Part 8 (2/2)
Sometime in the night, someone touched the edge of her cheek. Julie opened her eyes, feeling nearly out of breath from a terrible dream that she couldn't quite remember seconds after waking up.
In the bedroom, a small shadow before her. ”Mommy?”
”Oh baby,” Julie said. She scooted further into the bed, allowing her daughter to climb up onto it. The heat of her daughter's body pressed against hers was comforting.
”I have an idea. Let's ask G.o.d to get Daddy back.” She kissed Livy on her forehead.
”I mean it,” Livy said, her voice wispy and full of wonder at her own idea. ”Maybe n.o.body's ever tried, Mommy. We just ask. Maybe G.o.d feels bad for us and he'll send Daddy back. I can ask in my brain radio. I can.”
”Oh, baby, honey, shhh,” Julie whispered. ”I love you so much.”
”G.o.d can do anything. Matt said in the Bible, G.o.d sent back a guy named Lazzus.”
”Lazarus, sweetie. But it was different. That was a miracle.”
”n.o.body ever asked for their daddy back. Maybe,” Livy said, getting louder, until finally she was yelling, ”Maybe if someone did, it would happen. G.o.d can do it!” ”I'm sorry.” Julie couldn't control her tears.
”I just want G.o.d to send him back,” Livy said, too loud. ”I want my daddy back. G.o.d can do it.”
11.
Julie dreamed of: The day she met Hut. On the subway. He, on his way to his residency, she, with a day off, thinking about going to buy an air conditioner for her steamy apartment. The train was packed, and he gave up his seat to her. She could not stop looking at him. He was handsome in ways she'd never seen-not a pretty man at all, nor one that had a natural beauty to his face. He just had what seemed to be a chalk outline around him, for her, an aura of something that made her want to know him. He had glanced at her a few times on the train, and then had leaned over and said, ”You'd think the carnival was in town,” which made her smile, as she glanced around at others on the train.
When they'd come up into a muggy afternoon, he said to her, ”You know, you look like someone I'd want to get to know.”
She had laughed. ”That's the worst pick-up line I've ever heard.”
”It can't be,” he said. ”Surely it's only in the top ten of the worst. It can't be the worst of all.”
From there, they'd made a casual date-to meet at the Empire State Building like Sleepless in Seattle. ”That way, if I scare you, you can have the safety of all those people, plus you can throw me off the roof if you decide I'm the wrong one. You can even give me a fake name if you want so I can't stalk you later. I'll buy the hot dogs.”
”I'll bring a parachute,” she'd told him.
And then, she dreamed of: The face of the dead man in the morgue. It had not been Hut, even though it had been him. What was Hut had fled, and left the empty husk of flesh behind.
The face of the dead man with closed eyes.
In her dream, his eyes opened.
Chapter Seven.
1.
After a week, Julie felt herself rise, a waking sleeper, from some dark place. She spent less time in bed. She began enjoying the taste of food again. Just a little. Less time avoiding phone calls from the detective. Less time avoiding her mother and sister and even her children. Livy started having bad dreams, but weirdly Matt was handling himself okay, and her therapist, Eleanor Swanson, said it was completely normal, everything that was going on. Normal, normal, normal.
Within a few days, her mother went back to Pennsylvania, and Mel came and went, and it wasn't normal yet, and she felt as if she were hiding something, keeping a secret about how she wanted to scream and cry and yell and break things and kick walls in.
But she let some autopilot within her switch on, and focused on Matt and Livy, helping them navigate the slender ca.n.a.ls of grief.
2.
”Mommy!” Livy cried out from the backyard.
Some instinct kicked in, and Julie thought of the trowel she had left in the flowerbed, and all she could think of was that her baby was hurt.
”Mommy hurry!” Livy screeched.
Julie nearly flew out the kitchen door, out to the patio.
Livy stood next to the low weeping willow tree at the edge of the lawn.
”Honey? You okay?”
Livy had a glow to her face-as if she'd been sunburned, almost. She had her hands to her ears. ”It's Daddy!” she shouted. ”It's him!”
Julie went to her and squatted down in front of her so they were eye-level with each other.
”He's on my brain radio,” Livy grinned. ”He's telling me he's okay.”
”Oh, baby,” Julie said, and felt herself get all weepy as she lifted Livy up. Livy wrapped her legs around her mother's waist. ”He's in heaven. He's with G.o.d now.”
”No he's not,” Livy said. Then, whispering in her mother's ear as if it were a big secret that n.o.body was supposed to hear. ”Gramma was wrong. He didn't go upstairs. He's with us. Right now.”
3.
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