Kate Brian - Endless

“Sure.”

For some reason, I felt my heart rate thrumming in my wrists as I moved across the room, and I felt conspicuous. Fisher said something that made Bea and Lauren laugh and Liam blush. No one was paying any attention to me. As I bent to retrieve the platter from a low shelf, I noticed an old scrapbook open on top of the sideboard, its pages browned at the edges. The black-and-white and sepia-toned photos were held to the pages with black corner stickers. The book was flanked by a lit candle on each side, but they were both set a careful distance away from the book. I glanced at the first photo—a grainy shot of a lanky, smiling boy and a younger, round-faced girl in turn-of-the-century clothing—and dropped the heavy platter. It hit the corner of the sideboard with a serious clatter, but I somehow managed to grab it before it fell to the floor.

“God, Rory! Give me a heart attack!” Lauren said, hand to her chest.

“You okay?” Joaquin asked, coming up behind me.

“That’s you!” I blurted.

Joaquin nodded. “Yeah. That’s me and my sister, Maria.”

His sister. The one he’d killed in a car accident. His expression went distant for a moment as he eyed the photograph—not sad, exactly, just not here.

“How did you get this?” I asked. “Did you have it with you when you died?”

It seemed unlikely, considering he’d committed suicide alone in his attic. But the only things any of us had with us in Juniper Landing were those things we’d had on our person when we’d perished. Or in my and Darcy’s case, in our bags, since we’d been going into witness protection when Steven Nell attacked.

“No. It was my sister’s.” He took the platter from me, our fingers grazing. “I found it in the relic room about fifty years ago.”

He turned and headed back from the kitchen while my knees almost went out from under me. I placed one hand on the surface of the table and the other on the sideboard to steady myself.

“You found it?”

“Crazy, huh?” It was a light statement, but he didn’t say it lightly.

Slowly I tried to piece the implications of this together. If it was his sister’s and he’d found it in the relic room, then that meant that his sister had come through Juniper Landing when she’d died. When he’d accidentally killed her.

“So she…she had it with her when she died?” I asked, joining him in the kitchen.

“She must have brought it to church with her to show her friends,” he said as he wiped the platter clean of dust with a wet rag. His eyes flicked to my face. “I know. It’s freaky. I’ve had fifty years to contemplate how freaky it is. I killed her, she came here, and someone ushered her from here and tossed her stuff in the relic room only for me to stumble on it decades later when I was looking for a new needle for my turntable. I know.”

His hands started to shake as he wiped the platter yet again. I reached out and put my hand on his wrist, steadying him. He stopped moving.

“Does anyone remember her? Did Tristan…?”

I paused, his very name on my tongue causing my mouth to dry out. Joaquin shook his head. “No one really remembered her. I like to think it was because she was ushered straight to the Light.” His eyes shone as he looked at me, and he smiled. “She didn’t exactly have any unfinished business to deal with. That was all mine.”

My free hand fluttered to my chest. “Joaquin, I’m so—”

“Don’t.” He turned and put the platter down. “Seriously, don’t. It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine, but it is what it is.” He glanced across the room at the album and lifted a shoulder. “I’m glad I have it. It’s filled with good memories. And without it I’d have no images of anyone in my family, so…”

“Wow.”

For a moment, I couldn’t imagine the right thing to say. Joaquin stood still, his fingers pressing into the top of the kitchen island, the tips going white.

“Are you guys ever gonna bring the food in here?” Bea demanded. “I’m starving.”

I hurried to grab a bag of chips, then emptied it into a basket. Joaquin added the chopped vegetables to the platter and followed behind me.

“What were you guys talking about in there?” Fisher asked. “It looked pretty serious.”

“I was just telling Rory about some of the weirder visitors who’ve come through here,” Joaquin answered quickly, shooting me a go with it look as he set the platter down on the table. Bea darted forward and grabbed a handful of veggies before anyone else could move.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Like those twins from the station? Totally weird.”

Lauren shivered, her hair shimmering in the candlelight. “I know, right? Those two give me the willies. I hope Chief Grantz was able to explain everything.”

“If not, can’t the mayor just wipe their memories?” I asked.

“Wait. The mayor can wipe people’s memories?” Liam said, sitting forward.

“To a degree,” Joaquin answered, sitting down on an empty love seat. “She only does it in extreme situations, when someone’s behavior threatens the peace or our cause.”

There was nowhere else for me to go, aside from the floor, so I sat next to him, leaning into the opposite arm.

“So why doesn’t she just wipe everyone who came in on the ferry today?” Liam asked. “That’s an extreme situation.”

“Because she gets sick if she does it too much,” Bea explained, tugging on one of her errant curls and wrapping it tightly around her finger. “It takes a lot out of her.”

“Really? I never knew that. Like how?” I asked.

“Like if she wiped the whole ferry, she’d probably put herself in a coma,” Fisher said, crunching into a carrot stick. “So you could see how it’s better to try to deal with people in a non-mind-meld way first.”

I blew out a sigh. “Wow. I guess every superpower has its limits.”

We sat in silence for a moment, until Lauren sat forward and grabbed some vegetables. “Remember Andy Warhol?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly. “That guy was nuts.”

“And Babe Ruth?” Joaquin shot back. “He was an animal.”

Liam’s jaw dropped. “You met Babe Ruth?”

“And ushered him,” Joaquin said with a laugh. “But only after he got me good and drunk.”

“What about you?” Joaquin asked, popping a cucumber slice into his mouth. “Who was the weirdest person you ever met?”

I instantly thought of Steven Nell, but I wasn’t about to go there. “There was a kid at my school who could relate any situation in life back to Star Wars .”

“Seriously?” Fisher asked. “Like how?”

“Like this one time I had a fight with my dad and I was telling a friend about it, and this kid walked up to me and said, ‘At least he didn’t chop your hand off with a light saber,’ then walked away.”

Everyone laughed. “No way,” Lauren said.

“Yep.” I grinned and took another chip. “And then there was this girl who swore she was going to be a supermodel one day, so she walked around school for three years with a stack of books balanced on her head.”

“Was she hot?” Joaquin asked.

“Nope. Not even a little bit,” I replied, cracking up.

Liam’s brows knit. “What kind of crazy-ass school did you go to?”

Everyone laughed. I leaned back in the love seat and just let myself feel the joy of that one brief moment. Inside that cozy apartment with those people, there was nothing wrong in the world. We were just a few friends having fun.

“It feels good to laugh,” I commented.

“Yeah.” Joaquin looked me in the eye. “We should do this more often.”

My skin humming, I held his gaze, refusing to look away. Then Fisher cleared his throat.