My novel “The Memory of My Shadow” is now available in print, ebook, and audiobook format. If you live in the U.S., become an annual paid subscriber and I’ll send you a signed copy FREE. Still not tempted? What if I told you paying subscribers get early access to a bonus episode of “Departures” this week.
“Departures” is a supernatural thriller and love story published as a serial novel with new episodes dropping every Tuesday morning. Anyone can read or listen for free. Paid subscribers gain early access to new episodes. Watch the trailer or visit the table of contents to browse all the published episodes.
Previously…
In the last episode, Gerry was returning home from a work/pleasure trip to Miami beach where he had been with his lover, avoiding the reality of his wife, Abigail’s fast-approaching death. While his daughter, Millie was out to picking up dinner for them, he discovered Wild’s strange ledger among Millie’s things.
Millie, stay in your seat, turn around and eat your taco, honey. Let those nice people enjoy their dinner. I’m not ready yet, please let me finish my meal. No, I don’t want to leave. Millie’s not eating enough. Millie, you’re skin and bones. Come here, little thing and let mama fix your hair. Who’s that old man with your father? Oh, God, Wild, of course it’s you. What are you doing here?
No one was responding to Abby’s words. It was as if she hadn’t spoken at all. Hadn’t she? Who was this strange woman holding her hand while her family pushed food around on their plates and spoke in hushed tones like people at a wake? She could hear the words, but they flitted about the room like sparrows, barely lighting on a surface then taking to the air before she could grasp them. She was thirsty, and then there was cool water on her lips, dribbling down her chin. There was a gnawing pain in her belly like a great fanged wolf was tearing and tugging at her insides, but then there was a mechanical beep, small and sterile. Like the shot from a rifle, it chased the wolf away and she was floating again.
The woman, not a stranger, too kind to be a stranger. Abby reached for the name. Tanya or Tracy, no. Teresa, a friend of Millie’s. That’s right. And then there was Jeanie, standing in the doorway again smiling. God she’d missed her aunt Jeanie so much, the smell of her and the weight of her warm soft hands. And then those hands were touching her face. Her aunt’s moon-shaped face, free of wrinkles or worry lines was there, as large as the moon.
Hi sweetheart, it’s almost time to go. You know that right? You’ve got a little more time. It’s important you spend it wisely, you hear?
But I want to go with you. I’m ready to go with you.
And you will. But first, your family needs a little time to say goodbye. Can you do that? Just give them a few more minutes. I’ll be right here waiting for you.
Abby’s face warmed under the doula, Teresa’s hands and that warmth radiated down through the cold, dormant, frame of her body. The fog lifted and disintegrated and as if by magic, she was there again, in the room. Millie’s face was there where Jeanie’s had been. That sweet face of her baby was contorted and her eyes wide with fear like the time her father had insisted she was big enough to go on Thunder Road with him that day they’d spent at Six Flags when she was just ten. Abby reached for her and Millie took her hand and held it there to her cheek. She had to speak. She had to form words, but it was hard to collect them and assemble them into the feeling she needed to convey.
“Millie, you know how much I love you. You have been my world.”
“I love you too mama, please don’t go yet. Please, please, please.”
“No, not yet sweetie, but soon. Okay? You’re gonna be okay.”
Behind her daughter, Abby could see the two men who had been the bookends of her life standing stiff as sentinels waiting to serve. They had served her, each in their way. But she had been meant for something different, something closer to the freedom she felt when she stood at the edge of the sea as a girl, clutching her first diary that she had filled with lines upon lines of words like tiny waves endlessly reaching and crashing and retreating before reaching again. She knew Wild understood this. They had both tried to live a life outside the imposing walls of privilege and duty they had been born into, but neither had really escaped. And Gerard, all he’d ever wanted was to scale those walls to get inside. She had given him a key. Had he been happy inside? The drawn jowls of his sunburned cheeks confirmed he hadn’t, not entirely. She understood he had been living inside his own prison. She would soon give him a key to that too, but first she needed to speak with her brother.
“Can you and your daddy give me a few minutes with Wild?”
Millie and Gerard gathered up the plates of half-eaten food and left. Wild pulled a chair close to Abby’s bed, sat down, and enclosed her hand in both of his.
“Hi beautiful.” His voice was choked with emotion, and he cleared his throat.
“What happened to you?” she asked, wasting no time.
“What do you mean? Oh, I broke my wrist…”
“No, you know what I mean. Something happened to you on that trip you took. You changed.”
Wild looked down at their interlaced fingers. “Yeah, I did. I went out looking to be changed. I wasn’t happy with who I was, with what I was…”
“Why didn’t you take me with you?”
“I should’ve, but then we wouldn’t have Millie, would we?”
“Wild, you know something don’t you, about death?”
“No, I don’t know anything about death, only when it’s coming and that’s not been very useful.”
She didn’t fully understand what he meant, but some part of her did. Some part of her always understood her wayward little brother.
“When I lost my little boy, you were there. Out of the blue you were there, like you knew what was coming. Do you remember what we did that day?”
“Of course, I do.”
He looked up and, in his eyes, she was transported back to that rainy October morning when he had turned up at her door unannounced. She was supposed to volunteer at Millie’s school, and she had a lunch scheduled with a couple of friends. But she had canceled her plans, partly irritated by another of her brother’s spontaneous intrusions and partly relieved to have an excuse not to have to perform the day’s obligations because she had been so tired that morning and feeling generally off.
