Chapter Twenty-Two #3
“I remember you,” he whispers.
“Frank, I don’t—”
“I remember you.” He talks over me, his eyes wide. “I know where I’ve seen you before.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When you first showed up in town, you looked familiar, but I—I thought I was being a paranoid old man. But I know your face. I know it.”
Goose bumps pebble my skin. The hair on the back of my neck sticks straight up. Realization hovers just out of reach, and I almost don’t want to ask. “How do you know my face, Frank?”
Frank has always looked at me with warmth, but right now his eyes are hard. Furious. “You don’t remember? You were there on the worst day of my life.” His chuckle is mirthless, sharp at every edge. “You took them away from me,” he accuses.
“Who?”
“My wife.” He rattles out a breath like even saying the word aloud is more painful than he can bear. “My daughter.”
And I remember. I do. Instantly. Something about the tears clinging to his lashes and the utter anguish twisting his mouth takes me right back to the exact moment I reaped that little family on the side of the road.
There had been a car accident. I appeared in the moments immediately after, broken glass beneath my boots. There was a little girl, no older than five, sitting with her knees tucked to her chest. And a woman with strawberry-blond hair sitting right next to her, cuddling her small body close.
The mother had looked up at me with sorrow-filled eyes, tears and blood on her cheeks, and quietly asked, “It’s over, isn’t it?”
I nodded and held out my hands, but she hesitated.
“My husband.” She turned her face toward the car, still turned on its side. “I can’t leave my husband.”
And then the worst of it. A man pinned beneath the wreckage, close enough to death to see me, but not close enough to put a stop to it. His hand has reached for me.
“No,” he begged. “Please. I’ll do anything.”
He was young and dazed and devastated, the same straight nose as the little girl sitting next to her mother on the curb. The same dark hair.
He was not who I had come for.
“Don’t,” he sobbed. “Please.”
I still remember the way he tried to claw out from beneath the truck, his fingertips scraped raw against the asphalt.
“Please don’t take them from me.”
I remember the indecision. The panic. I’d never had a mortal recognize me as death. It was unbearable to watch his pain. To feel it.
To know I was the cause of it.
“I’ll take care of them,” I assured him, but he was in a place where he could no longer hear me, his forehead against his arm, sobbing. “I promise.”
I didn’t want to linger any longer. I couldn’t. So I stumbled over to the mother and the daughter and I took their hands in mine. Together we went to a room with file cabinets, and I watched them disappear to another place.
Maverick said it could happen sometimes. That if a soul was close enough to the edge of death, then they could witness our existence. He told me to put it out of my mind and move on to the next assignment, and I did, but—
I didn’t realize it was Frank.
His eyes are the same. His hands. The sweep of his hair, now gray instead of black. I can’t believe I didn’t notice before. But I guess he’s never looked at me like this, with the same anguished hatred as that day on the side of the road. When I took his entire world away from him.
“Do you remember?” he asks.
My chin wobbles. I press my lips together to try to control it. Frank doesn’t need my shame or my apologies.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I remember.”
I won’t insult him by playing dumb. He deserves the truth from me.
He sucks in a deep breath through his nose, his chest rising. I wait for him to say something, but he stays quiet. Vibrating with a silent rage.
“I can explain,” I say carefully. It won’t make up for anything, but he deserves to understand.
He shakes his head once and looks at his feet. When he manages to lift his chin again, there are tears on his cheeks. My chest cracks open, and everything I’ve ever hated about myself spills out.
“Did you come here to see the wreckage you made of me when you took them?” He dashes his hands against his cheeks. “Did you want to see what you left behind?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Of course not, Frank.”
“Did you come to collect?”
“No. I didn’t. I swear to you.”
“Your promises don’t mean anything to me,” he says, his voice tight. “I want you to get out of my shop.”
“Please. Let me explain. I—”
“Get. Out.”
I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to make him understand. That I didn’t want to take his family away from him. That I hated leaving. That watching that little girl sob and ask for her daddy shattered pieces of me that I’ve never been able to get back.
That it was the first moment I started to wish for something different. That it woke up the part of me that yearned for the light instead of the shadows.
But Frank has turned his back to me, his shoulders hiked to his ears. He doesn’t owe me a thing, least of all his patience or time. The very least I can do is honor is wishes.
So I grab my bag, and I do exactly as he says.
I leave.