ohhhh.”

The girls giggled at him. The next song was one of his best, Everything’s Coming up Rose’s. He sang it softly as he wiped their mouths and faces and unsnapped their bibs. He wiped down their trays and sat across from them, watching their faces and looking for himself in them. They looked more like Mick than Rose. He could see the Burkett nose growing pronounced each year. An hour had passed since the nightmare. He started a fresh pot of coffee downstairs and sat across from the girls. Mia reached for him. He lifted her out, and heard Rose checking their room down the hall. He poured a cup of coffee and held it up without looking, his eyes on the window, whistling the chorus to Mia. Rose took the cup, “Jesus, Garrett. Thank you for taking care of them.”

Layla reached for Rose. She scooped her up, set her mug down, and took Mia in the other hand. She set them down on the living room carpet, handed them their cups of juice and set their bean bag toys on the floor. She stood in the kitchen doorway and watched Garrett do the dishes. He nodded to their room, “How’s the party animal?”

She laughed, “He came alive at some point, drank his water and took the aspirin I’d set out for him. He’s out cold.”

Garrett dried his hands and gave her a loose smile, “What a pussy.”

“He’s learning. One day he’ll grow up.”

She sat at the kitchen table, “The song got me out of bed.”

“American classic.”

“Are you alright, Garrett?” she put her hands out. He sat and put his hands in hers.

“Goddamned nightmares again, babe. Could’ve been the drink, but I doubt it. I get them, regardless.”

“I hope you don’t mind, but Mick told me about your thousand-sunsets plan. Well, he mumbled it to me around four in the morning. I think it’s beautiful, Garrett, as long as there’s not some dark edge involved.”

Garrett looked at their hands, his spotted, hers so young and expectant. She’d always thought he was handsome, more handsome than Mick. She touched his face, “She’s in a painless place now, honey. She was a lucky woman, and you have nothing to regret or pay. Whenever a loved one dies, we instantly make them into saints and count our shortcomings toward them. In the short time I had with her, she expressed nothing but love and gratitude for her life because of you. She lived more than all of us will. You need to see that, sweetheart. You were absolutely perfect in her eyes.”

The tears came rolling down Garrett’s face. Fast, steady tears without a blink. They dripped into the creases of his elbows, and it turned on Rose’s waterworks.

“Thank you for that,” Garrett said. He looked down at their hands again, “I don’t know why this year’s been so tough on me. It’s almost like she dies again, every morning.”

Rose jumped up and grabbed two paper towels. She and Garrett wiped off. She squeezed his arm, “Garrett, I’ve been thinking about this. I know you don’t want another dog after Maximillan, I get that. That was hard on Mick, too. But you need companionship. You need to meet somebody.”

“Impossible.”

“I don’t mean a piece of ass, unless that happens, but I mean a woman for companionship. I mean there has to be—”

“Oh, hell,” Garrett interrupted, “I’ve got all kinds of women trying to get in my pants. Some of them even Bella’s friends. I know what you’re saying, Rose. But something feels wrong about it.”

“And it’s going to feel wrong until you get used to it. You’re not the one who died, Garrett. I’m sorry, but you’re not. You can’t live running toward her ghost like this.”

Garrett leaned forward and stared over at the twins. They were chewing on their bean bags, “I can’t replace her, Rose.”

Rose rolled her eyes at him. It had occurred to him more than once that she carried a lot of Bella’s tics and habits. They had the same eccentricities: eating pizza from the plate to their mouths, or not leaving a paper towel or toilet paper roll with a jagged edge. Bella would rather waste twenty paper towels than walk away without a clean tear across. They had a lot of idiosyncrasies in common–the way they held a phone, annunciated their Ts, clicked their tongues when impatient or annoyed. She gave him a frustrated sigh, “Of course not, Garrett. But you can make new memories.”

Garrett nodded tolerantly, she stared at him tolerantly, and looked at the twins. When she’d first met Mick, he took her to Eileen’s on the hill for a drink after a movie. She told him that her ex was a real asshole, he’d taken her there once and she hadn’t been back because the place reminded her of him. Mick took her hand as they walked to the door, “Come on. Let’s make some new memories.” They went in and had a good night, drank, talked and kissed in a different booth, then the same one. It became their place until it shut down. She told Garrett about it.

“I know what you mean, Rose. I need time is all.”

He checked his watch and stood before she could respond. He looked at it, “Time to punch in.”

She laughed. He squeezed her hand, bent down, kissed her forehead and went upstairs. Mia socked Layla on the ear and Layla bawled. Rose downed her coffee and walked over.

Garrett sipped his coffee. The tall pine in the window brushed against the glass, so he opened it. The air was good, it floated in and cleared out the rest of his nightmare. He stood in the shower and let the water hit his neck. He looked down and held his balls. A companion. The thought of being with another woman on any level made his stomach turn, even in the shower. Bella’s passing hadn’t rendered him impotent by any means, he’d never had that problem. On the occasions when he did masturbate, he thought of Bella, though last summer he had woken up with a hard-on from dreaming about Rose, which was natural, he thought. Any man who saw Rose in her little string bikini wanted to fuck her. No harm there, but a companion was nowhere in sight.

He fielded a few calls and emails. One was from Nina, which never happened. She had a long weekend coming and she thought she’d drive down to the lake house. He checked the time, 8:15. She didn’t have to be at work until 11:30 on Thursdays. He dialed her cell.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Woman, why are you emailing your old man?”

She guffawed. Only Garrett got that out of her.

“I was up late last night so I didn’t want to call, but I wanted to let you know about the weekend.”

“Hell, babe. You’re always welcome here, you know that.”

“Anyone else there?” she reached down and picked up her cat. He was fat and lazy now.

“Mick drove in just before dark. Then Rose and the dynamic duo showed up. They grow larger by the minute.”

She sighed, “How’s Mick?”

“He’s good. He asked about you,” Garrett lied, “he wants to see you.”

“Hmmm, well, to be brutally honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing him, either.”

Garrett laughed. She was an introvert for a non-creative person. She was his favorite area of study, always had been. Even as a child, a happy child, she was withdrawn and observant. Garrett never knew where she’d gotten her defensiveness. Neither he or Bella—or Mick, for that matter, were defensive beings. Garrett caught a glitch in her silence. He swiveled a 180 away from the screen and stood, “You alright, peanut?”

“Fat cat just puked on my lap.”

She wiped off, walked to the kitchen and cleaned up. Garrett hadn’t called her peanut in years, since grade school. She’d picked up the name from the zoo, when she tossed a gorilla a peanut-shaped cookie from the bag and he whipped it back at her. It thumped against her dress and she cried. Garrett picked her up. He was laughing, and he wiped the crumbs from her dress, “He’s just in a mood, baby.” There was a perfect imprint, a red hour glass on her chest when Garrett checked her over. He set her down and buttoned her back up, “He doesn’t even know you, sweetie. Plus, look at him, ugly as a gorilla.”

He touched her chest softly over the welt, and scrambled his finger around it, “Peanut.” She laughed. When she got her period, she asked if the name could be forgotten. She was becoming a young woman, rushed by her body. Up until that moment, into the conversation, she hadn’t heard him utter the name, thirty years in between, and she felt a rift as Mick had over the campfire.

“Are you alright, Dad?”

“I’m fine,” Garrett said, “stood up too fast.”

Nina told him that she was leaving in the morning, that she’d see him around noon or earlier. He washed his face and stared into the mirror. All the years behind him like a long drive, which it had been, and the last leg was bittersweet but he had a lot for which to be grateful. Back at the computer his phone rang, a buddy of his in Oregon, a Washington defector named Hazel, whom Garrett had advised on a few cases since. Garrett picked up, “Zane, you old trader. How the hell are you?”

“Garrett, I’m good. I’m guessing right now you’re at Sammamish?”

“I’m here. Got a full house downstairs, and a drunken son who has yet to match his father’s steel proclivities.”

“Sometimes it skips a generation.”

“Thank Christ for that. I faintly remember hangovers.”

“So, Garrett, I need your brain on this one. Four counts of first degree rape.” Garrett whistled. Hazel continued, “Rape 1, Sodomy 1, Unlawful Sexual Penetration 1, Sex Abuse 1.”

“Age of the girl?”

“35. Aspiring actress. Seen some of her shit on-line. Really awful.”

“Alright. Who’s the guy?”

“John Stanton, 39, author.”

“I know the name and the reputation, but I haven’t read his work. Mick reads him. First felony?”

“First anything. The reputation is bullshit, I can tell you that firsthand. I had concerns about that upon meeting him, but he’s a big sweetheart. He just ended up meeting one who couldn’t deal with him moving on.”

“I understand. He’s a wild card, but from what I know about him, I couldn’t see him being a rapist.”

“Hell, no. That’s why I’m calling you. This is one of those rare plums, Garrett. It’s bad. As you know, all Measures, all maxed. The guy’s looking at life in prison. And trust me, this guy won’t make it in there.”

Zane was another one like Garrett, or like Garrett used to be, a private attorney and cowboy, handed cases from the consortium that were so unwinnable they were laughable. Garrett reached over and killed the fan. Zane took him off speaker.

“Garrett, this one’s really corrupted with bad shit. The girl is lying, plain and simple, but the state has this guy against a wall. His bail is so high it’s ridiculous, 250K, and you know Oregon has no bondsmen, and nobody in this guy’s life has 25 large to spring him. He’s keeping his publisher out of it. He doesn’t want the word to spread, understandably. Lara is keeping his close friends and family informed from the office. Jack, my P.I., is heading up your way in a week to interview a couple of his friends. I might have them come in as character witnesses.”