“I brought you a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s and some videos…”
“The Witches of Eastwick and…”
Wild laughed and his smile changed the entire structure of his face.
“Fuckin’ Dirty Dancing. How could you possibly forget?”
“I think I blocked it out.”
They were both silent for a moment, each of their minds like whirring projectors spooling through a spliced together reel of the footage from that day. Abby remembered the comfort of his closeness, like when they were children curled up together in a blanket in front of the TV. She remembered how at one point, he had rested his hand on the bump of her belly.
“You didn’t cry that day because of the dumb movie…”
“No.”
“How did you know?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how it works or why. I just knew and I wanted more than anything else to save you from it. But I couldn’t.”
Wild was crying again, all these years later and it was horrible to watch the expression of his pain.
“But you did take care of me. You got me to the hospital. You were there with me every day for a week after.”
Abby was feeling weaker and had to close her eyes for a moment. Aunt Jeanie was still there, waiting. But Abby had more to ask.
“So, you’re here now because you know, right? It’s my time.”
“Yes.” The response came out as a sob and Wild buried his face in her shoulder.
“How horrible, Wild. I understand now. I understand all of it. So, you knew about June, and mom and dad and…”
“Yes, all of them,” he said, lifting his head and wiping the tears roughly from his cheeks with the backs of his hands.
Abby absorbed this and the knowledge was like a beam of light illuminating every shadow that had hidden her little brother from her all these years. She reached out and touched his face. He smiled the same sad smile. She couldn’t remember his smile from before, when they were children.
“Wild, before I go, you must promise me you’ll take care of Millie. I don’t want to know when her time is, I just want to know that you’ll be there. Promise me.”
“I can’t make that promise. I don’t know how long I have. That’s the thing. But I can promise you I’ll take care of her until then.”
He paused, considering something, and then added, “She can take care of herself though. She’s a force that Millie. Abby, you just need to see her, really see her before you go.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do. You’ve never really accepted who she is, and she’s had to pretend around you…”
“I’ve never made her pretend…”
“But you have.”
“She’s always had her father for that. He understands.”
“Doesn’t matter. She needs you to understand.”
Abby tasted a bitterness in her mouth, and it matched the bitterness she felt when she replayed how dismissive she’d always been about her daughter’s sexuality. How had she been such a prude? Why had she found it so impossible to accept this part of her daughter. But she knew the answer to that. She had spent a lifetime competing with Gerard’s desire for anyone but her. She couldn’t respond to Wild with anything but a nod, but it was enough.
“Okay, Abby. I’m going to go now so you can say goodbye to them.”
“I love you, Wild. I’m sorry I have to leave you like everyone else.”
He rose out of the chair, leaned over and pulled her to him. “I love you. Tell me it’s all gonna be okay…” He could barely get the last few words out.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered. “Aunt Jeanie says it’s all going to be okay. I love you, little brother.”
Then he was gone in a blur of light that trailed in his wake as he passed through the open door and Jeanie who stood at the threshold and smiled, enfolding him in her arms as he moved through her. The silence of the room transformed imperceptibly into a tremolo of strings, their multitude of voices as light as a fingertip on a crystal glass circling and circling to a crescendo that resonated in every cell of Abby’s body. With each revolution she became lighter and lighter until she was light itself.
She could feel what was once her hands, her two boney hands being pulled, tethered by Gerard and Millie, who clung to them. The woman, Teresa, stood at the foot of the bed speaking in a soft, loving language that the collection of atoms which once collaborated in the form of Abigail Thorn could understand but this new being could not.
Not yet… just one more thing…
But light cannot be contained only expanded.
Please tell them… tell Millie I’m sorry… tell her I see her… tell Gerry I’ve known, I’ve always known, and I forgive him…
“I will tell them, Abby,” Teresa said. “I will tell them of your love. I will tell them that you see them. It’s okay for you to go now. They will be okay.”
And then, the being that was Abigail lifted up, out, and beyond where she flowed into a wave of interstellar particles vibrating inside everything all at once.
A father held his daughter, and their salty tears became the air of an ocean breeze that once lifted the curls of a skinny young girl who held a diary and wrote of reaching far beyond its pages.
A weary old man stopped at the edge of a driveway, the keys dropped from his hand to the gravel, and his chest expanded with cool autumn air. When he exhaled, the sound that came out was both a cry and a laugh that echoed that of a sister on a rainy day in the distant past just before she would suffer the greatest loss a mother could bear.
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Want More? Check Out My Other Novels
If you’re enjoying “Departures,” chances are you will also like my two previously published novels. I’ve made the first two episodes of each free for you to preview. If you prefer reading the old fashioned way, you’re in luck because “The Memory of My Shadow” is now available in print, ebook, and audiobook anywhere you purchase books. I give you all the details in this announcement post.
In 2052, Magdalena, a brilliant programmer invents a device for telepathic communication with AI, seeking to decode the mind of her twin, the shooter in a school massacre she alone survived, but when she resurrects his consciousness, she unleashes a malevolence that could destroy her. Fans of the movie “Ex Machina” will love this story.
In the reality show competition for Houze, a revolutionary eco-home, six contestants face a winner-takes-all challenge. Beneath the surface of sustainability, altruism battles greed, turning a hopeful vision into a life and death struggle. Fans of “Nine Perfect Strangers” by Liane Moriarty will love this story.
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If you love the soundtrack for “Departures” you should check out the work of my friend and collaborator
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