Firefly Rain (40 page)

The news on my hand wasn’t quite as good—there were some crushed bones to go with the severe lacerations. They had to do surgery to put the jigsaw puzzle inside my fist back together, and then they slapped my arm in a cast up to the elbow to make sure I didn’t mess it up again. The doctor also stuck me with a rabies shot, just in case, and gave me a stern talking-to about the way I took care of myself. I took it all as best I could, too tired and too numb to wiseass back at him. Jenna, for her part, was fine. Scratches and cuts and a bruise here and there—she took care of herself, as always. She sat by my bedside and watched me sleep, or at least that’s what the nurses told me when I woke up and she was gone. She didn’t come back until morning—pale, tired-looking, and ready to get me out of there come more hell or high water. And at my bedside, she’d placed one crushed, crumpled toy soldier.

Hanratty’s questioning of both of us was perfunctory, not that I’d expected much else. Details would have raised too many questions. Instead, the town would discreetly mourn the loss of some of its leading citizens, pick up, and move on. Carl, it turned out, had a considerable sum of money that he’d willed to the upkeep of the Logan property, and specifically to the perpetual care of my mother’s grave. I told Hanratty I wasn’t sure I’d be using it, and she gave a massive shrug. “No sense in letting it go to waste,” she said, “especially after what you went through with him.”

“He went through more with me,” I said, and I let the subject drop. There’d be enough time to deal with that later. There’d be enough time to deal with a lot of things later.

Adrienne, on the other hand… well, I didn’t know what
happened to Adrienne. Nor did I ask, though I wanted to. Hanratty dropped a couple of hints that she’d gone back to her family in Banner Elk for some peace and quiet, and strongly discouraged any follow-up on the matter.

And then Jenna brought me home, said her long good-byes, and drove away.

I waited until the last plume of dust was out of sight, then stepped off the porch and felt the cool wet grass between my toes. This was my land. I belonged here. Every step I took told me that it was right.

In front of me, the fireflies danced. I could see them lighting my way in swirling clouds of light and steady pulses in the grass. I took special care not to step on them as I walked down to the pine trees and beyond. It wouldn’t do to harm any fireflies, not now. It just wouldn’t do.

The graves were waiting, like they always had been, just past the trees. Father’s stone had lines of lightning snaking along it, bolts of yellow-green power that wriggled and writhed and winked out when you least expected it. The same lines of fireflies that covered his grave snaked through the tall grass that grew there and shone up to Heaven. Mother’s stone was different, a soft glow from a hundred lights shining low and steady all at once. It told the angels, “Here I am. Come get me. Come bring me home.”

Up above, the skies were bright and clearing. There was a quarter moon sitting overhead in a patch of open sky torn from the clouds around it. The rain had long since gone, but I didn’t mind. It had rained enough since I’d come home. I wanted to see the stars.

I smiled and turned back to the graves. “Good-bye, Mother,” I said. “Good-bye, Father. I’m sorry. I did love you, you know.
I wish I’d shown it better.” They didn’t answer, not even in that fever-dream way I’d imagined they might. They were gone, thank God, gone home to wherever good people who try hard and love strong are supposed to go. Off in the distance, frogs sang and crickets chirped, and every so often I could hear the wind. No voices, though, and when I spoke, the night swallowed up the sound right quick.

That was fine. It was over. The fireflies were proof of that, all the proof that I needed. I nodded to each stone, then pivoted on my heel to head back up toward the house. It had been a long day in a series of long days, and I was bone tired.

As I turned, though, I noticed something. Lightning bugs were everywhere, happy and oblivious. One even landed in my hair. Except…

Except there was one bare patch left without them. It was six feet by three feet, just the right size for a grave, and it was right next to where my mother rested. No fireflies danced on it. No fireflies would cross its boundaries.

I took a deep breath and rested my hand on a tree to help steady me. No fireflies there, not for me. A slow look around my land showed me sparks of light everywhere. They’d come back, all right; they’d come back like they’d never left.

Save for that one spot, that one bare patch of black night resting so close to Mother’s gravestone that it made my heart ache. There was a message for me there, a message written in light and shadow.

That grave they marked out was mine, and not a one of them would guide an angel to it.

I’d planned, even after all this, to stay through the end of the year, then move on come next spring. This was my land now, my home, but I still needed to move on. The difference was that
I’d come back to it, and both the land and I knew it. No matter where I went, I’d come home. Maybe Jenna would join me, maybe she wouldn’t. That was for the future to tell, though, to unwind in its own way and its own time.

That’s what was written in my blood and in my bones. And the fireflies? They knew that once I came back, I’d be staying.

Forever and ever.

Amen.