“I’ll keep it under wraps. How about a bail reduction hearing? Get it down to 15 or 10.”

“In this case, even if he had the 25 grand, the judge would raise it. I’m telling you, Garrett, this is really inside here, this case. A lot of accumulated, circumstantial, bullshit evidence, probably the worst I’ve seen. Not enough to prosecute, in my opinion, but you know how most rape trials go, especially in Oregon.”

“Go on.”

“She met and dated Stanton for six weeks when he got back to town from his book tour.”

“Dated him?”

“They fucked around for six weeks, basically. He’s admitting to all the sex, but absolutely denies and even cringes at the words forcible, compulsion, or rape. She’d also had sex with an ex within 48 hours before she fucked Stanton. I get the feeling she’s done this before in some way, Garrett. When she and the detective, who she’s incidentally fucking at the moment, went before the Grand Jury, they had cherry-picked text messages, a really cleverly staged pre-text phone call and a rape kit, but it only shows that they had sex, no defensive wounds.”

“That’s why grand juries are bullshit. Let me guess, Killings County.”

“Bingo.”

“Shit. Any bruising?”

“One the size of a dime on the inside of the knee, and one on the thigh, the same size, but they look pretty aged in the photos. She waited exactly 24 hours to go into the hospital with her ex, who just happens to be a parole officer.”

“Motive?”

“Stanton called it off with her, and was headed to Los Angeles to talk movie options with one of his novels. She invited him back to her place, the night of her birthday, no less. After he took her out for dinner, she fucked him, and then cried rape. I have text messages from her after he left, telling him what a doll he was.”

“Well-played on her part, but it sounds like a trial to me. Who’s the DA?”

“Some moron named Bill Dolt. The name says it all, but he’s a real fuckwad, you know?”

“Most of them are.”

“Well, they’re making this really personal, lined up cops and many professional witnesses against him. Garrett, I wouldn’t call you if I didn’t have an innocent man keeping me awake at night. Been a long time since I’ve had one like this.”

“Write this number down,” Garrett read it off from his contact list, “John Bradley, the ex-head examiner of Oregon. He’s like fucking Quincy down there. He’s retired, but drop my name. If anyone can get a trumped up sex kit exposed to the jury, it’s him. Has the DA offered a deal?”

“No deals yet, and he wouldn’t take one if they offered him a conviction and a walk.”

“A fighter, huh? That’s good. Will he present well in court?”

“He will.”

“How is he?”

“Frightened and pissed. He writes by hand compulsively in his cell, so he has that. Jack visits him on a regular basis, and they’ve discussed taking a deal, and the pressures of taking a deal to avoid decades in prison. I was there with Jack the last visit. Stanton knows what he’s facing, but he told me he’d rather die on his feet than live on his knees for the state.”

“Then a bench trial’s out of the question. A judge in that county will convict him so fast. This is going to be a tough case, but it’s not unwinnable, I think. You’re going to have to go with a jury trial, full emotion. Punch holes in the prosecution and get as much reasonable doubt that you can possibly find. Get that jury full of women and middle-aged men. Is he good looking?”

“He is.”

“Young women on the jury, if Dolt doesn’t challenge them all off. Women can read other women. What’s the victim like?”

“A real pile of shit. I had Jack tail her. He took Lara with him and sat in at a few of her spots. She was out drinking and laughing with her pals, grinding on men and kissing other girls. The recorded phone call and headshot of her at the hospital is enough to make you want to put her down. Pretty little thing, but an ignorant little cunt all the same.”

“Yeah, you’re taking this personally. Means you’re not dead to the field yet. I would say to call Bradley, and bring all the holes to light from the discovery when compared to the police report, because I promise you there are incongruences there.”

“There are, we’ve counted six.”

“Use that as your base. Discredit the little whore. And by no means instill confidence in Stanton, keep him on edge. If you ask me, you have a rough road ahead here, but one maybe worth taking. And when you get that fucking detective on the stand, show no mercy. When you do your cross with her, she’ll expose herself to the jury. That Dolt asshole will have her crying for them, then when you get her, trip those nerves. Hell, Zane, you know all of this already. Your reputation precedes you. Is the guy any good with the word?”

“Thanks, Garrett. Yeah, he really is. I read one of his novels in one night. Lucky for him it all flies under the banner of fiction, because Dolt would bring it into evidence.”

“He’ll still try it, Zane. I guarantee it. But I don’t care how slanted that county is, his writing won’t be admissible.”

“I like him quite a bit, and so does my team, but I can’t tell him that, I can’t get in deep with him, because if he loses, then he goes to prison, and we go to lunch. I can’t have that.”

“I remember those cases. Few and far between, but they run the gamut on your sleep.”

“Exactly.”

“Call Bradley, he’s going to be crucial.”

“I appreciate that, Garrett. How the hell are you holding up, anyway?”

“I’m good. It’s good to have the family here.”

“Garrett, I’m glad to hear that, and I want to catch up with you, but I have to get to the jail and meet with a client. This one did it, though, shot back at a cop. Stupid, stupid kid. Dangerous, too. He’s getting 200 months, if he takes a deal.”

“I remember those, too. Go. It was good to hear your voice again. Call me when you can and let’s catch each other up, Zane.”

“What do I owe you, old man?”

“Oh, hell. Buy me a beer next time you see me.”

“I’ll have Lara send you a check tomorrow. The beer’s a given.”

“Suits me fine, brother.”

They said goodbye and hung up. Garrett turned the fan back on and sipped his coffee. The pine outside tilted a branch back and forth beyond the window. Garrett walked over and plucked a needle and chewed on it while he checked his emails. His phone rang more, he talked more, then after another hour, he closed shop and went downstairs. Out back Rose had the girls set up on a blanket while she read a book. He poured a glass of orange juice and sat out there with them. The sunlight on the lake and the girls on the blanket, Rose’s face in the book on the lawn chair, if Bella could see that. Maybe she could, maybe she could see it, and maybe she even agreed with Rose about Garrett not being alone. Inside, Mick rolled out of bed and ran the shower. Garret looked at the lake. Rose looked over her book, “You done for the day?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Anything new?”

“Nina’s coming down tomorrow. She has a long weekend.”

“Nice. I like seeing Mick on his toes.”

Garrett laughed, “She’s coming around, slowly but surely. She’s always been a weird kid.”

Rose closed the book and sipped her wine, “Not like your son’s normal. That apple fell close to the tree, that’s for damn sure.”

Garrett leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He stared at the grass, “Both of our children are mildly retarded, in their fashions.”

Rose laughed. Garrett looked at her and smiled, then shrugged, “Mick got his mother’s bleeding heart, and Nina got my sense of responsibility. Not that Mick’s irresponsible, just relaxed. He’s always been calm in the face of chaos. Nina, not so much. She likes to shut down and go inside of herself.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Rose said. Garrett looked at her and smiled, “Right. The bitter, silent evil she emits doesn’t make it plain enough, does it?”

Rose looked at the girls, “I hope they get a touch of everyone.”

Mick walked out back in his shorts, holding a cup of coffee, “Least one of you could have done was made a new pot. Thanks for the mud.”

Garrett shook his head at the water, “There’s a fresh bag next to the Midol.”

Mick raised the back of his hand to him. Rose sipped her wine, “Take two and go back to bed, grouchy ass.”

He moved his hand toward her. She lowered her sunglasses, “Uh huh, you just keep thinking that.”

He moved it toward the twins and Garrett laughed. The sun was warmer than it had been the previous summer. A drop of sweat rolled down the back of his neck into his shirt. Rose looked at Mick, and the look told him to take the girls inside. He squinted at her and she laughed, got up and scooped up the girls from their blanket. Back inside they sat and listened to the radio. Mick drank a fresh cup from the pot Rose had brewed, popped four more aspirin and waited for them to work their way to his forehead. Garrett handed him a shot of whiskey and he slammed it. Rose shook her head at him, “You’re just now doing that?”

“Head’s moving slow, woman. Don’t toy with me.”

She lobbed a grape in the air. It landed in his lap. Garrett poured a few shots around the table, and they slammed them. The girls were in front of the television, watching a DVD. Mick looked at it, “They can’t call that shit cartoons. CGI has completely destroyed Saturday morning.”

“We said the same thing about eight-tracks,” Garrett said, “we hung on to vinyl until the bitter end.”

“This is different, dad.”

“No, it is. Just felt like flicking you shit because you’re hungover.”

Rose smiled at Mick, “Either way, it’s television, babe. Let them get their fix while they’re here. Us, too.” she looked at Garrett, “I don’t let them watch it more than an hour every few days. I want to raise them as humans. But it’s nice to have them quiet and in one spot.”

“Always been a cheap babysitter,” Garrett nodded at the set, “but Bella felt the same way, though Mick was fucking glued to the television every chance he got.”

Rose looked at him, “He has a thing for westerns and Dirty Harry.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” Mick said quickly. Garrett nodded at her, “My fault. I addicted him. I can’t look away from that pistol when he aims it, either. I have the films memorized.”

They drank at the table until Mick’s head was better. The twins had gone down for their naps, and Garrett surfed the fridge, “We need some food in this house.” Rose offered to drive to the store. Garrett said he’d drive, which was fine with Mick. His head was better, but the bright day was murderous for him. They left. He sat on the couch and killed the music, stretched out and put his arm over his eyes.

