Justin Cronin - The Twelve

“But how come the others didn’t know who he was? They couldn’t have. They would have killed him.”

Carter shook his head. “Their kind never could read me, one way or the other. You could say we been out of touch awhile. It’s a two-way street, and I ain’t sent nothing back their way since the beginning. Shut my mind to all of them.” Carter hitched up in his chair and returned the cloth to his back pocket. “You done right, Miss Amy. Wolgast, too. Was a hard and terrible thing, I know that.”

She was suddenly thirsty; the tea felt cool and sweet going down and left a bright, lemony taste on her tongue. Carter watched her, waving his hat in a gentle motion to push a breeze over his face.

“And Zero?”

“I expect there’s time yet. But he’ll be coming for us. This here’s personal now. He’s surely the worst of ’em. Put ’em all together and you still ain’t got one Zero. Bridge we cross when we come to it.”

“And until then, here we stay.”

Carter nodded in his patient way. “Yes’m. Here we stay.”

They sat together in silence, thinking of what would come.

“I’ve never tended a garden before,” Amy said. “Would you teach me?”

“Always lots to be done. Reckon I could use the help. Mower’s fussy, though.”

“I’m sure I could learn.”

“I’m supposing you could, now,” he said with a smile. “I reckon that’s the case.”

Amy remembered her promise. “Rachel told me to send her love.”

“Did she, now. I was just thinkin’ on her. How she look to you?”

“Beautiful, really. I’d never really had a chance to see her clearly before. But sad, too. She was looking at the house, like there was something she wanted.”

Carter seemed surprised. “Why, it’s her babies, Miss Amy. I thought you knew.”

Amy shook her head.

“Haley and the little one. Woman can’t see or touch ’em, where she is. It’s her babies she’s always dreamin’ on. It’s the most awful ache to her.”

Amy finally understood. Rachel had drowned herself, leaving her children behind. “Will she ever see them again?”

“I expect she will when she ready. It’s her own self she has to forgive, for leaving them like she did.”

His words seemed to hover in the air, not sounds alone but things of form and substance. The temperature was dropping; the leaves had begun to fall.

“She not the only one, Miss Amy. Some folks can’t find a way on they own. For some it’s a bad feeling in the mind. Others just can’t let go. Them’s the ones that love too hard.”

In the pool, the body of Rachel Wood had completed its slow ascent to float upon the surface. Amy looked down at the table; she knew what Carter was saying to her. Every day I cut the lawn , she thought. Every day she rise .

“You got to go to him,” said Carter. “Show him the way.”

“I just …” She felt his eyes on her face. “I don’t know how.”

He reached over the table and cupped her chin, lifting it upward. “I know you, Miss Amy. It’s like you been inside me all my life. You the one was made to set this whole world right. But Wolgast’s just a man. It’s his time now. You got to give him back.”

Tears trembled in her throat. “But what will I do without him?”

“Just like you always done,” said Anthony Carter, and smiled into her eyes. “Just like you do now. You Amy .”

He came to her a final time. Or it was she who came to him. They came to each other, to say a last goodbye.

For Wolgast it began with a sensation of abstract motion. He was in a kind of nowhere, floating through an infinite space, though bit by bit the scene resolved, its spatial and temporal parameters firming, and he became aware that he was, of all things, riding a bicycle. A bicycle! Now, that was strange. Why was he on a bicycle? He hadn’t ridden one in years, but he’d loved it as a boy: the feeling of pure freedom and gyroscopic lift, his body’s energy flowing through this marvelous mechanism that joined him to the wind. Wolgast was on a bicycle, riding down a dusty country lane, and Amy was beside him, perched on a bicycle of her own. This fact surprised him neither more nor less than anything else about the scene, it all simply was , just as Amy was both a little girl and a grown woman, and for a time they rode together without speaking, though the idea of time itself felt strange. What was time? How long had they been riding like this? Some period of hours, perhaps, or even days, and yet the light was always the same—a permanent penumbral twilight that enriched the colors of everything around him with a golden glow: the fields and trees, the dust that rose under his wheels, the small white shapes of houses in the distance. Everything felt very close; everything was far away.

“Where are we going?” Wolgast asked.

Amy smiled. “Oh, it’s not much farther.”

“What… is this place?”

She said nothing more. On they rode. Wolgast’s heart was full of warm contentment, as if he were a boy again: a boy riding his bicycle at sunset, waiting for the call that would summon him home.

“Are you tired?” Amy asked.

“Not at all. It feels wonderful.”

“Why don’t we stop at the crest of the next hill?”

They coasted to a halt. A grassy valley opened below them. In the distance, nestled by trees, was a house: small, white, like the others, with a porch and black shutters. Amy and Wolgast lowered their bicycles to the ground and stood together quietly. There was no wind at all.

“It’s quite a view,” Wolgast said. Then: “I think I know where I am.”

Amy nodded.

“It’s strange.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t really remember how it happened, but I suppose that’s for the best. Is it always like this?”

“I’m not sure. I think sometimes it is.”

“I remember thinking I had to be brave.”

“You were. The bravest man I ever saw.”

He mulled this over. “Well, that’s good. I’m glad to hear it. In the end, I guess that’s all a person can ask.” He sent his gaze over the valley again. “That house. I’m supposed to go there, aren’t I?”

“I believe that you are.”

He turned to look at her. A second passed; then he broke into a smile of discovery.

“Wait a minute. You’re in love . I can see it in your face.”

“I think I am, yes.”

Wolgast shook his head with wonder. “I’ll be damned. How about that. My little Amy, all grown up, in love. And does he love you back, this person?”

“I think he does,” she said. “I hope he does.”

“Well, he’d be a fool not to. You can tell him I said so.”

For a moment neither spoke. Amy waited.

“So,” he began again. His voice was thick with emotion. “I suppose that means my work here is done. I guess I always knew this day would come. I’m going to miss you, Amy.”

“I’ll miss you, too.”

“That was always the hardest part, missing you. I think that’s why I could never bring myself to leave. I always thought, What will Amy do without me? Funny how in the end it was the other way around. I suppose all parents feel that way. But it’s different when it’s you.” The words caught in his throat. “Let’s do this quickly, okay?”

She put her arms around him. She was crying too, but not with sadness. Though perhaps a little bit of sadness. “It will be all right, I promise.”

“How do you know?”

At the far end of the valley, at the edge of the fields, the door to the house had opened.