Until Then

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

Quinn

It's in the still of the night that I let go of the need to figure this all out. I know you can hallucinate when exhausted and under stress. If you add to that the deep wrenching heartache I feel for the loss of the little boy who, in his death, had managed to Hulk Stomp my heart, there's a chance I'll never get all the pieces back together.

"I hope so too." This is probably where I should get in my car and drive myself home so I can go to bed and not emerge again until I'm sure there isn't a Marine that only I can see, speaking to me with empathy and compassion. Just like I'd always hoped I'd find in a love interest. There has to be irony there—that I'd find the boy of my dreams and he'd literally be the boy in my dreams.

"I'm kind of torn right now," he says shyly, ducking his chin to look at his feet before meeting my eyes again. It makes me giggle and something warm spill over from my heart and into my stomach. It feels good to sit here in his company. If my mind has created him because of the trauma of losing Joseph, then I'm not going to rush him away. Maybe my brain knows what's best.

"About...?" I tip my head to the side and wait for his answer, loving the way he rubs a hand against his chin. He's nervous.

"I'm hoping there's someone who's expecting you soon, because I hate the thought of you leaving this parking lot so late at night after your shift and going home to an empty house." He lifts his brows and it makes him look so young. "But...I also don't want there to be anyone waiting for you because then you'll have to leave soon."

I laugh, turning my body so that I can look directly at him. "No one is expecting me." His face falls and I can see that worry is working its way up his features. "But I'm supposed to call Letty to let her know I made it home okay. She knows I was going to take a little time to get myself together before I tried to drive home."

"No boyfriend then?" he asks.

"No." I shake my head and look away, not wanting to get into all the reasons I haven't tried to find someone to keep me company this last year. "What about you? Do you have a girlfriend—or did you have a girlfriend before you became this mystery man that has a strange sense for when I'm falling apart?"

He grins. "No girlfriend now or before. I had someone back home for a little while." He stops, his tongue peeks out to run along his lips. "This is going to sound crazy, but I think I always knew how my life was going to end. Not the details of course, but the general path."

I nod my head because I know exactly what he's saying and I don't think it's crazy at all. There have been many times when I've just known the way something would turn out as if I'd read about it somewhere already. I'd wanted to be a nurse since I was a little girl, and I always knew where I'd go to college and where my first apartment would be. "It's not crazy. Maybe sad since you're sitting here with me instead of living your life."

"You would think I'd feel upset about it, but I don't. I was having the time of my life until that life was over. I don't know why I'm still here, but whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing, I wouldn't have been able to if I were still alive." He shrugs his shoulders as if it's nothing. I'm in awe of this young man, courageously giving his life to serve our country and then being in service even in death.

"What's it like? I watch so many kids pass over and one of the hardest parts is not being able to assure them there's something else out there when their time here is over."

"I don't know yet myself." He turns his body slightly towards me and rests his arm along the back of the bench. "I was running from enemy fire and the world lit up." He motions with his hand how big the light had grown. "Then I was in the kitchen talking to my dad."

"He could see you too?" Maybe it's not just me.

"He's not of your world either. He took his own life when I was just a kid."

"I'm sorry," I say quickly. "I can't imagine what a parent's suicide would do to a little kid. It must have been hard."

"It was, but the day he did it was a long time after he had actually left us. We lost him when he left for his last deployment. He never really came home." His words make tears sting the back of my eyes.

"That's terrible. I know what it's like to lose a parent young, but it just seems so much harsher to have them choose to leave instead of something taking the life from them." I never talked about my parents, but something about him made disclosing my personal business easy and dare I say...therapeutic?

"You've lost a parent?" he asks.

"Both actually. I was young too. I don't really remember them. I just remember what it was like to not have a parent while everyone else did. My grandma raised me after the accident. She passed two years ago." I rest my elbow on the back of the bench and use my hand to hold my head. "She was all the family I had."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. She was ready. She was young when she started forgetting things. At first it was picking me up from high school, or which way to turn at the end of our street to go to our favorite restaurant. Slowly she lost more and more, like names of close friends and whole decades of memories. She was only fifty-eight when she was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease."

"Wow," he comments quietly.

"It was rough. In the end her quality of life wasn't great. She used to tell me she just wanted to be little again. She wanted to start over and not have all the confusion. She spent a lot of time afraid and that was hard to watch. I like to think that she got to heaven and then came back so she could experience all the things she forgot she enjoyed, without any of the confusion or fear."

"I have no idea what happens once you get to leave the space between, but if there's a chance we get to come down here and do it again, I hope next time I meet you sooner." His grin is sly.

His words are warm and soothing to my sore soul, and I feel myself smiling so big my cheeks start to hurt. I don't know what happens either, but maybe death wouldn't be so lonely with someone like him waiting for you in the space between.

***If you could meet up with someone in the space between, who would it be? Tell me here and on twitter (at)SarahWhiteWrite or tag me in a picture with that person on Instagram (at)SarahWhiteWrite***