“MICK!”

He leaped up and looked around. Nina sat in the recliner and set her sunglasses on the table by the lamp. His eyes narrowed, “Sister.”

She uncapped her bottle of water and drank. He rubbed his eyes.

“Lucky you didn’t wake the girls.”

“Or what?”

“Or you’d be napping, with a black eye.”

“Uh, huh.”

He glanced her over. She’d lost some weight, and even had her hair highlighted in the front. He reached over and drank his coffee. It was cold, and it ran through his chest and arms, hydrating his lingering hangover. She stared at him, “Tied one on last night?”

“Nothing gets by you.”

She kicked the recliner’s leg rest out, leaned back and sighed, “Still weak in your replies. Good to see it.”

He set his cup down, “Sounds like someone’s finally getting laid.”

“Someone just might be, and he might be a much younger man, a bad-boy, if you will.”

Mick rolled his eyes, “Jesus. As long as you’re not giving up too much money.”

She reached down, took off a shoe and threw it at him. He caught it and set it on the couch next to him, “Thanks. I needed one of those.”

She kicked the other one off and threw it. It hit him on the chest, “Take two.”

He set it next to the other one, “Who’s the martyr?”

“His name’s Blake. He works in advertising and he rides a Harley.”

“Pathetically dual. How old is he?”

She smiled, “Just turned 30.”

“Does he have his own place, and his own money?”

She rolled her eyes, “Yes, ass, he’s well-established. He has a tattoo, my first tattooed one.”

“What and where?”

“A praying mantis on his forearm.”

“I can’t fault him for that, but he has to be disabled in some way if he’s giving it to you.”

She shook her head at him, “You idiot.”

“At least you’re looking better and sounding better. Good to see you somewhat less from Hell.”

“Where’s my father?”

“They went to the store. I should call them and make sure they bring back some lamb’s blood to keep you away from me.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. She sighed, “Sometimes, I actually have to remind myself that I love you.”

“Likewise.”

The car doors closed out front, and they walked in. Nina stood and hugged her father. Rose looked at Mick and smiled. He shook his head at her and she laughed. She hugged Nina and they stood in the kitchen while Garrett put the groceries away. Rose nodded to the room, “Still out?”

Mick shrugged, “Even the cold presence of Satan didn’t shake them.”

Garrett laughed. Nina looked at Rose, “I put a block on them.”

They sat at the table and drank wine, while Nina told them about her boyfriend. Her phone rang and she walked outside to talk to him. Rose looked at them, “Wow. I like the 180. I think I actually saw her smile with her teeth exposed.”

Mick laughed. Garrett smiled into his glass, “The opportunity always presents itself, even to the queen of black souls.”

Nina came in with her phone to her side and looked at her father. He nodded to her before she could say anything, and she walked back outside. Mick looked at him, “Wonder what this one looks like.”

“Can’t be any worse than the mustache. Goofy little motherfucker.”

Rose laughed. Nina came in, “What’s funny?”

“Frank’s mustache,” Mick said.

“Blake is clean shaven, just so you know. I just texted him the address. He’ll be here tonight. Mick, you be fucking nice to him.”

“I will.” The girls began crying in the room. He stood and looked at her, “For the good of the rest of the world.”

Garrett broke out laughing. Rose looked at Nina and smiled. Nina shook her head at him and pulled out her phone, “Let me show you a picture of him.”

Mick put his hand up, “I’ll let the fag’s appearance strike me.” He walked off. Rose looked at Garrett, “I think you were drunk when he fertilized the egg.”

“More than likely.”

Nina showed them the photo. Rose and Garrett passed the phone back and forth.

“Hell,” Garrett said, “not bad.”

“Not at all,” Rose said, “how’d you meet him?”

“Online. Some free dating site. I tried it out for a week, met some real fatasses who looked really good on their profiles. I’d decided to jump off the site just before Blake messaged me. I figured one last effort. He doesn’t want me telling people that we met on-line, but I don’t really care. Not like it’s new.”

Mick set the twins on the floor and grabbed the tote bag, “Almost unnatural to meet someone any other way these days,” he said, “it’s a whole new time.”

Rose watched him change the girls, impressed with his reassuring words to Nina, because she was expecting him to bring some serious venom. But Mick liked the new Nina, a hell of a lot more than the old one, and he wanted to keep the ball rolling. Garrett shrugged, “As formidable as I find it, I’d have to agree. Meeting someone in person doesn’t always guarantee that they’re kosher, either. But the on-line dating scene these days is a vortex, for sure. Even in law. Almost every civil or criminal, or even family court trial has elements of social media involved. Messages, comments, posts. It’s amazing, when you think about it. People incriminate themselves without knowing it. Kind of funny, too.”

“I imagine it cuts some of the investigation time in half,” Rose said.

Garrett nodded, “It practically does the P.I.’s job for him, in a lot of cases.”

Mick changed the girls and set up their chairs in the kitchen. Nina watched him. He poured their juice and handed them their cups, which instantly went to their lips. Garrett laughed. Mick nodded to Rose, “Feed the beasts.”

He walked into the living room and fell back across the couch. Nina walked over and sat next to them. They looked at her over their cups. Mia smiled at her and held her cup out. Nina took it and started to raise it to her mouth, and Mia reached for it. Mick laughed, “That’s daddy’s girl.”

Rose walked over to the counter and started making their lunch. Nina kissed the girls and held her finger out to Layla. She gripped her finger and Nina smiled at her, “Sorry your daddy sucks, baby girl. Yes, he does.”

Rose smiled at the counter. Mick closed his eyes and listened to the outside. He could hear the birds over the voices in the kitchen. After a few minutes he faded to black, and woke up with Layla on his chest. Behind her Rose’s face floated overhead, “Alright, husband. You’ve had enough time to let yourself heal. I need to shower.”

“We have two workers in the kitchen.”

“They’re out back. Sorry, Charlie.”

He sat up and took Mia from her. Rose kissed his head and walked to the bathroom. The water turned on and he set the girls on the floor. He stared down at them, “You two need to get some fuckin’ jobs.”

They looked up at him, and he crouched to the floor from the couch and did a somersault over them. They padded over and jumped on him.

Out back over the fire, the group of them sat and drank. Garrett had seen the Sun fall, and he was looking at the four of them. A seed of sorrow laid in his stomach, the absence of Bella seeing the four of them, seeing Nina honestly happy for once. Garrett watched Blake’s profile. Blake was actually alright. He’d scored points with Mick because he was well-read in Nietzsche, as well as Vonnegut. They talked about Man or Superman until the others had to tune out and start their own conversation. Mick was doing well without his cigarettes. He wasn’t thinking about them, because he’d made them a non-option in his mind. Earlier, Rose had promised him the best blow-job of his life if he could get through the night without breaking down in some way over the withdrawals, which Mick pawned off to the hangover. His plan was to stay drunk for the first two days, this way he could drink consistently after his body was used to not having nicotine. Too many times in the past, he’d quit then restarted after a few drinks. Rose thought the plan was genius. The fire crackled and the drinks were constant. Nina was drunk, and she sat close to Blake, her hand on his leg. When he went inside to use the bathroom, she asked Rose what she thought of him, and Rose told her she thought he might be the one.

“I fuckin’ hope so,” Mick said, “at least the dude reads.” he looked at Nina, “how bad did you trash me to him?”

“The usual amount.”

“Constantly,” Garrett said, keeping his foot in the conversation and away from the seed down there, and the seed was taking to soil without mercy. Garrett felt it growing a body, and the body formed with dread in the trunk, a dread he’d never felt.

Rose looked at her, “Well, at least he’s tall and minus the mustache. Two for two against the last one.”

Nina looked at her father, “Dad?”

“He’s a good man, sweetie. Just don’t drive him crazy.”

Mick nodded into the fire, then felt Nina’s slap across his leg.

The five of them drank until midnight, when they put out the fire and stumbled into the house. Garrett was drunk, and upon walking upstairs and seeing the bed, the drunken sorrow turned into violent depression. The sorrowful seed at the fire had sprouted up and moved through his heart, and its leaves were soaked black. He stared at the closet. A dark edge to it. Rose’s words ran through his mind. All that he had on Earth, his family, and all that Bella had left behind, died with his heart in her corpse. Another nightmare awaited him, another morning, another day bright with death, hers and his own. By the time Layla and Mia were ten, he’d be dead anyway, or close enough. He stared at the closet door. A thousand sunsets my ass. He staggered over, opened it, and dug the box out of the back, his oldest bottle of wine and his .45. Nobody knew about it. He had the kit ready for his last sunset, had readied it the summer after Bella died, but tonight was the night. No point in going for a number. He would die failing her, because he needed the punishment. He needed to leave his life at war. Tonight was the night, the mood was definite, and he had no fear of it.

He coasted the canoe out into the lake, opened the bottle and drank from the neck. There was a cool and steady wind, which had only been a breeze on shore. The oars sat on the floor of the boat next to the pistol’s chrome. He looked at the house and thought of them, his blood and their people. There was no note written, no short goodbye. His death would explain everything.

He finished the bottle and reached it over, let the lake make it full and swallow it down. He looked around the dark water, his head lifted with the drink, his heart heavy with sad blood. No more sadness, no more nightmares, no more dreams. If death brought nothing, then nothing was better than this. The time was there, and he was grateful.

