Kiersten's Arc

Chapter 4 of 33

Kiersten walked home from the school with the spirit's voice still warm behind her eyes. One sentence. Then silence again. By the time she reached her porch, the grief on her skin had climbed back up her arms like wet wool. Eduardo's grief. She had carried it out of his yard days ago and had not been able to set it down. She lay on her bed without pulling the quilt over her. The tattoo above her heart pulsed. She pressed her palm flat against it and whispered the spirit's name the only way she knew how. "I need you to show me what I'm holding. I can't hear you through it." Sleep came fast, heavier than sleep should be. She woke inside the dream standing on a small round cloud. It bobbed under her feet like a boat. A cherub child sat on its edge, legs swinging, eyes full of small sparks. The child pointed up. The cloud rose. They passed through a stone arch wrapped in green vines. On the other side, the light was soft and even, no sun, no shadow. An angel stood on a pedestal in flowing robes, holding an open book. Her hair moved though there was no wind. She did not look at Kiersten. She looked past her, downward. Kiersten turned. Below the cloud, a battered house sat alone. Sagging roof. Cracked walls. Boards nailed across the windows. Eduardo stood on the porch. Not the Eduardo who lied at her door. A younger one. He was watching himself through the window. Inside, he was shouting at a woman who was not Kiersten and not anyone Kiersten knew. The woman flinched. He threw a glass. The younger Eduardo on the porch put his hands over his face. The scene shifted. He was at a table pushing money across it he did not have. He was on a road at night, alone, crying into the steering wheel. He was small, in a kitchen, listening to two adults break something in the next room. He saw. That was the part Kiersten understood in the dream. He saw all of it at once, without excuses, without the cap pulled low. His face was open. His mouth trembled. He said, out loud, "I did that. I did that. I did that." The angel's book turned a page on its own. Kiersten felt the weight lift off her shoulders like a coat sliding down. The grief was not hers to hold. It had never been. It went where it belonged. Into him. Into his own hands, for one clear moment. She woke on top of the quilt. Her skin was light. Her sleeves lay flat. Behind her eyes, the spirit spoke again, unblocked, steady. Two sentences this time. Then three. A conversation beginning. Kiersten sat up and listened. Somewhere across town, she knew, Eduardo was waking too, already reaching for the cap, already pulling the dream back down. But it had happened. He had seen. And she was empty of him at last.