Tears breach my lids and spill down my cheeks at the thought of what that little boy will be left to deal with if his father continues down this path. I can’t stop myself when the questionwhyspills from my lips, and Paul shatters in front of me.
He drops his face into his hands and begins to cry. Loss and agony pour out of him with each sob, his pain so brutal and palpable. I want to reach out and hug him, but I get the distinct impression that if I do, he’ll shut down, and he needs to purge as much hopelessness as he can if things for him are going to change. So instead, I helplessly watch and I cry with him.
“She was everything,” he keens into his hands, his chest shaking with the sobs wracking through him. “She was the softness, and the compassion, the love, and the gentleness; I’m none of it. How am I going to keep going without her? How will I ever be anything for our son without her?” he begs, shaking his head in his palms. “Everything was better because she was here, and now she’s not, and I don’t want this world without her. I don’t want anything if I can’t share it withher,” he wails, and I pull up the neck of my shirt and use it to wipe my face.
“But how will he know?” I ask, and after a minute, Paul’s red and broken gaze meets mine. “How will your son know all these amazing things about his mother if you’re not here to teach him? He’s young, I can see that, and his memories of everything she was, of the special things she did, will fade. I see that you have family and that you think they’ll do a better job than you will raising him, but, Paul, that’s not true,” I plead with him.
“You were Phoebe’s everything.” I point down to the bones that surround Phoebe’s rings. “I can see that you met young, and from that moment until long after this one, you were the world, you hung the fucking moon for her. Shewasspecial, you’re absolutely right about that, and that special creature chose you, Paul. You,” I tell him assertively. “Who knew her better than you?” I ask, and I wait for him to answer.
“No one,” he says on a sob, and he fishes a handkerchief from his back pocket and wipes at his face and his nose.
“Exactly! No one knew her better than you, and that means no one will be able to tell your son, to show him, the kind of woman she was. All that beautiful compassion and kindness, all the ways she cared for those around her, that’s now your legacy to pass down. Only yours.”
I watch as he considers my words. I can sense as the truth of what I’m saying dawns on him.
“I know you think he’ll be better off without you, but he won’t, Paul. Because if you go, he’ll never know his mother the way he should, and Phoebe deserves better than that. Your son deserves better than that.”
“But how? I work long days. I’d barely be home. How can I be enough for Jackson?”
“She had life insurance,” I tell him as I trace the symbols her ring is leaning against. “It looks like she took it out a long time ago when she was working for a bank,” I explain, the words sounding more like a question than a statement, but the symbol on one of the bones is very faded.
“She kept paying on it after she stopped working, before Jackson came. She didn’t think she’d ever need to tell you about it, and soon it just became a bill that got paid every month without more thought than that.”
“What?” he asks, his sniffles slowing and growing quieter.
“She had life insurance,” I repeat. “I bet if you called the bank, they could tell you what provider they used when she worked there. Or maybe you have a statement somewhere in the house that will give you the details.”
“She did everything electronically. I can’t figure out the passwords into the accounts. She changed them all the time because she was worried about hackers and all the big companies that are having issues with data breaches. She was fanatical about it,” he tells me with a small sad smile.
“Call the bank she used to work for, they should be able to help you,” I encourage.
“How do you know this?” he asks as he wipes again at his cheeks, his eyes looking less desolate and more stunned.
“The bones,” I tell him, gesturing down at them.
Moisture fills his eyes again, and he silently nods his head. “Every morning when I’d leave for work, she’d always call out that she was sending her guardian angels with me. She’d say she didn’t need ’em and she’d rather I have the extra protection.” His blue eyes settle on mine, and his gaze grows intense. “It’s like she’s still looking out for me,” he tells me, his voice cracking as more tears spill down his cheeks.
“She always will be, Paul. I know it’s not the same, but she will always watch over you and Jackson, never doubt that.”
“Thank you,” Paul chokes out, and then he scoots to the end of the booth. I pluck his wedding ring, Phoebe’s wedding ring, and the penny from the bones and hand them to him. He slips his ring back on his finger, loops the chain back through her wedding set and places it around his neck, and the penny goes back in his pocket.
He reaches out a hand, and I place mine in his. He holds it for a moment, overcome with a wave of new emotion. “I owe you,” he tells me as he shakes my hand.
“No, you don’t, now go home to Jackson, wake him up and hold him, and then start living the legacy that Phoebe deserves to have,” I order.
He nods, wiping fresh tears from his cheeks, and then he gets up and walks out of the bar.
I don’t tell him about the bones his penny landed on, about the woman he’ll meet that will help him find love again. About the way she’ll care for him and his son, or about the daughter she’ll give him. I don’t explain how his new wife will ask to call their little girl Phoebe, and how they’ll all live beautiful lives honoring all the incredible things that made his late wife the best of souls.
I can feel that he’s not ready for that, so I keep it to myself as I bless the bones with my gratitude and, one by one, place them back in the pouch. I used to only see the bad parts of Grammy Ruby being pulled away all the time. I thought being summoned here and there could only ever be something inconvenient, but as I put the bones away and hear a truck firing up in the parking lot, I know I’ll never see things the same. This...this is beautiful, and for the first time, I can’t wait to see what’s next.
12
“That was pretty incredible, what you did back there,” Rogan tells me, his compliment breaking the silence we’ve been driving in for the last thirty minutes.
I look over at him, the shadows in the car caressing his face and darkening his features. “I don’t know what future readings will be like, but for a first one, that was a game changer,” I admit. “Do Hemamancers do readings?” I ask, curious. “I know your magic works differently, but I don’t know how it all works.”
“Blood Witches don’t have any relics like your bones, it’s just the blood itself for us. We do have a kind of reading that we perform, but the information we get from the blood is very different from how your bones work.”