He sat in the middle of the boat, placed the gun under his chin and clicked off the safety. He thought about it, his head blown in half, and he didn’t want them to see it. He placed the gun in front of his chest. It made more sense. He looked at the house and pushed the trigger with his thumb. The hammer pulled back and he remembered her face, all that he loved, all they’d created. The light came on downstairs in the kitchen. Rose poured Mick a glass of water, fished out some aspirin and stared out to the lake. She lingered there. It was impossible to see him, but she stared directly at him, to where he was. She’d never seen lightning bugs in that part of the country, but she watched a swarm circle out over the lake, then disappear inward. Garrett saw no bugs, because there were no bugs to see. His pain begged him on. He stared at Rose. She stared out, walked away then killed the light, and the wind stopped blowing.

He closed his eyes and told her that he was coming, to wherever she was. He sighed a last breath and touched the gun over his heart, pulled it back and pressed with his thumb while his hands were forced aside. His brow furrowed, the hands over his, a feeling of warmth covering him, a light planted in his stomach. It devoured the tree within him, it glared up through his skin, and the light of her told him that he had time left, plenty of it, and the trigger wouldn’t be allowed to reach its cradle—no weak end to his warm blood—he owed her his natural death. Before that, though, she had a debt to collect from him, the remainder of sunsets, then his own happiness, which he’d stolen, not her. He let the warmth pull his thumb from the trigger, and watched the gun fall into the water without sound.

The wind picked up again, and there on the lake he knew. He knew wherever she was, she was waiting for him, and she was in no hurry. Her concept of time was something he couldn’t grasp, and he couldn’t let the sunsets get away from him, because he’d made a deal with her ghost. 368 more, and then he owed himself the rest of his life. She’d stopped by to collect from her man, she was stronger than Garrett, and while he sat there staring at his hands, the black sorrow of ten years left his body and ran across the surface of the lake, over the trees and away from him. He sat up and turned around, picked up the oars and rowed slowly to shore, and the feeling of knowing covered him like she had in the middle of the dark water, and it was good. Everything was. He rowed and thought about Mick, who was onto his plan, and he couldn’t let Mick be right about him. He thought about Mick and he laughed.

The air was thick, smothering her skin as rain ricocheted against the slate roof. Mildew and disintegrating paper filled the room, pushing her away as she walked to the midday light pooling on stone. Dragging fingers over its surface steadied her breathing. A kaleidoscope of shadows played through the broken window before her, grey hills rolling into the horizon. She continued stroking the lined sill, each movement a mindless meditation. It was frigid. A thin layer of condensation melted beneath her hands as she continued the hypnotic assessment of her surroundings. Everything was cut from the earth, benches, tables, shelves; the room was a monument to man’s triumph over nature. She shuddered and tugged at the woolen hat sliding up her head. It was too cold to be humid, but her hair grew wet all the same.

A rat ran in front of a pile of books that cantilevered itself towards the center of the room. She inhaled slowly, trying to warm the air before it hit her lungs. The sea raged off the far side of the building, like a woman in labor. Where had she read about this place? For that matter, why had she ever decided to come? Her hands shook. She would not be allowed to return without a souvenir. The front door blew back on its hinges, slapping against the rock wall with each howl off the water. She did not believe in hauntings, but she did believe in life. She knew how large it was and how small she was and right now, the thought made her sick.

As she bent over her knees, trying get beneath the tacky air, her hand brushed against warmth. It wasn’t soft or pliable, not like a body or something animate, but it sweated beneath her touch. She thought about running for a second. And then bent closer.

++++

When she turned nine, her aunt gave her a doll that talked. It had eyes that opened and closed and arms that raised up and down. The legs worked too. Everyone at the party clapped and begged to hold it. It completely horrified her. There were no joints in the elbows or knees and the eyes blinked like a lizard. “MA-ma! MA-ma!” the thing crackled as she held it with outstretched arms. “Stop!” she commanded, but the toy kept rasping and shutting its eyes with excruciating precision. She threw it to one of her friends, ran into her room and locked the door. Her mother tried to convince her to rejoin the party, but she refused. There was nothing human about that creature. It made her feel like she was being watched, assessed with each tortuously executed blink.

The party ended without her. She didn’t care. She hoped someone had taken the doll with them. When she came to dinner, the doll sat across from her seat at the table. “Why is that there!” she yelled. “I don’t want it! Take it away!” Her mother straightened her skirt before sitting down. “Your aunt paid a lot of money for that doll. I thought you might give it a chance.” The doll was immobile and said nothing. Her father winked at her and took her hand in his. He took the doll’s in his other. “Let’s say grace and forget all about this. I know you both have a lot of playing to do.” She stared at him. “This is not my father,” she’d whispered. But of course it was. He winked at her mother like a big joke was in progress. Her mother covered her mouth with her napkin and pretended to sneeze. The doll just stared across the table, freezing her in her seat. That was the moment she discovered that her will to live was stronger than her fear. She picked up her fork and started eating, never taking her eyes off the doll until the last bite was down.

When dinner was over, she asked to be excused and left the doll sitting in the chair. When her mother came up to read her bedtime story, she asked for the doll. Her mother looked relieved and returned with the creature. “Put her by the window so she can breathe fresh air.” she commanded. It was done.

In the morning, the window was open, the doll gone. “Oh, I hope she didn’t fall!” she intoned as her mother gawked out the window. “It’s the second story!” Her mother straightened up and looked at her dead on. “If I ever find out what you did with that doll, you will wish I hadn’t.” Then she turned on her heel, leaving the room silent.

The girl was still. She inhaled the scent of cherry blossoms from the tree across the street and flexed her toes. They were bare and her legs brushed against her cotton pajamas. There was nothing in her room except for her bed, a dresser and a few library books about Vikings and mummies. She liked it clean. Simple. A can peeked from beneath her bed and she bent over to pick it up. Shook it. The hairspray was nearly gone. She smiled and padded down to breakfast, dumping it back in her mother’s drawer. The lighter was fished from her pocket and placed on the mantel inside the wooden box. She felt weightless.

++++

The stone was hot beneath her hand but did not burn her. It radiated up her arm and through her face until she felt her hair drying into curls. Everything around it was cold. She reached her other arm out in a circle, testing each flagstone, trying to ascertain a pattern, but none appeared. The sea continued to hammer against the foundations. She moved to stand on the warm stone, it made the abandoned building ache less. The mental checklist began.

There were too many books for it to be random. It had to be a library at some point. The Norman architecture dated the place to around the 11th century AD. That didn’t explain the fact that the building seemed to be cut from one piece of stone. It did not explain what she was standing on.

Her feet grew warm through her hiking boots and she looked down expecting to see the ground molten beneath her. Its surface was smooth, worn by numberless feet, and gave away nothing. The only way you might find it was to stumble over it. She began shifting from foot to foot, giving the heat a chance to disperse before re-contacting her soles. Each exhalation sent fog rolling to meet the viscous ether surrounding her. It was a dance, she thought. A duel between secrets buried in time and my present curiosity.

The stone beneath her shifted slightly, causing a bobble to the right. She reached out her hand and caught the edge of a stone table. As her fingers curled around it, she squeezed and willed herself upright. The table lifted.

She stood on both feet, staring at the table. Her toes pushed her to the perimeter of warmth and stopped. She looked down. It ended a half meter from the table. She bent closer and pulled her cell out. Flicked on the flashlight app and felt her legs shake. A groove ran through the stone the same width as the table.

“It’s never the aspiring detective that gets it first.” She reminded herself. “It’s the ones who run.”

The channel fit her finger perfectly, hugged in around it like a cradle. As she drug her flesh across its surface, she noted that half was hot, half cold, as if an impenetrable wall bisected the trough. She tried to roll her weight into one side of her finger, than the other, but it was locked in place, equally pressed against the rock.

Her knees began to ache from crouching and she pressed into her feet to stand. Her hand remained rooted to the ground. She looked around the room. The light skimmed low through the door at the far end. This far north, it would be dark in two hours at most.

All was still, save the sea. No gulls rode the updrafts, no trees shook their leaves at the wind. She was completely alone, save a rat and a patch of stone that refused to release her.

+++++++

She was aloof in college. The clubs, sports and sororities held no interest for her.

Her history professor was 20 years her senior and wore the same tweed coat to class every day. That caught her. She watched him prepare his lecture notes at the lectern for a month. Wondered, “Why that jacket?” There was never a deviation.

At the end of the second month she decided to ask him to coffee. Along with his folder of notes he always carried a mug that looked like a first attempt in Freshman pottery. While she’d never gotten close enough to smell him, she noticed his teeth and shirt sleeves-both bore a hint of color that was too light to be nicotine.

She decided on October 13, which fell on Friday that year.

She didn’t believe in coincidence and wanted to see if he noticed.

After class, she walked straight to the front of the room and stood in his path.

Jack looked up to find a short brunette staring at him, hand on her backpack strap, the other extended towards his face. His nose twitched and he ran his fingers inside the tweed pocket, digging for a handkerchieve.

“Hello.” She smiled.

He coughed and cover his mouth. Too late.

“Apologies. I’m sorry, your hand surprised me.”

She started.

“It’s alright. I don’t get sick. Can I call you Jack or would you prefer Dr. Temple?”

He couldn’t place her face and knew he should be able to. Took a stab.

“Students generally call me Dr. Temple.”

She raised an eyebrow and reduced him without speaking.

