Vicki Pettersson - The Given

Then Justin Allen lifted his other hand and pointed his gun directly into Kit’s face.

“Honey,” he said, eyes glittering in the cold night. “Don’t even think of trying to run in those shoes.”

It took Grif twice as long as it should have to reach the Sunset Retirement Community. He lost his way twice on Hacienda, despite knowing the road well, and it wasn’t out of shock or even nervous anticipation. Not entirely. His sense of direction, never good, was also deteriorating. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but it seemed like someone had gradually been lowering a dimmer switch on his eyesight so that every outline blurred. The bones in his fingers ached as well. His knuckles threatened to lock even when he turned the steering wheel, like the marrow and cartilage and joints were beginning to fuse together so that mobility would soon be impossible.

So when he did finally arrive at Sunset, he grunted like the old man he was supposed to be as he climbed from Kit’s car and straightened to face the building.

“They’ll be expecting you,” Marin had said, voice soft because even though she didn’t know who Evelyn Shaw really was to him, she knew he’d been searching for her long enough that the moment mattered. The moment, he thought, was all that mattered. After spending one lifetime looking only forward to the future, and a second gazing longingly at the past, as least he’d finally learned that.

So he took a step into the next moment, and then into the one after that. And they were indeed expecting him. The interim health services director held out a hand and smiled as if welcoming him home, like she’d been waiting for him all along. She led Grif to room 330, then turned to regard him as she placed her hand on the door.

“I normally accompany guests into our residents’ rooms, but as I’m new here and she no more knows me than she does you . . .” She trailed off and Grif glanced at her to see why. That was when he spotted the speck of stardust caught at the corner of one of her eyelashes, winking at him as if from the wings.

How ’bout that, Grif thought, impressed despite the gravity of the moment. A Pure taking human form . . . just for me.

“Steel yourself, Shaw. She’s not the same woman as the last time you saw her.”

And with a murmured blessing in the jumbled language of tongues, she was gone.

Grif turned back to the closed door. Alone.

She was seated in a wheelchair, facing the window, when Grif entered the room, a heavy tartan blanket draped across her lap. The light from the nearby table lamp illuminated her thin, freckled neck, and she was so slight that there was room in the seat for another small person. Evie had always been a slim woman, but he’d never thought of her as frail before. Nerves moved sickeningly in his stomach.

The Pure who’d led Grif in was right. This woman resembled nothing of the Evie he’d loved and adored and married. He’d watched a woman with platinum curls fall to the floor beside him when he died. Now she was sitting up again, those curls gone gray and brittle, that other woman a mere memory to them both. For a moment Grif was unable to take another step. He’d hardly changed at all—not on the outside—but if her mind was as frail as her body, would she recognize him?

He must have sighed or made some other identifying sound, because Evie tilted her head without turning it, a move that put him in mind of a baby swallow. “Is that you, Mr. Justin?”

Justin. Grif burned inside. Justin Allen had known his wife.

He had never so dearly wished a man dead.

Yet he couldn’t let his anger show, not to Evie. She was fragile, and Marin had said that her charts and meds indicated a heart problem. So, slipping the fedora from his head, Grif took a careful step forward. His knuckles were white around the brim of his hat, his heart beating like mad. Evie’s softened profile shifted and rounded out as he approached, and he steeled himself as he slipped in front of her.

Though the room was warm, Evie wore a sweater that swam over her shoulders, in addition to the blanket folded across her knees. Her entire body trembled with the effort to lift her gaze, and her thin, dry lips pursed hard in concentration as she worked to focus on his face. Grif had a flashback: those lips stained red, full and stretching into a playful smile, meeting his with the ardor of . . . well, someone fifty years younger. He blinked, the image replaced by the trembling woman in front of him, and something in his heart cracked.

“No, Evie. It’s not Mr. Justin,” he said, as quietly, as gently as he could. “It’s me.”

The woman just stared, the corners of her eyes milky with age. This was not his wife, Grif suddenly thought. Evie would never wear her hair swept so carelessly to the side . . . she did not have a face as soft as sagging velvet. This woman wasn’t even made up, he thought, swallowing hard, and his girl always pulled out her pancake tin and sponge the moment she awoke.

But then the dark irises found focus, and that vibrant, long-ago girl flashed into view.

Evie’s mouth fell lax without uttering a sound, yet those piercing eyes remained on his, and after what felt like a full minute, she rasped, “Griffin? I— Is that you?”

He hadn’t even known he’d been holding his breath, but it escaped him now in a dizzying sob and he fell to his knees before her. He’d found her. No matter what else occurred in the next few hours, in this life or any other, he had finally found his wife. When he felt her hand, tentative and shaking, on the back of his neck, Grif lifted his head.

“But you were . . . but I saw—” She jerked her head, eyes going wide.

“Shh . . .” Grif lifted his hand and gently touched the back of her palm. It was cold. “No, I’m alive.”

But his words didn’t soothe her. She began shaking her head more violently. “No. No, I saw it. You were struck down. Your blood was everywhere.”

“Yes . . . and no,” he said, hating that of all her memories of him, this was the one she still carried. “It’s complicated. But what matters is that I’m here now, and Evie, you need to know. I’ve dreamed of this for so long. I’ve dreamed of you.”

Suddenly, the already glassy eyes filled with tears, and Evie lifted her hand so that it wavered in front of her mouth. “Oh, Griffin. Oh, my God, it’s really you.”

And when he bent forward this time, she folded herself around him. They clung to each other for long minutes without speaking. Evie shook above him, and Grif responded in kind below.

“I was so scared,” she finally said, her voice muffled in his hair. “I’ve been so alone. I closed my eyes that night, I couldn’t help it, and when I opened them again, you were gone. And then, eventually, I was gone, too.”

Grif sat back on his heels and studied her face. He didn’t know what that meant, and from the way Evie’s gaze began to wander again, he wasn’t sure she did, either. His voice, too, shook when he spoke. “Do you think . . . you can tell me what happened?”

Evie seemed to look right through him. It was as if he’d been a ghost to her for so long that she couldn’t hold on to him, even when he was right there. But then her mouth moved in a stutter-start, her eyes shifted, and her mind began searching the past.

Then she started to talk. Full sentences. A story that, Grif could tell, she’d told many times over the years. No, she hadn’t died back in 1960, but the events of that long-ago night had chased her as relentlessly as they had him. And despite the age rubbing her vocal cords into reedy strands, she laid out the story so clearly that Grif could see it even when he closed his eyes.

She had been dizzy with drink that night, she said, the roar of the casino crowd round in her ears, a rush of approval that felt like a big hug as she kept the craps table alive, throwing seven after seven. The night was cold when they finally left the casino, yes, but she had a large, warm man at her side, and the juice zinging through her veins. Their bungalow had been hidden, as if in a secret garden, a dark pocket of solitude sweetened by the scent of honeysuckle and rose.