Shift (26 page)

“Sounds risky,” Zachary said. “What if everyone finds out he’s really solid?”

“They won’t. Mickey will be backstage dressed as Logan. They look enough alike that people will assume they’ve switched places, especially since Logan will run backstage before coming out again with a real body. I’ll be back there, too, since Logan needs my help turning solid.”

“What kind of help?” Zachary’s voice was almost a growl.

“Whatever it takes.”

His lips tightened, and he switched on the radio to listen to a World Cup match. Discussion over.

We reached downtown Sykesville none too soon. Judging by the empty side street where we parked, it was the kind of place where not much happened after six on a weeknight.

Luckily, the lobby where the PO boxes were located was open all night, and right now was totally empty.

Once we’d found Box 308, I inserted the key and opened the door.

A large manila envelope leaned against the interior of the box. I pulled it out, almost reverently. The front bore Eowyn’s name and this address, but no postage. She had put this here herself.

Inside were two more envelopes—a thick nine-by-twelve one and a small white one bearing a
READ ME FIRST
! sticky note.

I slipped my thumb under the piece of Scotch tape, my heart hammering so hard I could feel my pulse against the paper. The envelope contained a single folded sheet.

D
EAR
A
URA
,

W
HEN YOU READ THE CONTENTS OF THE OTHER

ENVELOPE, YOU’LL BE THE ONLY LIVING PERSON TO

KNOW YOUR MOTHER’S SECRET.
I
HOPE SOMEDAY

YOU’LL SHARE IT WITH ME.

I’
M VERY PROUD OF YOU AND
Z
ACHARY
. T
OGETHER

YOU WILL DO GREAT THINGS.
I
F THEY LET YOU.

W
ALK IN PEACE
,

E
OWYN
C
YNTHIA
H
ARRIS

Beneath her name was a phone number with a 00 prefix.

“Now she tells us how to reach her,” Zachary muttered.

I traded him the letter for the larger envelope. Across the wide adhesive seal was my mother’s handwriting:
TO BE READ
ONLY
BY AURA, IF EVER
. At either edge the seal was reinforced with red candle wax, like a letter from a hundred years ago.

“We’re the first people to read this,” I whispered.

“And we should do it somewhere private.”

“There’s no one here, and I can’t wait.” I broke the seals.

A peek inside the envelope showed a mass of loose pages, so I hurried to the table near the self-service postage machine. There I dumped out the contents all at once.

The missing pages of my mother’s journal. I wanted to cheer. Or cry. Maybe both.

“Eowyn had them all these years,” Zachary whispered.

The pages were arranged chronologically, starting with an entry marked “December 21 (cont.).” My toes wiggled inside my shoes as I realized
this
was the remainder of the entry I had at home, which I’d memorized months ago:

December 21

There are no words to describe what happened this morning in Newgrange. But so, so, SO many questions.

I scooted closer to Zachary so he could read over my shoulder. I didn’t want to go through this alone.

This morning before sunrise, twenty of us huddled inside that chamber. I felt lucky to be here on the day of the actual solstice, unlike the eighty lottery winners whose tickets got them access on one of the two days before and after. (I wouldn’t have been inside at all, if not for a gorgeous Scotsman who gave me his extra ticket.)

Let’s be honest. I’m lucky to be alive, period, but now more than ever, for having seen this place.

As the time approached, we all hushed, as if our words could keep the sun underground. I imagined how prehistoric folks must have felt as the sun spent less time above the horizon each day, maybe wondering if it would one day stay away and never come back.

At the visitor center they said that

I flipped the page, and Zachary put out his hand. “I’m not done.”

“Did you get stuck on my mom calling your dad gorgeous?”

“I don’t read as fast as you. But aye, that was odd.”

I waited while he finished. Then I turned over the page.

“solstice” means “sun standing still,” because for three days the sun seems to trace the same pattern in the sky. At one precise moment, it switches from “leaving” to “returning.”

But the light doesn’t really return on the winter solstice. That day is still pretty damn dark. Solstice is just a promise.

But it’s a promise kept. Light always returns. Unlike people. When they’re gone from this world, they’re just gone.

Not anymore
, I thought. Logan was only one of thousands, maybe millions, who had returned as a ghost since the Shift. The way Mom described the meaning of the solstice made me think its connection to ghosts couldn’t be a coincidence.

I read on.

While I was standing there, thinking thoughts as deep and dark as the chamber itself, it happened.

A red-golden beam appeared, like a laser shooting down the corridor onto the
chamber floor. When it touched the farthest spot on the floor, in the back recess, they even let us step through it. I felt giddy for the first time in months.

Right then, I believed, to the bottom of my soul, that anything could happen. If the sun could return from death, anyone could. I had done it (from the brink of death, anyway).

Why couldn’t he?

“Whoa.” I looked up at Zachary, wishing my hands would stop shaking.

“She almost died?” he said. “Did you know that? And who’s ‘he’?”

I shook my head. “I’m so confused. Let’s keep going.”

Afterward, we all gathered outside, none of us wanting to leave this place and what we’d shared. An American teenager with long blond curls told me the strangest thing—when I’d passed through the solstice sunbeam, she saw me lit up from the inside, like my skin was a lampshade.