“I want to get coffee with you and talk about Spain. Specifically, the Alt Emporda.”

Her voice stayed even and Jack smelled warm cornbread on her breath. Her skin glistened at the corner of her eyes and he realized she was nervous. But so was he. He shook his head to clear some space to think. She blanched. Seemed smaller.

Jack reached a hand out, touched her shoulder. He jumped visibly. She was hot.

She swayed briefly, than caught herself.

“Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to refuse. I thought everything out.”

Jack cursed to himself.

“No. I wasn’t saying ‘no’, just needed to focus. Today is an intense day for me.”

She nodded and handed him a napkin.

“That’s why I asked you out. It had to be today or never.”

Jack’s head cocked sideways. Why hadn’t he noticed her before?

“What class are you in?”

She waved a hand over her shoulder.

“This one. I’ve been sitting in the second row on the right hand side for the last two months. It’s fine if you haven’t noticed. I was trying to blend in.”

He looked at her closer. Shoulder length hair, blue eyes, hips. If he had a type and she weren’t a student. Jack stepped back from the desk.

“What the hell. It’s Friday the 13th and you want to talk about my area of expertise. You say it’s no coincidence and I don’t believe in them anyway. Let’s go.”

She held out her hand and he took it. Fuck the rules. Her voice was gravel speckled honey and he needed something sweet to wear away the edges of his day.

They made it to the parking lot, not speaking, just walking. She motioned to a green MG with its top down. He grinned.

“You have my favorite car. And, by the way, what is your name?”

She dug the keys out of her backpack, then threw it behind the driver’s seat. The keys sailed at Jack’s head and she swung into the passenger’s seat.

“Do your homework and drive.”

++++++++++++++++++

The light shifted from grey to mauve. Magic hour muted the roaring sea and coaxed her towards the ground. She sighed and knelt on the stone. Her watch read dusk. Palms and toes pressed into the heat and she thought about sleeping there.

It was at least four kilometers back to the car and her cell battery wouldn’t last. The only real choice was where in the building she would try and get some rest.

Her eyes wandered over the objects in the room as they started to soften at the edges. A floor to ceiling bookcase dominated the furthest corner from her. Its shelves were overflowing with papers and rolled parchment that clogged the space to capacity. Interspersed at random intervals were stone spheres that had been halved and hollowed out into bowls. They were all empty. As she gazed over its entirety she gasped. It was the hull of a boat, turned on its end, back into the wall. Except it was stone.

The table closest to her was almost bare except for a candle stick that rose like a tree trunk from the table. It looked to be carved from the same piece of stone. There was no wax on the stick or the base but the scent of beeswax wound through the viscous air into her nostrils. Two long benches flanked either side of the table and she could just make out areas worn smooth from countless sessions sitting there. They were carved to resemble planks sitting atop log rounds. The table top itself was at least six inches thick and its corners were perfect 90 degree angles. From her crouched position she could make out the base, which mirrored the candlestick above. The overall impression was that the table had grown out of the bedrock.

A ledge ran around the room at window sill level. Corbels shaped like crescent moons supported it every foot or so. Between the corbels a border of acanthus and roses twined about each other and the stone felt so alive, she found herself inhaling to try for a scent of the flowers.

There was a six inch wide hole cut in the corner closest to her. From her vantage point she could see the ocean through it and the horizon beyond. From the way the light was fading, she guessed it was facing due east.

Jack was supposed to meet her here. He hadn’t shown up. It didn’t bother her that he’d stood her up, he’d been late for plenty of meetings. But he’d always been punctual when it came to Lucibel. His interest bordered on obsession, the passion he’d expressed after their first date had been the only bench mark to hold a candle to his ardor on this subject. Her mind clicked through its deductive process as she kicked her legs out and sat on the heated stone.

They’d met in Barcelona four days ago to go over the plan. He’d been gathering information on the site since he spoke better Catalan than her. She’d headed up to Perpignan to do the same for similar reasons. They made a good team when they divided and conquered. Men seemed to respond better to Jack in Spain and to her in France.

“Might as well capitalize on our strengths.” He’d smiled at her over their tallats. The small cup fit in her hands perfectly and warmed them as she tipped the coffee between her lips and savored the hint of milk. Jack reached out his hand and touched her hair. Said it was time, so they paid and left.

She put him on a train for Girona that evening and walked Park Guell until she spotted Venus on the horizon. Tibidabo glared out from the hill behind her, throwing manmade light toward the planet’s winking glow. When she looked at the amusement park shooting its neon and sparkle atop the mountain, her heart sighed. Even the soul of Spain could be bought for an overpriced ride with a view. She hoped they would not be too late.

Old villages were being rediscovered by ex-pats from Britain and northern Europe and bought up at fire-sale prices. They’d kept tabs on Rabos for years, monitoring its growth and industries, encouraged by its imperceptible progress. This year, they’d finally found the funding to put together the equipment and resources needed to fully chart the site.

“Just the two of us” Jack insisted and she agreed. The information was too explosive and far too exciting to trust anyone else to keep it under wraps. They were pulling out all the stops for this.

A sabbatical for him and a cessation of graduate work for her. The liberal attitude of the university would only extend so far if they knew the full extent of their intentions.

To the world, a professor of pre-Iberian goddess based cultures in northern Spain was travelling with his assistant/lover to catalogue the contents of a particularly ancient religious site in the Alt Emporda. For she and Jack, it was a portal to the origin of humanity.

Which is why, when Jack did not show up at the appointed coordinates, she decided to enter on her own. After all, it was only the staging area, not the site itself. Now that she stood inside, her perceptions were shifting without restraint. The place was alive, holding onto information that she could smell like damp paper drying on a heater. Where she’d expected a place to gather any last thoughts, she found endless unanswered questions.

“I’ve got to move around at least once before it’s completely dark.” She instructed herself. First one foot came off the stone, then the next. She was surprised at the reluctance she felt to leave the space, but turned to her right and began to walk the perimeter.

On an instinct she bent and removed her shoes. They stayed where she shed them as she continued forward. The floor was even and unmarked as though some great blade had sliced it cleanly and then polished it after. She windmilled her arms over the walls and empty spaces, testing for differences in air pressure, temperature, anything out of the ordinary. There was no variation any place but where she’d been standing for the last four hours.

+++++++++++++

Jack had surprised her when they arrived in Barcelona. “Let’s stay at the airport for sunset…it’s so beautiful looking out to sea.” He took her hand and led her to a bank of windows facing west.

El-Prat was a soaring affair with lofty ceilings and walls made of glass. The central courtyard offered shade and sun in equal measure. She’d always loved the feeling of the place. Like a vast terrarium for transients, it soothed and reminded its guests of life’s impermanence.

They stood there, watching the sun drop into the Mediterranean as landscape shifted from daylight gradients to the pastel of evening. “So subtle,” she’d mused, breathing in the scent of coffee lacing the air. “You’d never realize color could change unless you measured it before and after dusk. You just assume it stays the same, even when your eyes tell you it is completely dark.”

Jack looked down at her and put her hand into his tweed pocket. He never took the jacket off unless he was making love or showering. “Remember that when we get to Sant Quirze. Everything will look one way and be another.”

Her skin prickled when he’d said that. This was before they’d gone their separate ways north. The first time they’d both been in Spain together at the same time. She wondered what his fears were. There were plenty to have but neither of them liked to dwell on things outside their control. If they focused on the goal, obstacles became peripheral.

She traced her finger around the inside pocket seam of his jacket, willing the cycles to unwind the knots they still had to untie.

“We haven’t talked about what we are prepared to do if they refuse us entry.” His voice came from a distance and she turned sharply.

“We don’t usually plan for contingencies. Why are you bringing this up now?”

His eyebrow raised a fraction and his shoulders bunched.

“This is not Indiana Jones. Besides, I left my whip at home and you always lose your hat. We can’t just go in there with excitement and a lifetime of scholarship to protect us.”

She looked at the sea and then at her shoes. They had good soles. Kept her from blisters when she would have gotten them in any other pair. Weak ankles had always been her nemesis, rolling her feet in when she’d been younger. She’d had no end of trouble finding the support she needed to keep her stride straight. But she didn’t stop hiking. She ran every day to remind her feet that they had the strength to endure. Jack underestimated her resourcefulness and her tenacity. She wouldn’t do the same.

“I’m not worried. We have everything we could bring from home and our wits have never failed us. Why borrow trouble?”

Jack rubbed his temple with his free hand. She never let him dodge a bullet, even when he was shooting at her.

“You remember the day you asked me to coffee? Friday the 13th, October…the day the Knights Templar were officially disbanded and exterminated?”

Her stomach flipped. He’d never brought up that particular detail of their association. Even though she knew he had to realize her choice wasn’t random, she’d laid her curiosity around his omission to rest for the last five years. Why was he bringing it up now?

“I do.”

The sun seared its last impression in a line at the horizon as Jack inhaled audibly.

“It struck me as Fate when you approached me that day. I had no idea why you targeted me but I was so absorbed with my work that I didn’t think to consider the consequences of saying yes to you.”

A sultry female voice announced the last departing flight to San Francisco via London. It was an oddly appropriate choice, Jack thought. Made you want to return, even if you were anxious to get home. He could sense her hand getting colder in his pocket. He knew he wasn’t doing a great job laying out his point. Everything got muddy and clear around her; it always had. She saw things, connections in the work that he’d never have thought were there. She also clouded his judgement in moments where everything depended on cool headedness. To Jack, it could only mean one thing.

