CHAPTER EIGHT
Ten Years Ago
Two weeks after my fourteenth birthday, Grams went into the hospital after coughing up blood. The doctor said she had pneumonia and needed to stay, and asked if I had any family. I told them my parents were dead and Grams was all I had. I think the nurses felt sorry for me, because they let me stay with her.
I think I felt sorry for me, because I blamed Grams for getting sick. “I need you,” I told her. “You shouldn’t have been gardening in the rain.”
Grams loved her garden. I helped her, sometimes, but I think she liked to be alone to pull weeds and turn the soil and plant her flowers. I helped carry pallets of flowers, mowed the lawn, and trimmed the bushes because the shears were too heavy for her. But Grams spent hours every day outside.
It didn’t rain a lot in Florida, but whenever it did Grams got sick. Like now. Except now was worse because she was seventy-nine and had been slowly dying ever since Grandpa died when I was five.
I knew she wouldn’t live until September, when she’d be eighty. The doctors wouldn’t say it, but they didn’t tell me she was coming home, either. They said things like “We’re doing everything we can” and “She’s strong,” and “Give it time.” Never that she was going to die, but never that she’d get better.
It wasn’t fair! I needed her.
“Read to me, Peter.” Grams had been in the hospital for three days. I thought she might come home today, but the doctors said no. She looked sick. She’d never looked sick until three days ago. Tired, maybe, but not sick.
I picked up book 6 in the Chronicles of Narnia series. She’d bought me the books the first Christmas I lived with her, before my sister’s killer was put on trial. I read them because there was nothing else I could do—I couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours a night, I couldn’t go to school without someone talking about Rachel or my parents. Even in Florida, people knew. Especially after that reporter published a book about it. Why would somebody do that? Write a book about Rachel’s murder and the bizarre life my parents lived. People whispered when they didn’t think I could hear, even the teachers. Grams got rid of her television, so at home I didn’t have to remember if I didn’t want to.
But I’d never forget Rachel.
Grams’s eyesight was poor, and a few months ago she asked me to read my favorite book to her. I don’t know if the Narnia stories were my favorites, but I knew Grams would like them. There was one more book after The Silver Chair, and I wanted to finish the series for her. Maybe if I read slowly enough, she’d get better.
I read until she slept, and then I cried. I hated her for being sick, and I hated me for being mad at an old woman. I hated God for killing everyone I loved. My insides were black like an unswept chimney. Dark and full of ash. I didn’t want to be here or anywhere. I wanted to die when Grams did.
I was too big to curl up with Grams anymore, but I put the side railing down and put my head next to her thin arm. She smelled old and sweet—the sweet from the apricot shampoo she liked.
Rachel walked into Grams’s room. I stared at her, because I didn’t believe she was there.
I must have fallen asleep, because ghosts aren’t real.
“You can’t come back,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. She looked at Grams. “She’s going to die, Peter.”
“No, she’s not.” I sounded nine again.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. She wasn’t real. She wasn’t here. She was dead, and I’d never see her again. When Grams died, I would be alone.
“Are you going home?”
“They moved.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
Grams, don’t die. Please don’t die.
I woke up and of course Rachel wasn’t there. But Grams was, and she was petting my hair like I was her puppy. I cried again.
“Shh,” she whispered. “You’re stronger than you think. Believe in yourself, Peter, like I believe in you.”
“I don’t want you to die.” My voice cracked and broke like my heart.
“We don’t have a choice when our Father calls us home. Go get the last book. Read it to me, Peter.”
Five days later, an hour after I finished reading The Last Battle, Grams died.