“I saw it,” I rasp. “I saw how all of it would be.” How we would fit, what would be built between us. “I was there. What do I do with that?”
“Sweet kid.” Grandmother reaches out and swipes a piece of tear-dampened hair away from my eyes. “I may have never seen it, but it never left my heart, this whole time. You take your hope with you to the end, just like I’m doing.”
I look up into her face, searching for her meaning, and she presses her finger to her lips, eyes dipping toward the ground. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse and rough. “I’m dying.” Her confirmation is little more than a squeak, and she takes a long second to build her voice back up. “This isn’t about me anymore. It’s about you, and what you want.”
“Dying?” I whisper. “How?”
She closes her eyes. “I won’t tell you that. I don’t want to ruin any surprises, or give you any fears. Everyone dies, honey, and you already know that now, at eighteen.”
“And even Jesus was scared to die,” I remind her.
“He was.”
“You can’t tell me anything? Give me any hint?”
She folds her hands together to steady her trembling. “I can tell you that the pain of living is worth it. That if you live, your life will be as full of love as it is darkness, and for every moment of pain, you’ll have one of joy too. The one thing you won’t feel is what you feel now with Beau, and that doesn’t make your life any less worthy of being lived. But then again, worthiness isn’t a factor in whether we’re alive or loved.
“You have the choice to either appreciate the impossible and unwarranted gift of being alive or to give it to someone else. To use your love to remake the world. Whether you give it to Beau or keep it, Natalie, the world’s going to keep right on being terrible and beautiful all at once.”
I’ve been so afraid of those terrible things, of everything falling apart and of never knowing who I am or finding the place I belong. But here I am, looking at myself at the end of time, and she was never alone, not really. God, it’s a painful sort of relief, seeing that some version of me has already lived and that all those fears eventually fell away, unrealized. I still want the whole picture all to myself, to get to the end of my world and slip quietly from there, but there’s no real choice to make. I don’t know for sure what will happen when I go back to the night of the accident, but I know I’ll go. Not because Beau’s future is so big or because mine is so small, but because love is giving the world away, and being loved is having the whole world to give.
“How much time do I have?” I ask.
“Hours,” she says. “Minutes. I don’t know, Natalie. Not much.”
“I’m so scared.”
She pulls me into a hug and smooths my hair away from my face, exactly as Mom has a billion times. Mom. The last thing I said to her was I don’t have a mother. There are so many things I need to do. See my parents, Jack, Coco. Tell my mom to stop carrying around her guilt and promise her it’ll be made right. Say goodbye to Megan, tell her how much I love her. Comfort the Kincaids, who will have their son back, if this works. Thank Rachel for loving me brutally, enough to hate me for leaving her behind.
And I need to be held by Beau. To make sure he understands how deeply I really do love him. How kind and gentle and soft he is. How safe and cared for he makes people feel, and how much brighter the world is for all he does and gives. How good he is, and what kind of life he deserves despite the one he’s been given.
But there may not be time to say these last words. I can’t risk it. This is my only chance. I’ll never get to tell him how I think that if it were an option, I could love him well until I died.
I guess I will love him well until I die. I have to believe the world will pick up where I leave off. I have to believe that, whether I’m there at the end of the world with Beau or not, love is bigger than death.
“I’m scared too,” Grandmother whispers in my ear. “But we’re so brave, girl.”
I give a phlegmy laugh. I’m minutes from death and nonexistence, and I’m laughing. Suddenly, I’m laughing hysterically, and Grandmother’s laughing too, and we’re both rocking on the floor of our bedroom, tears of laughter streaming down our faces, snot dripping from our noses.
She regains composure first, gritting her teeth, smiling forcefully, and nodding at me. “You can do this. I should know. I was a surrogate mom twice for Jack and his husband.” She responds to my surprise with a dramatic wink. “We can do anything.”