“Kate. I am in love with you.”

She blinked.

“Jack.”

He stepped in front of her, blocking the sea, the trees, anything that could obscure her view of what he was saying.

“When we find the cradle, I want us to make love there so Lucibel and the entire realm of observers knows that we are one. I want us to create a light that leaves no doubt as to our intentions.”

Kate was silent, considering the request. Jack had never been one for effusive shows of affection. He preferred to reserve his passion for private moments, or his work. This was a combination of the two. He was proposing absolute surrender.

“I’ll go to Perpignan first. We’ll talk about it when we rendezvous in Barcelona.”

She felt a low heat rising in her chest. It would happen, just like her first step toward him. Inevitable, a gravity that remained consistent regardless of the opposing forces vying for its energy.

“You know what, fuck it, Jack. Yes.”

He hadn’t spoken, had just taken her hand from his pocket, threaded his fingers through hers and pulled her through El Prat to a waiting cab. They’d wound through the city to El Palace Hotel where Jack escorted her through the front doors and into its heights.

“Get used to feeling like you’re living in a dream.” He’d said as they sat on their balcony with glasses of wine in their hands. “When we find the cradle, life is going to look like a million reflecting surfaces all pointed at the stars.”

Kate leaned back into the couch and nodded. She’d never imagined a dull life and had no illusions of winning an abstraction like success. She just wanted to see what life could be, how many particles of light she could experience while in her body.

“There have been two times in my life when I felt surprised by my emotional response to something unexpected. I don’t care if life becomes infinitely complex or how many stars know, we found our way home. This is it.”

They sat on the balcony, wrapped in over-priced robes, staring at the sea and the lights of Barcelona until the sun threw its first searing tentacle across dawn.

¬++++

It was dark now. The room refused to give up any secrets before deepening into shades of indigo and black. Back on the heated stone, Kate began to hum. It was an old song she’d learned in her childhood books and made up a melody to.

Silent stone echoes on,

Come to bed and rest,

Every child, worn and weary,

Find some peace at last.

Light will feed you,

Light will guide,

Church is not a place to hide.

Wander far, but always know,

The cradle is your home.

As she sang, the sea became distant and the air in the room cleared. Kate rocked, as she always had when she sang the song. Forward and back, side to side. A slow circle beginning to widen. Her face grew calm and she placed her hands on the ground at her sides. This was alright. Safe. The darkness felt lighter, warmer. She opened her eyes and looked down. The stone was glowing.

Its perimeter was indistinct, but the light shone brightest beneath her. She recalled pressing her flashlight to her hand as a kid and watching the ligaments dance against bone. Her knees popped, relaxing into the earth. She was still singing. Her lips wouldn’t stop the lines.

Jack’s voice began to buzz in her mind, all the facts and places they’d discussed flying about crazily, daring her to grab one.

“Lucibel and Lucifer were the same.”

“They were light bringers. People in the Alt Emporda remember.”

“Hail Lucifer, who was wronged!”

“Venus and Lucifer, lover and light.”

“He came willingly.”

“Brother of Christ, not fallen angel.”

“The stone was not of this planet.”

“When the circles align, the awakening will be upon us.”

Kate brought her hands to her heart and bowed her head. She knew what was happening, at last. This was the test. This was the portal, not a staging area. It was the gate.

And then, knew, Jack could already be here. Watching. Or dead.

Her seat became warmer as the thought sat in her mind. What if he followed the threads instead of the light? What would it be like to perish on the cusp of experiencing his life’s work?

The room itself began to vibrate, she could see the walls shaking. It was a uniform quiver, nothing fell from the shelves. In fact, if anything, they began to rise, like kids on a Gravitron at the fair.

Tables elevated, shelves climbed, the boat bookcase in the corner shifted as though on a vertical tide. Kate accepted all this calmly, did not question how she could see the movement when it was supposed to be night.

“Every line is also a wave,” she heard herself whisper, somehow inside the song that continued spiralling from her mouth. But the sea was so far away, back by her car. Why had she walked all the way on foot instead of driving? Why did she think she could see the ocean from inside the room?

Kate brought her hands to her forehead, pressing fingers between her eyes. Her head was a drum, her skin, the membrane holding everything together. It would have to be resilient. She opened her eyes and scanned the walls.

She was sliding down, placed in the center of the stone as the room remained overhead. It did not matter if she understood everything there, the symbology, the smell, the sounds of the sea. She was travelling, something in her proving worthy of the next step.

As she descended, a voice seeped through her consciousness, forcing her to listen, to hear.

It was no longer about applying her intellect, the quality of her soul was being assessed.

She felt the heat of stone spread throughout her body, rendering her immobile and pliant. It was reading the response of her tissue to being permeated with something beyond her control. Kate sighed and arched her spine as heat moved up her legs and into her brain.

There was nothing else around her, all senses on hold as she allowed the earth to hold her.

Drifting, a feather, she was lightening even as she fell.

And Jack was beside her, the stone expanding to hold him.

“Hand.” He said, and she offered it up.

They rocked together, bodies sitting cross-legged, knees to knees. His eyes were opals, every color she could imagine looking back at her. The song continued, flowing from both of them into each other as the air warmed about them. Kate could not take her eyes off Jack, they were locked together and she could no longer remember where they were trying to go.

++++++++++

“What do you think I am trying to do?” Jack asked her the first time they were alone and still. After the coffee and the drive, after the walk through the university library. At midnight the clock rang over the campus, startling them from their books. Kate studied his face, her head cocked to the right. He was handsome, not just in a messy, professorial way. His mouth had creases at the sides from private smiles, his eyes commanded attention, even behind glasses.

“Tell me about the cult of Venus in the Alt Emporda, I’d imagine.” she said with a straight face. He wanted a mystery to solve and she didn’t plan on remaining the cat now that she’d caught his interest. All she needed to do was stay just out of reach.

Jack stared at her and paused. What was he trying to do? Seduce her, obviously, came the reply. He batted it away. She was too interesting to leave it at that, though he didn’t doubt that they would collide sooner or later. Her curiosity and knowledge held him in a precarious balance. There was nothing Freshman about her choice of dates for their meeting, nor was she blushing when he spoke of fertility rites and sex magic cults in pre-Iberian culture. Yet, she clearly wanted to know more, something specific, he sensed, though he couldn’t say what. He leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head.

“Alright, I’m just going to say it. You fascinate me. I’m also bewildered by my level of attraction to you, having never noticed you before today. I want to study with you and fuck you. It’s disconcerting.”

Kate was 19 going on 25. Jack was in his late twenties. She thought about telling him that her childhood had been spent combing books on Isis and the Templars and wondering how they were connected. It would be a good card to hold in case she needed to reengage him. But she’d been studying sound too, the way vibrations made up physical objects, the frequencies of different words and languages. He would understand.

Her hands shook under the table as she came up against her resistance. Sure, she’d been watching him for months but that was different than spending time with him. Far different than actually speaking her mind for him to assess and pick apart. Self-criticism had never been a weakness of hers but she was no fool when it came to the economics of love. You give, someone receives. When the trust loop is completed, both parties benefit. She tapped the underside of the table. The loop of trust. She’d already held out the first strand by inviting him to coffee. Sure, he might brush her off and leave her to find another ally, but things were going well so far. Besides, it was better to try for the stars than wallow in the mud.

“Jack.” It was the first time she’d said his name without asking. He liked the sound of smoke on it.

“Girl.” He had to find out her name

She shook her head and let her hair fall over one eye. “I already know about the sex-magic and the Isis line. I’ve been a practicing initiate since I was 15. What I’m interested in is how they came to be connected with the knights Templar.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. He was ready to be surprised but not to be compelled.

“Why would you think there is a connection?”

She nodded, expecting his question. There was no point in being coy, he was the only person she’d been able to find within driving distance who could possibly speak to the subject.

“The Knights were connected to the Cathars. The Cathars were notorious for their healing abilities and their connection to the Druids living in the Pyrenean region. They were also known to have snuck out their most profound treasure from Montsegur castle the night before surrendering to the Catholic crusaders. It is known that both Knights and Cathars inhabited Montsegur at the end. I think they worked together to remove a lineage. Perhaps an actual person. I want to know what you think.”

Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and scooted his glasses up. She hadn’t answered his question so much as given him a taste of what she knew. A gesture of good faith, he mused, as though they were in negotiations for something they both wanted. But how would she know what he wanted? He grabbed his class roster from the folder of papers in front of him and skimmed the list. None of the names jumped out at him until he saw Katherine.

“Clear. Pure. Katherine. Is that your name?” He knew as soon as he said it. Of course. That was the point. She was unfiltered and patient-prepared to wait until she could engage without artifice. Jack’s mind became a labyrinth he knew perfectly. If she could hold the wisdom without dilution, she could hold the line. She could be the one to enter the cradle with him.

“Indeed. But I prefer Kate. It’s less pretentious. Too many ex queens and princesses go by the long form. That said, you’ve mentioned a cradle and a connection with a lady that I think might figure in to my Isis work. I think we’d make a natural team if you’re prepared to rob the cradle.”

Jack chuckled, savoring the sound of life flying around the book shelves. “This is all rather clandestine, Kate.”

“I know. It suits us much better than a brief in Starbucks, right?”

