The Runaways

Chapter 19

Caleb

I woke up to miles of darkness, dead quiet, and hollow fear. It was just me and the shadows for a while. My heart beat against the blackness, pumping blood through a body I’d run down to the bone.

Someone called out to me. Someone I’d tried to forget, someone I’d loved too much, who’d left me too soon. She was somewhere in the dark. I didn’t think I’d ever hear her again, but I knew that voice too well to deny it.

I couldn’t see her, or much of anything, but I kicked my legs off the ground and broke out running. Running like I could find her blind. I’d chase that voice across forever just to hear it again. If this was dying, God never runs out of surprises.

I ran until my blood set my heart on fire, and it burned brighter the closer I got to where she was. Something subtle and sweet slipped right past my nose out of nowhere.

Spiced honey and lily flowers.

I fell to my knees, like all the hope keeping me standing was sucked out by that smell. I only ever lost hope in anything for two reasons, I either gave up on what I was looking for, or I found it. And this time, I found it.

She was right there with me, I felt it, and I breathed her in ‘til I couldn’t anymore. I cried out like I did the day I lost her. All that misery I’d gotten so good at carrying around just up and boiled over.

I tried stopping myself, like always—to man up and hold it together. But every time I came close, my eyes filled up ‘til there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

She spoke to me. Like she was next to me this time, and said, “You’re alright, love,” and I fell apart like a toy soldier.

When I finally got around to not crying, I blinked the water out of my eyes, and there she was, cradling my head in her arms and gazing out over her bedroom window watching the sunset like she always did.

The darkness disappeared as quick as it came. Maybe I cried it away, or maybe I died, but I didn’t ask questions.

Her room and all her beautiful things still looked exactly how she’d left it. The pretty gold clock she had by her bedside, the hundred little wooden boxes me and my brothers made for her precious things, the dried flowers from her wedding day—everything was still there, and still perfect. So was she.

Not a lick of disease or despair had marred her face yet. Soft rose budded in her cheeks and her eyes still burned bright like mine. Seeing her like that made it hard to believe that she’d eventually wither away.  

I stopped thinking too much and thanked God for giving her back to me like this—like nothing had changed.

Her bed was the softest place in the world, and as I lay there, disappearing into a kind of peace I hadn’t felt in a long while, I figured I could die here with her and not think twice about it. If there was any mercy in the world I was already dead, I just didn’t know it yet.

I didn’t speak for a long time, just lost myself in the feeling of her running her porcelain fingers through my hair. I reached up and tugged on the corner of her nightgown, the silk and lace one she used to wear when she wanted to feel beautiful. I never saw her any other way.

I glanced up at my hands as I clung on to her sleeves. They’d gotten so small, as small as they used to be when I was only nine or ten. Maybe heaven for someone like me was a good memory with my Ma. I could live and die with that just fine.

She looked down at me with the kindest eyes in the world, and asked if I was hungry. Sometimes that’s all you ever need to hear.

I opened my mouth to tell her I could eat and a squeaky half-pint of a voice came stumbling out. I’d always been the runt. If I hadn’t had my brothers, I would’ve come home black and blue from school more often than I did.