Damien wiped his eyes and tried to sound cheery. “Okay. Well, Z knows I’m here, and she’ll call if she needs me. I’ll have a pot of chamomile tea, read a little, and then maybe even nap. Actually, napping sounds like a good idea.” His shoulders slumped and he stared at the closed cover of the book he had been looking forward to reading.
He missed Jack. His Jack. But his Jack was dead. Other Jack, as Aphrodite and everyone was calling him, was downstairs. Alive. He wasn’t his Jack, but he looked like him. He even sounded like him sometimes. And any part of Jack was better than the horrid gaping hole that was his absence.
“What would happen if I went back down there—to his room—and just sat with him?” Damien murmured to himself. He glanced at the clock on the mantel of the unlit fireplace. It was a few minutes after six, so he had about an hour and a half until Jack was unconscious.
“No. I have to stay away. I have to remember he’s dangerous, and he’s not mine.” Damien pressed his hand against his mouth, trying to stifle a sob.
There was a soft knock on his door.
Damien cleared his throat and wiped at his eyes. “Who is it?”
“Grandma Redbird. Might I come in, please, Damien?”
Surprised, Damien hurried to open the door. She was standing there with a small picnic basket held in the crook of her arm, smiling up at him and looking sweet and familiar and so filled with grandma-love that he wanted to put his head on her shoulder and cry himself to sleep.
Instead, he said, “Of course. It’s really good to see you. Would you like some chamomile tea?”
“I would, dear,” Grandma said.
He motioned for her to have a seat on the settee while he went to the cupboard for another cup.
“These guest rooms turned out beautifully,” she said. “Zoey told me you did most of the redecorating work on them. You’re really very talented, Damien.”
“Thank you. I enjoy design. Before I was Marked I planned on going to SCAD. That’s the Savannah College of Art and Design. They have a program located in Lacoste, France. I was going to try for a study-abroad semester there. It’s why I started learning French in middle school. Would you like almond milk and sugar?”
“Just a little milk, please. Well, you’re certainly a gifted decorator.” Grandma’s face wrinkled into a cherubic smile. “Though I believe decorator is probably the wrong title for something this grand.” With a sweeping gesture, she took in the beautiful suite.
“The more official title is interior design, but I don’t think it’s offensive to call it home décor, or home decorating. Of course I also don’t have a degree or a career in the field, so I could definitely be wrong.”
“Ah, semantics. They can certainly bog us down, can they not?”
Damien nodded and sipped his tea before asking, “Can I do something for you, Mrs. Redbird?”
“First, you can promise never to call me Mrs. Redbird again. I’m Sylvia or Grandma, whichever you prefer.”
“I prefer Grandma,” Damien said.
“As do I, dear,” she said. “I came here not because I need you to do something for me, but because I would like to do something for you.”
“Me?” He stopped the motion of his cup midway to his mouth.
“You,” she said firmly before opening the lid of the small picnic basket. Carefully, she pulled out a bundle wrapped in a brightly colored scarf. “I see your sadness, wahuhi.”
“Yes, I’m sad. Jack is downstairs. But he isn’t. Jack is alive. But he isn’t. I think being sad is a correct response.”
“I was not admonishing you, child. I was only acknowledging the depth of your grief.” Grandma Redbird touched his cheek gently. “But you and I know this sadness has nothing to do with Jack.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” His words denied it, but the fact that he spoke them in a voice pitched much higher than usual revealed the truth.
Grandma said nothing. She simply watched him with knowing eyes and a kind expression.
Damien bowed his head, unable to meet her gaze any longer.
“You have no reason to show shame. Sometimes our spirit weeps. When it does you must work at comforting it, and then healing it.”
“Can—can you do that for me?” he asked hesitantly.
“No, wahuhi, no one can do that for you. That is something you must do yourself. I can help strengthen you, though, so that you may begin the job of healing.”
He lifted his head. “What if I can’t heal?”
“Then you will either live miserably, or you will die. It is your choice—and only your choice.” Grandma cocked her head to the side, studying him. “But I believe you will choose wisely. I have always sensed much wisdom and kindness within you, though you rarely use either for yourself. May I ask you a rather impertinent question?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to heal? Do you want to live embracing joy and all the messiness it brings with it?”
Damien opened his mouth to give an automatic reply, but Grandma Redbird lifted her hand in an imperious gesture. “Do not answer by rote. Many people do not want to embrace joy—not in this lifetime. If you are one of those people, have the courage to speak your life path in truth. I will not judge you—that I swear.”
“Why would someone not want to embrace joy?”
“Because a life filled with depression—sadness and stress and the tumult and drama that comes with such a life—can be addicting. After you live with it long enough, you only feel normal if you are mired in darkness. No, I do not mean the Darkness that is accompanied by evil. I mean the darkness that is an absence of joy, of lightness of spirit, of happiness. Depression is an abyss—a pit from which it is difficult to emerge. You must truly want everything that the absence of sadness brings with it—all the victories and defeats of a life lived open to the endless possibilities of love and light and laughter.”
“In other words, a life where I could get my heart broken. Again.”
“Yes, child.”
“Or I could be disappointed by friends and family.”
“Or, in a life lived fully, embracing joy, you could choose the wrong career path or make decisions that hurt others even though you do so with the best intentions, and so, so many other mistakes you would not make if you retreated within yourself and closed off those possibilities. Or if you ended your life. So, think before you answer me. Do you want to heal?”
Damien felt his eyes well and then overflow, but he didn’t look away from Grandma Redbird’s knowing gaze. Finally, he whispered, “What if I’m not brave enough to open myself to that kind of pain?”
“Then you will not know that kind of joy, either.”
“I want it, though. I want joy,” Damien whispered desperately.
Grandma leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “Then believe in yourself. Believe you are brave and worthy of such joy.”
“Yes.” The word came out as a whisper and Damien stopped, cleared his throat, and began again—this time in a voice that filled the room. “Yes. I want to heal. I want to live a life filled with joy.”
Grandma’s smile was like the full moon beaming on a winter-white field. “Of course you do, child. And you shall. Now, let us begin.”