Page 60 of Keep Me

And now, I was still in my dead father’s house asking something I did not have the language for yet, something in the shape of: Does anyone choose me before something unbearable makes them need to?

I did not say it. Zane had just fought his way to the other side of something, and I was not going to hand him hill to climb over, too.

Instead, I said, “I understand.”

I sat down on the bench that I knew so damn well. And I meant it about all of it, the choosing, the direction, the dream, the cemetery, all of it.

Zane sat beside me and I leaned toward him and put my head against his shoulder, and he put his arm around me, and we sat there on the porch of my dead parents’ house with his dead best friend’s letter taking over the entire area, and I held the question somewhere inside where it could rest until I knew how to ask it properly.

In front of us, the hummingbird feeder hung, no longer empty in the dark. The thing I had filled was the thing I had not yet learned to keep.

Fate

Austin let himself in around noon the next day, the way he always did, no knock, just the front door opening and his voice announcing him before his body caught up.

“Seren?”

“Kitchen,” I called back. I was always in the kitchen. I was stuck here.

He found me where I had been most of the morning, at the island, the letter still sitting on the counter where it had spent the night, where it had decided it lived now. It had replaced the phones and the granola bar and the envelope. Zane had gone back to his parents to shower and change, promising to be back by evening, and the house had that quiet it got when it was just me and whatever I was supposed to be doing with myself.

Austin took one look at my face and pulled out the stool across from me without asking. “You look like you slept on the kitchen floor,” he said.

“I did.”

“With Briggs?”

“With Zane.”

He nodded, like that explained everything it needed to. He reached over and stole a piece of toast off my plate, the way he always did, and ate half of it before he spoke again.

“Okay,” Austin said. “Talk to me.”

“Zane found something,” I said. “Last night.”

“Found what?”

“A letter. From Henry’s parents. He has had it for years and never opened it.” I watched Austin’s eyebrows pull together. “He opened it last night.”

“Okay,” Austin said slowly. “And?”

I did not know how to start this in the right order, so I just started. While I was talking, I knew it would not make sense to Austin, I was laying down pieces of a puzzle that he did not know the final image of. He did not know how many pieces were needed, and he did not know what the corner pieces were. I knew that and I laid it down anyway, because I was able to do that with Austin. I could give him the shadows of things, and he would sit through it until I finally gave him enough light to see what was standing in my mind that was casting those shadows. I could forecast the storm, and he did not need the numbers and science. I only needed to explain the way my knee was hurting and there was pressure in my eyes, and the sky held a specific shade of red, and he saw the same storm as I could.

Me and Austin speak the same language. We both know weather that wants to spin you around and soak your skin.

“There was a dream,” I said. “Zane had it. Years ago. After Henry died. Henry told him not to let someone fall. No name. Just a girl.”

Austin’s jaw shifted, the smallest amount. “Okay. A dream. When?”

“Before any of it. And then Zane went to visit Henry’s grave. The first time after the funeral. And he saw me there. At my mom’s grave.” I watched that land on Austin’s face, the pieces starting to assemble themselves before I had even finished giving them to him. “He didn’t know me yet. Not really. Or maybe he did, but I did not know him. He just saw a girl crying at an angel and he thought about the dream.”

“Seren.” Austin’s voice had gone careful. “What does this have to do with the letter? What kind of letter?”

“Henry knew me,” I said. “I knew Henry.”

That stopped Austin’s cautious look cold. Austin knew the architecture of Zane and Henry. He knew the architecture of my solid understanding that Henry was Zane’s ghost, not mine.

“No, you didn’t,” Austin said quickly. “What are you talking about?”