Page 25 of Twice
“I don’t know. All I know is it’s really dangerous. I came back to warn you.”
I looked at Wes’s hands. They were trembling. I leaned in closer.
“Just take the training center job, OK?”
?
Now what I didn’t tell Wesley was that even if he did what I said, I couldn’t assure his survival. I learned this from my mother in our last conversation together:
“Alfie, don’t try to go back and save me,” she said. “I’ll always die when I’m supposed to die. You can’t undo it.”
“Why?”
“That’s just how this power is.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I had it, too.”
“Then why don’t you save yourself, Mom?”
“I did save myself. That’s why we came to Africa.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I had another life, Alfie, a different life, before this one. It was more selfish. I was losing my heart and my soul. So I went back and changed things. I put other people’s problems ahead of mine. I was a better mother to you. A better wife to your father. And I was happier.”
She sighed. “I just didn’t know it would be so short.”
I was lost. I leaned into her and felt her arms drape tightly around me.
“Mom?”
“Yes, my angel?”
“I don’t want you to go.”
She brushed my face with her fingers. “I want, and you want, and God does what God wants.”
?
I thought about that conversation after seeing Wesley at the panzerotti shop. Two days later, he went back to his unit and took the training center job. And I lived through the next five months like a convict in a dark cell, not knowing if the executioner was coming.
When the incident started with the Cambodians overseas, I called Wes every day at his office. He was fine. But on the day they released the names of the dead Marines, I called him again. No answer.
That night, at our house, the phone rang and my father picked it up. I saw his expression change. My stomach sank. When he held out the receiver, I already knew what was coming.
“It’s Wesley’s mother,” he said softly. “There’s been an accident.”
Nassau
“Whoa, what are you saying?” LaPorta interrupted. “He died anyhow?”
“Yes.” Alfie looked away. “I never had another friend like him.”
“How’d it happen?”
“An explosion at the training center. Wes was in the basement, trying to fix a boiler, and something blew up. A freak accident. No one else was hurt.”