On any other day, that image would’ve creeped me out. But at the time,
my mind was soaked in belief, the kind I’d had as a kid, when I thought that God granted our prayers the way Santa Claus grants wishes.

So to commemorate our shared awe (and because the morning light looked exquisite on Eowyn’s golden hair), I took her picture and promised to mail it to her.

Now that it’s dark again—the sun set at four, how depressing—my soul feels heavy. God and Santa Claus are fairy tales, and wishes don’t make anything come true.

My hands trembled harder. In her pictures, Mom always seemed so carefree. I’d always envied the way she breezed through life, even as it was ending. I never knew how much pain her heart had harbored.

I took a deep breath and turned to the next page. At the top, it read “December 26 (cont.).” The entry had been torn out midsentence. The first word was “Anthony.”

I thought back to the journal pages I had at home. Anthony must have been the possibly dead person my mom couldn’t believe she saw at the St. Stephen’s Day party.

Even though I knew it couldn’t be him, I tried to get closer, maybe ask if I could take his picture. Then me and Not-Anthony would have a good laugh and he would think I was trying a lame pickup line (“Don’t I know you? Haven’t we met? You look like a guy I wish I’d slept with”), and he’d smile and buy me a drink, and after that, who knows?

But when I got to that side of the pub, he had disappeared. No one else had seen him.

So I’m re-evaluating my disbelief in ghosts. As long as I’m in Ireland.

I drummed my fingernails on the table while Zachary finished reading the page. “Do you know who Anthony is?” he asked.

“Please stop asking questions. I don’t know anything but what’s in front of us.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m going to keep reading ahead. You can catch up.”

“No. We can’t do this here, where anyone could walk in.” Zachary scooped up the pages and headed for the exit.

I had no choice but to follow.

* * *

Zachary’s car was parallel parked on the wrong side of the street, facing traffic—not that there was any traffic. We got in and locked the doors.

He put the key in the ignition. “Where should we go?”

“Nowhere. If I read in a moving car, I get carsick.”

“Then you read out loud here, while I keep a lookout.”

“Whatever.” Luckily, there was still plenty of sunlight. I started reading to Zachary.

“December 31/January 1

I’m writing these two entries together because it feels like one day. I haven’t slept since night before last. Now I wonder if I’ll ever sleep again.

New Year’s Eve night was warm enough that we could stand outside the pub to drink and smoke and look out at the party boats on the River Boyne.

That’s when I saw Anthony. Walking atop the water. His long coat brushed the river’s tiny waves, making no ripples.

He looked just as he had the night before the car accident, when he was alive. But now he was serene and determined, like a man with a mission.

When Anthony reached the shore, he disappeared.”

The next entry’s handwriting was even sloppier than the others’, the words leaking off the lines as if written by the left hand of a right-handed person.

“January 2ish

Holy, holy, holy shit, it’s true. It’s really him.

I’m under the covers. (Coward.) A’s out there in my room, which doesn’t feel like mine anymore. This whole real world—whatever that means—doesn’t feel like mine anymore.

Why me? Why not Gina? Her love for Anthony ruined her life. All I did was get on a plane to learn about my friend’s favorite place in the world, to feel close to him after his death.

And now I am. Closer than I ever thought possible.”

I looked out the window, my eyes strained from deciphering the bad handwriting. “She must be talking about the guy Aunt Gina had an affair with. Gina used to see ghosts, so she saw him after he died. She told me my mom had a crush on him.”

“Sounds like more than a crush,” Zachary said. “So he was with your aunt and mother at the same time?”

“I don’t know if he was,” I said defensively. “It’s hard to tell for sure what happened when.” I continued reading aloud.

“January 3

Not flying home tomorrow. I’m staying here to be with him. I can always make up school later, if I stay healthy. I can do anything later.

But only this is now. Life is short.”

What did she mean,
If I stay healthy
? I swept my hair off my face, wishing for a ponytail holder in the hot, stuffy car.

As if reading my mind, Zachary turned the key halfway in the ignition and rolled the windows all the way down. The radio came on automatically, but he switched it off.

“January 20

It seems so unfair, so WRONG, that Anthony helped me escape death, only to be yanked there himself.

I would give anything if we could be together now, like we never were in life. But it’s impossible. His flesh is now spirit, and my flesh is, well, flesh.

But it hasn’t stopped me from falling in love.”

My chest ached. Everything my mother wrote rang so true to the way I felt after losing Logan. The endless longing and review of missed opportunities. The sense that I would’ve done anything to feel his skin against mine once more, and that with another chance, everything would be different.

I skimmed the next several pages, tossing them onto the floor in front of me. They held nothing but snippets of conversation between Mom and ex-Anthony, plus lists of places they’d gone.

One day these pages would help me put together a full picture of my mother’s time in Ireland, but right now I needed to know who my father was. A cinder of fear smoldered as I began to grasp one possible, horrible truth.

“Slow down,” Zachary said.

“I have to know.” I flipped the stack over. “I’m starting from the end.”

I read the final entry to myself, in silence.

April 19

I’m pregnant. This is impossible.

Last year they told me the cancer treatments would make me infertile.

But it’s happened. I don’t know how.