She hesitates. “But I just got you back. I can’t leave you alone here.”
Althea beams. “I am not alone. I have my soulmate with me.”
“Mr. Benny?” She grips her grandmother’s hands.
“My Benny,” she says, looking over Marigold’s shoulder.
She turns, and there he is, tall and unbroken. His beard is neatly trimmed and his bright red suspenders look brand-new. He takes off his straw hat and holds it over his heart.
“Hello, Miss Marigold.”
She runs to him and throws her arms around him. “You’re here,” she sobs into his shoulder. Althea walks up behind them and embraces them both. She finds her grandmother’s hand and holds it tightly. “My family. I cannot believe I’m seeing you both again.”
“I told you I would be here waiting for you,” Althea says, her voice trembling.
She pulls away and watches her grandmother and Mr. Benny fit perfectly into each other’s arms. Two soulmates, finally together the way the fates intended them to be. The way that she and Lottie could be if she went back.
“If I go back, will you still be waiting for me here one day?”
“Always,” Althea says.
“We will never leave you, granddaughter. We promise,” Mr. Benny says.
She smiles, nodding. “Thank you. I love you both so much, but I need to go back. I have to be with Lottie.”
Her grandmother slips out of Mr. Benny’s arms and comes to her side. “Lie down. I’ll help guide you home.”
She lies on her back and looks at the sky, steadying her breathing before returning to her broken body.
“Grandmother, how did you know when it was time for you to go? And how did you stop yourself from coming back?”
“I knew it was time when I was the only thing standing in the way of the rest of your life. When you get older, people want to take care of you, and that’s so lovely and comforting for a time. But eventually, you get so old and so sick that all people candois take care of you. They cannot move on. They cannot live their own lives. If you love them, you must leave them. So, I did.” She cups Marigold’s cheek and wipes the tears with her thumb. “And my, Marigold, how you bloomed. You were so astonishing. I cannot wait to watch the rest of your life flourish.”
She smiles, placing her hand atop Althea’s. “I will not let you down.”
“Darling, you never could.”
She closes her eyes and listens to the low hum of her grandmother’s voice, feeling herself drift away.
“Mari, please.”Lottie’s voice sounds from a faraway place. She lets that voice lead her home.
Pain. Blinding pain. Her body is made of suffering.
“Mari, wake up. We just got our lives back. You cannot leave me now!” Lottie cries over her. She’s telling her hand to move, to reach up to Lottie and touch her face, but her body isn’t listening.
I’m alive, she screams in her head, but her lips will not move. She takes the deepest breath she can. It burns her ribs.
“You’re breathing. Oh, thank the fates, you are alive. Please keep breathing, my love. I’m going to fix you. Please do not stop breathing.”
She nods, or at least, she tries to.
“Do not move,” Lottie says.
She strains to open her eyes. Lottie, covered in ash and sweat, starts raking warm ash from the ground and placing it on Marigold’s body. The woman flattens her palms on Marigold’s chest and starts whispering something. The ground around her starts to heat. Her entire body shakes and her bones rattle in her skin.
Lottie leans down and kisses her forehead. “You’ll be perfect again. Hold on for me.”
Her muscles tighten and snap into place. Her splintered bones come back together. Sweat drenches her dress and covers her entire body. She feels a slight tingle—it starts in her shoulder, this ball of everything bad and hard and sticky. It rips through her, tiny spindly fingers reaching for the worst of her until it lands with a thud in her stomach. And there it grows, this twisted mass of guilt and grief and pain and teeth.