He took her hand and studied the fingers, one by one. It was finely carved, the bones delicate, palm narrow. He didn’t like meaty hands on women. They were natural channels and it seemed fitting that their hands should display the sensitivity. Jack raised it to his lips and his eyes met hers. They wavered in the heavy air of the library. She looked at his mouth and moved her hand away.

He couldn’t breathe. The light in the room, already diffuse from outside lamps, lowered until it framed her face. She inhaled and opened her mouth.

A sound poured out, so pure Jack felt every sound in the universe. It was quiet, felt more like a whisper than a tone, but it was pregnant and caught him hard. His body was afloat on the current, he’d never hovered before, but he knew if he looked down, his chair would be far below.

“Who are you, Kate?” he whispered as she began to chant.

“The key, Jack. Who are you?”

Jack watched the room drop away and then they were alone in the darkness, the same congealed light creating a bubble around them.

“The lock, right? That’s what I’m supposed to say, isn’t it? That’s what the book says…but I’m the only one besides Astrid that has access to it.”

Their hands wrapped around each others’ as they wandered the night. To the casual observer, it was another forbidden liaison between faculty and undergrad. Kate paused and turned to Jack.

“I make things disappear with light. Material objects, conflict, questions. Perhaps it would be more fruitful to consider how we might leverage our resources.”

He kissed her then, swallowing all sound into his chest. It was the right choice.

+++++++++++

The ground roared up, splitting them apart before everything went black. She did not lose consciousness. Kate reached around her, willing something solid to appear.

“Jack.” She spoke with volume. “Jack. Say something.”

There was nothing. Kate was warm still, the song leaving its after-glow in the space. She had no idea how much space there was to fill. Her body uncurled from seated and she found no sore spots. It was as if the ground had softened before impact, all the hardness becoming a pillow she was being cradled on.

It was spongy beneath her, dry. Almost like a memory foam mattress in a sauna. She wanted to curl into it in the worst way, found her thoughts of Jack slipping through the earth and away from her. The air was different down here, wherever that was. Down no longer seemed right, but then she had no point of reference for where she might be. It smelled like fresh water. Moving water. She was not frightened, but every pore of her skin tingled with a tiny charge. This was bigger than she and Jack had expected. Even though they’d prepared to be overwhelmed.

A hand touched hers and she gasped. It was not Jack but it reminded her of him. This hand was softer, there was no hair on the back like his. Her body said, “Take it.” And she did. Found herself rising to her feet and walking forward into empty space.

Each step met with something to push against, though it might have been air for all she could tell. “Are you walking in darkness too?” she asked the hand. It pulled her forward gently, coaxing her with a grace that made her feet steady.

Then there were trees and she felt Jack in those too. He was changed though, almost an essence rather than a physical form. When she breathed in, she felt him fill her lungs. When she moved forward, he strengthened her legs. It reminded her of rituals she had taught him from the temple of Isis. Ways to move one’s energy from the body to the energetic double that existed like a hologram. She reached out for him with her mind, trying to locate his heart.

“What happened to you when we landed, Jack?” she questioned, expecting his voice in her head.

“I became what we sang, Kate.” His voice was not audible in her mind or ears. It throbbed in the blood pumping to her heart.

“But we sang of light. We sang of meeting Lucibel in the cradle.” It wasn’t that she disbelieved Jack, she simply wanted to feel him physically next to her. She wanted to crystallize what still floated in tendrils inside her.

“Walk forward, Kate. Keep walking forward.” And she felt him go before her, the hand still wrapped around her fingers. She did not question what was attached to it.

Light coalesced around her slowly and she did not notice it immediately. There was blue, the color just before dawn when night agrees to surrender. Nothing sharp came into focus, everything a sense of weight, mass being willed into shape. Her own body felt pliable, weightless in the emptiness of monochrome. Kate wanted a star to appear, felt like it was destiny to see something fixed and gleaming. At the very least, a comet shooting a flare of relativity to make sense of the environment.

Her heart beat steady, Kate realized she was completely awake and entirely detached from emotion. Sure, she wanted to feel Jack next to her, but that registered as more of an overlay, an outfit to put on or take of at will. It was not her flesh beneath. This fascinated her, even as she continued to progress over the yielding ground. She felt the feeling but she was not bound to follow it.

The blue continued to lighten until it reached a clean cerulean. Her gaze travelled down the length of her body and she felt herself lifting out and up. She was not given to making demands on unprecedented experiences and kept her mouth closed. Her body remained on the ground as she watched from above. She knew she was not dead.

She looked about for the hand that had led her through darkness but saw only one thing against the blue.

A stone appeared at a distance, its shape the crescent moon. She focused on it and took note that she travelled in a line toward it. The surface was utterly smooth, so glassy she should have been able to see her reflection in it. Instead she saw an old woman bent over the side, rocking it back and forth.

Kate took in her face, one endless wrinkle after another, trying to find her eyes. They sank into the recesses of her skin, two pinpoints sending beams into Kate’s forehead. She felt herself unwinding inside them. Laying herself bare for examination. It was a relief to be seen. Everything about her from conception to now was taken in and weighed. Witnessed, not judged.

The light continued through, Kate saw it reaching behind her and into the expanse. It was satisfied. She approached the woman and knelt beside her.

“What are you?” she asked, for it was clear the woman guarded the stone.

The woman nodded her head slowly and reached her hand to Kate. It was the same touch she’d felt moments ago. “Thank you for helping me.” Kate whispered.

When she looked down at the cradle, she realized she was no longer breathing.

++++++++++++++++++++

Kate would never call herself a lone wolf. Neither would Jack. They were individuals who saw the beauty of following their passion without apology. Often, it meant they worked alone, seemed aloof and unaccessible, but they were caught in web-spinning a network of curiosities that fascinated them.

Three months after their first encounter, Kate and Jack shacked up in a two bedroom flat in an old brownstone just off campus. It took two minutes to walk to the library and they wore a path between their front door and the books. There was a park a block away that had stands of old oaks Kate visited to practice her rituals. They ordered take-out constantly, most of the time from their computers. Entire weeks would pass with them orbiting each other without touching down for a conversation or meal.

Just as precisely, one of them would have a break through that demanded experimentation and the other would be summoned. It amazed both of them that for all the focus they applied to their study, they were equally happy to be brought into contact with another human.

“We’re doing the same work from different sides.” Jack said after they’d made love for three days. Kate pushed up on an elbow and studied him.

“Do you feel stronger? Brighter? It’s why we do this, you know that.”

Jack rolled her onto his chest and pressed his hands against the sway of her back. “I do and I do. You know we’re not just weird, we’re incredibly lucky.”

Kate stretched her arms above his head and placed her forehead on his.

“Luck is for the undisciplined. I’m the real deal. We transmute light or nothing.”

“That’s why I adore you, Kate.” Jack thought. “No compromise.”

++++++++

The belly of the cradle was luminous. Where the outside seemed to swallow light, the inside birthed it. If she had a fire made from burning opals, she’d still come up short on vibrance. There was a reason she wasn’t breathing. She didn’t need to in the presence of Life. “This is it. This is what we have been looking for.”

Kate stared into the expanse, even though she doubted that she still had eyes. She’d been rearranged on her trip through the portal, right down to the particles holding her body together. If she’d been pressed to explain what had happened, she’d have said she was transformed. Like the second coming of Christ, it happened in the blink of an eye that lasted longer than time itself. Perhaps she was the hologram she and Jack had spent so many hours fuelling. Perhaps the dross of a physical form had been completely burned away, leaving her in possession of her essential self.

But then, where was Jack? Everything in her training had indicated that successful completion of the transmutation would allow her to stay in communication with whomever she chose.

The consideration that Jack may have failed to make the leap did not bother her. In fact, she felt a breeze pass through her, like a whisper. Jack was here, but not in the same way as she.

As she pondered this, the light inside the cradle began to assemble, pulling from surrounding space until an outline shimmered before her. It inferred an infrastructure that was upright without committing to a particular form. More for her benefit than actual necessity for the entity.

She had lost all sense of direction. Up, down, in front of, behind, they all dissolved as she beheld the image of light. She was free of the constraints of 3 dimensional space. Free to observe and feel every nuance of movement occurring around her without becoming overwhelmed. She had no investment in the outcome, she realized. That made whatever happened now an unencumbered learning. She could feel but not be weighted by the sensation. She could love and breathe into the fullness of its potential. Jack could be whatever he was and she would touch him and they would go on learning like this until things shifted again. It flattened every possibility, every impossibility into a table top she could span easily.

As her spirit somersaulted through its newfound spaciousness, the light being reached out to her. The old woman who had watched everything from a distance now approached and extended her hand to Kate. It was a gesture, not an offer. She wanted her to approach the luminosity.

Kate was suffused with the brilliance. All she need say, was ‘yes’. Which she did. Instantly she was filled with a voice that moved her like a cork on the sea.

“How many people have actually looked for the truth behind the mythology?”

Matter paused, suspended in thrall of the thought. Kate waited too, there was more to come. The cradle began to rock, slowly at first and then faster until it became a whirling sphere that rose between them.

“He thought to find me incarnated. Something to be related to, someone he could study.”

She knew even before she saw the face in the ball.

“Jack.”

He sat in the room at the stone table, staring at the candle stick. There was a book on the table and his hands rested on an open page. His lips moved rhythmically and Kate understood he was chanting. No, it wasn’t that, he was…praying?

Lucibel spoke again, carrying her back to the cradle. “He is shallow. Ernest, yes and caught in human frailties. He would be incinerated before ever looking at the cradle.”

