“There’s no going back. Ever. It shouldn’t matter what’s running through my veins—or what’s beneath your skin,” she says, and steps closer. “No going back, Locke. Get that straight right now.” She pulls my face close, our lips touching, breathing each other’s breaths, nothing between us anymore, no lies or secrets. I ache inside in a way I never have before, in a way that makes me feel hopeful, in a way that makes being part of someone else’s dusty forgotten inheritance part of another lifetime. Not this one. Not the life I’m living now.
* * *
It turns out we have to spend the next few days in the organ gallery above the church. Father Emelio keeps us updated. The whole city is thrown into a Stage 10 Alert because of a security threat. The public is never told what the threat is but we know it’s us. All highways out of the city are in lockdown, which means extensive searches of every vehicle leaving the city. City streets aren’t much better, but because Boston is still billed as the home of a revolution that birthed two nations, tourism refuses to be shut down. But IDs are being checked and double-checked and no Non-pact in his right mind is leaving his home.
I don’t mind this time being holed up in the gallery with Raine. There are worse places to be. Much worse. I know, I’ve been there. In fact, in some ways I wish this time would never end. It’s surreal, day turning to night, night to day, the world outside almost ceasing to exist, the colored light of stained glass creating a new world for us, our world, Raine and me lying on blankets the father has brought us, our arms wrapped around each other, dozing, sleeping, touching, waiting to leave, but in so many ways not wanting to. A small piece of heaven. Our heaven.
Raine sleeps in my arms now. I look at the large round stained glass window above us. The exact same window I looked at so long ago when I was an altar boy and I should have had my eyes closed in prayer. Maybe even then I didn’t like the black world inside my head.
The world changes. It stays the same.
I ease my arm from beneath Raine’s head, replacing it with a folded blanket, and slip through the velvet curtain to the steps leading to the nave of the church.
As I walk down the center aisle, I feel the timeless power of it, a world that moves forward but stays the same too. My bare feet are cold against the marble floor. I’m all alone except for flickering candles, dancing shadows, and soft lights illuminating the altar. I stop midway, in the center of a world that refuses to stop spinning and it carries me along with it. I swallow. The immensity presses down on me.
It’s a journey, Locke. A long one.
Even my father never would have guessed that a journey could be this long, but all those years are a part of who I am now—even those 260 spent in a voiceless vacuum. If not for them, my life would never have intersected with Raine’s.
I saw and heard, and knew at last / The How and Why of all things, past. My past echoes around me. Glimpses. Ghosts. A world gone by, but still kept alive in this new one by me. My throat swells and I lower my head and bend my right knee the way my parents taught me before entering a pew, my right hand brushing my forehead, my heart, each shoulder in turn, and finally my lips. I see my mother nodding approval, my father touching my shoulder, and I step into the pew and sit, my hands resting on the seat in front of me, hands unlike any kind this church has ever known before. Just below them, cradled on the back of the pew, are a hymnal and a Bible. Real books. I pull the Bible from its slot, trying to recall something from my catechism days, and I flip through the pages until I find it. A Psalm. I linger on the words that seem to be written just for me.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
I touch my fingers to the paper, feeling the words somewhere inside me.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
My fingers slowly trace one line.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Fearfully and wonderfully made. I stand and exit the pew, repeating the practiced liturgy, and return to Raine. She smiles as I pull an extra blanket up over us and put my arm around her waist. There are all kinds of definitions for life. I have my own now. And that’s all that matters.
* * *
I’m startled awake with another blast of sirens in the streets outside the church. Raine’s eyes flutter open. We wait for them to pass and they do. We know this is only a brief respite, and not even a safe one. They’re still searching. How long before they search here?
I closed down my iScroll before I came here, not knowing if the Secretary had learned my code when Raine called me, so our outside communication has been limited. I use the phone tab if I have to talk to anyone. I briefly spoke with Miesha, telling her to stay put until I call her.
When I finished the call Raine repeated the name with wonder, Mee-sha, and asked me about her birth mother. I told her as much as I could, especially about our time running across the country with Dot. Oddly, I smile remembering those times, even though I wasn’t smiling then. I remember fuming in the back of the land pirates’ truck when Miesha wouldn’t tell me about her past, eating a disgusting oily tuna sandwich beneath a smelly tarp. Time has already softened so many memories. I tell her about the two of us pulling Dot from
the cab, neither of us willing to leave her behind, because Miesha knew as well as I did that there was something different about Dot. I tell her how Miesha struggled to tell me about Rebecca’s and Karden’s deaths, how she felt like she had lost everything and there was no point to life.