Dot nodded and nodded, her voice too choked up for words. “I miss you, little sister. I love you,” she squeezed out.
Lu was shaking and shaking, as if she were buried in a snow bank, freezing to death. “S-same here, big s-sister.”
“Out,” I demanded.
Stella turned Lu’s face to me. I held my hand for her. If she’d take it, I could help pull her into this reality. If she didn’t take it, I was going to shove my hand in there and yank.
Stella managed to lift Lu’s hand. Even though I had dulled senses when it came to the living world, when Stella dropped Lu’s hand into mine, even I could tell it was cold, cold, cold.
Too cold.
“Walk to me, right now, Stella. Right the hell now.”
Lu’s eyes closed, her teeth chattering, body trembling. Dot held on to her other hand, crying silently, watching, but not understanding. Not fully.
“Three,” I said, “two, one.”
Stella hesitated, and I knew in that moment she’d lost herself. That seeing her sister had broken her concentration. That she had seen some of Lu’s memories, some of her life. Sorrow and then horror twisted her features. Her mouth dropped open in a hollow “O” as if she were hurting so much, she didn’t have the air to scream.
If Stella didn’t step forward, if she didn’t disentangle from Lu and enter the ghostly realm again, those memories, Lu’s brilliant, hard, horrifying life would tear her apart.
“Fuck it.” I gripped Lu’s hand tighter, and then allowed my hand to sinkintohers.
Stella was there. Cold and slippery like frozen silk. And Lu was there too.
Everything about Lu was fire and warmth. She was home and peace and love, and I could hear her memories calling to me, our memories. I could feel her reaching for me.
Even though it would be disastrous for me to reach back, any second longer leaving Stella there, possessing her body, making it more and more possible that she would never be able to be free of her, I paused.
“Brogan?” Lu’s voice, Lu’s heart so strong, her emotions a wave of water, heavy enough to drown me, an ocean of death I’d welcome. That one word, my name, carrying every emotion of a long, long life wanting, lonely, loving, angry, determined.
“Lula,” I breathed. My voice echoed softly, as if being repeated by polished bells, hung waiting in the still air.
“I love you,” she said, just as she always did.
“I love you.”
And there was more, so much more to say, my senses drowning in the scent of flowers, in the warmth of her pulse, the thrum of her spirit, the echo of her soul in me reaching for home, just as my soul in her reached toward me.
It would be easy to stay here. To touch and remain, to hold, to lose myself in her and keep her for all the time I had left.
But Stella was there, cool and slick, spreading out too thin, like a membrane between Lu and me, a thin, wailing wall that was tattering with each beat of Lu’s heart.
“Please,” Lu said, her voice straining.
It broke me. “Yes,” I agreed, even though I didn’t know what she was asking. I would do anything. Anything for her.
“Stay,” she breathed.
“Dotty?” Stella howled, a far-off cry that somehow felt like it was surrounding me, swallowing me whole. It was that, the sister crying, lost, her thoughts spinning, as if caught by a hard wind, her form failing with eachthump, thump, thump, that shook me free from taking that last step. From falling into Lu and never leaving.
I am a strong man. I had spent years holding on to hope, years being beside Lu and still alone. I’d walked every step of this path with her, every second, minute, hour—and days, days, endless days.
But it took everything I had to pull myself from the siren call of Lu’s body, her soul, her heart and turn instead to Stella’s failing presence.
Just my hand. It was just my hand joined with Lu’s, but it also carried all of my attention, my focus, my will.
I flexed my fingers. Stella was thinner, her voice so distant, it was a mosquito buzz. But she was there, not shattered yet. Close, so close, but still whole.