Fire stirred Kate’s belly. It wasn’t rage, it was conviction.

“He loves me. Surely that is enough to approach the light. Unless that is not what you really are.”

It didn’t laugh, exactly, but there was a decided ripple through Lucibel.

“Yes. He does at that. But what about you, Katherine? How were you pure enough to approach the cradle when Jack was not?”

So, the moment was here. Her memory supplied a sense of tension, a vague notion of nausea, but it passed swiftly. Kate drifted for a moment, letting her awareness be carried by the light waves emanating from Lucibel. She could never lie and remain there though the truth was more than she had anticipated.

“Thought moves differently here”, she realized. There was no slow unfolding; information did not dawn, it appeared as though commanded. “I am lingering because I remember the tendency of a body, my ego, to avoid unpleasantness…nothing more.”

But there was nothing unpleasant about the truth. It simply was.

“I not only hunger for the light, I have worked to become it.”

Lucibel countered.

“But what now, that I tell you, you have always been light. That you are all light.”

Kate felt herself slipping, shedding another skin as the words poured over her. All the breath, the fire, the desire to move beyond artifice-it had all been training. It had prepared her to accept this moment. She was lighter still, diffusing into the color around her, even as she struggled to collect herself.

“Is it too much for me?” she went to ask, but the words would not come. Instead, sound, more clear than any note she could have conceived of as Kate came from what she identified as her.

Lucibel wavered erratically, as if trying to leap out to catch the vibrations as they passed.

She watched for a moment and felt herself coalesce. There was no body anymore, nothing so crude for her to maneuver, but she was beginning to sense that energy could be grouped with intention. That her essence was what motivated certain particles to combine. She could become a fish as easily as a star and she flexed her awareness beyond its confines to test the theory.

She stood on the surface of the sun for a moment, expanded with its heat, felt its flares ripple through her field, and then, she remembered.

“He was my gravity. My contract to pull me into a body. To have this remembrance. He agreed to stay dark so I could experience expansion. He said he would see me at the end of his human life.”

Her heart no longer existed, as such, but her being shattered into a thousand fragments. Of sound.

They shot across the universe, dragging comets in their wake like water skiers tethered to a runaway boat. She felt creation itself bloom inside each fragment. Every galaxy bore a scent that reminded her of something on Earth. Wet stone after rain. Ozone in the aftermath of lightening. Space was a garden perfuming the very essence of possibility. And she inhaled deeply, calling them back to order.

They moved through staccato into a sensuous legato with stillness as afterglow.

There was no beginning and end, no place where sound and light did not venture.

And then she was lying in the cradle, the old woman rocking her with her foot and humming a tune that sounded familiar and old. In her hand she held a sphere and in it, Jack’s face, smiling as he laid down on the portal floor.

She waved her hands at him, trying to arrest his attention but his gaze fixed over her shoulder. “I should be able to contact him now.” She thought.

Lucibel echoed through her. “Are you certain you want to disturb him? He is finally ready to begin his journey.”

She looked closer, feeling the light from the cradle holding her steady. Jack’s face was the same, but his hands shook, an even tremor that passed like a shiver every few breaths. His eyes had their familiar lines but as she waited, they did not smooth. He moved deliberately, each motion coming slowly, without the spontaneous freedom she knew. He was old.

++++++++++++

She remembered when they had first discussed the possible outcomes of working together at the cradle site. Kate had been the one to suggest teaming up but Jack was skeptical. He had never discovered anyone who had successfully encountered the cradle alone and the thought of them attempting it together worried him.

“It’s difficult to be pure enough for admittance, let alone asking that of two people.”

Kate was unconvinced and shook her head.

“We balance each other. And since we’ve started working on the initiate level together, our tie is that much stronger. I think it works in our favor.”

Jack propped his hand against his mouth, covering it. Leaning into it, he weighed her words. And thought about his childhood.

An only child, Jack was raised by parents who were creative and practical. His mother was a theoretical physicist, his father an art historian. Their house had been a mosaic of prints by Italian masters and the unified field theory scrawled on the refrigerator in dry erase markers. He was allowed to have animals that did not require regular grooming. Mostly, Jack was a quiet kid who preferred books to people.

He’d had a best friend during high school, a lanky girl named Meredith who was into sewing period costumes. They spent hours together, him reading to her from Otto Rahn’s books on heretics and Lucifer, she sketching out her interpretation of what the characters might wear. They dressed as Lucifer and Venus for Prom and lost their virginity to each other in a lake cabin near Mt. Washington.

Meredith was cool and articulate, not unlike lime gelato. Jack never worried about saying something that would offend her because she did not care about offense. She cared about creating garments that played with light to startling effect. Jack was her inspiration, feeding her a constant source of information that wound into her seams and stitches. Their Prom wear had been exquisite.

Far from being sophomoric and gaudy, their outfits created a sense of galactic tension resolving in an undulation of shadow and light. She’d woven together tiny fishing lures and covered them in a sheer fabric to form a waist-coat for Jack. He wore a rough linen undershirt that had golden fibers embedded throughout. Down the sides of his tuxedo trousers, an iridescent strip of silk acted like a runway to his face. He looked like a god with his light curls and piercing eyes, just like she’d planned.

Her gown was flesh colored with a train that foamed behind her like sea spray. She had dyed the bottom blue and faded it gradually to nude at her waist. Her breasts were accentuated with silver curls beneath and around them, on her feet she wore slippers that curled at the toe with the same delicate curve.

Jack’s heart was useless when he saw the combined efforts of their work, but he said nothing. He figured they would continue on into infinity creating glorious homages to light. It never occurred to him there might be a price for such conviction.

Later that summer, Meredith was hit by an oncoming car riding her bicycle to his house. When Jack looked up from the costuming book, it was over. He recalled staring at his hands on the wheel, not knowing how to move. He’d been excited to present it to her as a gift for getting accepted into Princeton. He’d cradled her body in his arms for an hour, feeling the warmth leave her as he waited for someone to drive by. By the time a trucker stopped, Jack had started shivering.

Her parents did not press charges, despite Jack’s desperate wish to be punished. “It won’t bring her back.” Her mother had murmured. “You will never be the same after this, poor boy.”

The compassion stunned him. Made him vomit in the bus on the way back home. It was his get out of jail free card, but he was not going to let the jailer know he had it.

Looking at Kate, Jack felt the bile rise again. He could not tell her the story, it was his fate to bear, not hers. Still, the thought of leaving her behind, or worse, watching her be rejected at the gate to the cradle made him sick. He knew the price. But so did she and she was insistent.

He thought about abandoning his work, knew he loved her, feared its logical end.

“I’m no good at balance, Kate. When I go in for something, I’m in all the way. You’ve clouded my judgement. I’m all heart and no brain anymore.”

“I know,” she’d replied, giving him a hug. “That’s why we need to get to work.”

+++++++++

She lay in the cradle, the old woman stroking her cheek as she watched Jack close his eyes. It was strange that she did not feel remorse. His chest expanded and contracted so slowly, she could only feel the vibration travel through space to her.

“His body is failing,” she told Lucibel, “He’s dying.”

“So it is, are you sad?” The sky was crystalline and seemed to refract rainbows everywhere.

“Not sad, exactly. Curious. Look at him.”

Jack curled into a ball, curved in such a way that mimicked the shape of the cradle. His body seemed to shrink and expand with every breath. Kate saw light begin to lift off his skin and hover over him.

“His energy body,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful.”

Lucibel was quiet, letting light behold light.

Jack’s hands settled at his sides and ceased to quaver. His eyelids fluttered several times. Then suddenly, he sat upright.

Kate reached out to him, knowing it was not distress that moved him. He needed warmth.

“I am going back to help him down.”

The old woman stood up and shuffled back. When she raised her head, Kate watched as her skin pulled taut across her face until she was young.

“Go to him and bring him here. We will fill him together.” Her voice was clear and smoothed itself over Kate, lifting her out of the cradle. She felt buoyant and dense, looked down and saw flesh.

“What is this form for?” she questioned, remembering the weight of earth.

“It is so he will follow you. He will recognize you.”

And Kate stepped toward the shadows that gathered on the horizon. As she entered them, a hand reached for hers and guided her deeper. It was soft and warm and felt sympathetic. She stroked the fine hairs on the back of it and blinked her eyes. So strange to have senses, to feel disconnected from light. Her feet stumbled against roots and she reached out for something to steady her.

Ground whooshed up beneath her and she closed her eyes from vertigo. She had not anticipated this jarring as part of helping Jack.

And then she heard a low hum enter her body, felt it lengthen down her spine and uncurl her. She opened her eyes and saw Jack. Followed the sound to his mouth. She smelled the salt on the air and a faint sweat at his temple. She reached out and touched his shoulder.

When he opened his eyes, Jack saw stars. “Kate,” he whispered, “Is that you? Why can’t I see your face?”

Kate hugged him to standing. He was so light, almost transparent. She raised him in her arms and carried him across the room to the stone. It still pulsed with its unceasing heat. Laid him down and then placed her body beside him.

“I’m here to help you, Jack. To take you to the cradle.”

Jack sighed, letting his body sag into the stone. “That’s where you’ve been. Kate, you’re so light, I can’t see your edges.”

She cradled him then, wrapping her light around him until he was enveloped.

“It’s not important, Jack. I know you traded places with me. I should be looking for your face.”

His breath was mist now, the last bits of light rising from his body as she pressed herself through him and called them home.