Page 21 of Forever Frenzy
“I want to help him.”
I didn’t want to have to. I just wanted Dad back. Looking to Tage, I saw the slight shake of his head. What I wanted to do couldn’t happen. I’d asked him about bringing people back from the dead once, but Tage warned against it. ‘Dark magic isn’t something to play around with. Sometimes the one who comes back isn’t the soul you sent for.’
Tage gathered Saul into his arms and walked toward the doorway. Mom stopped him, brushing her hand over Saul’s hair and face again. She placed a tear-soaked kiss on his cheek. Tage’s eyes held the pain she felt.
Whether it was the tether between them or the love he still felt for her, it killed me. My Dad was dead.
The strongest man I’d ever known.
He was already sick. The tumor had grown so fast. We were going to let him live in this place, thinking we could outsmart death, but death found him anyway.
We were fools, naive and pathetic.
I followed Tage out the doorway and stopped to look back at Mom, who was clawing at the barrier in anguish. The fact that she was bound to The Sand made it even harder.
“Can we bury him here in the clearing, so she can at least see him?”
Tage’s brows drew together. “Yes.”
Tage lowered Dad to the ground and crossed his arms over his stomach. I handled the excavation, willing every particle of dirt to his left to move, shifting into a pile next to a hole the length and height of a man.
Mom wailed as we lowered his body into the hole and then sobbed, beating at the doorway as I willed the dirt to cover him again. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t stay in Blackwater. There would be too many questions, too many lies to keep covering up. Tage put his hand on my shoulder, but I knocked it away.
“I want to live in The Sand with you and Mom.”
Tage shook his head. “You have a life, the chance to do amazing things, to help people, Seth, in a way that only you can.”
“But Ican’thelp! I can see things, but I can’t cure them. I couldn’t even helphim,” I cried, falling to my knees. “I couldn’t do anything.”
Mom pounded against the barrier, collapsing. Tage crossed over and took her into his arms. She cried, loud and mournful. I crossed over as well, but I couldn’t stand to listen to it because it was exactly the way I felt. But she’d known Dad longer than I did. She’d loved him.
Tage carried Mom to the tent in the palms and disappeared behind the flapping fabric. When he returned later, he came to stand beside me on the nearest dune.
“The Sand. Is it accessible everywhere?” I asked.
“It is, but the doorway won’t appear in a crowded place, so you’ll have to find a spot that’s isolated.”
I was a coward. I wanted to run, so I was running. “I want tofind Uncle Ford.”
Tage nodded.
“And I want you to take away Mom’s memory of this entire thing. I want you to create a place for her where she can be happy,” my voice cracked. “No matter what that looks like. I mean, I don’t care if she even remembers me. I don’t want her to look out and see his grave and wonder what happened. I want it all to go away. For her.”
“I can’t do that to her,” Tage said.
“If you love her, you will. You’ll let her stay here and take all of that ugliness away, every ounce of what happened to her. You’ll give her a happily ever after. Even if it’s all a lie.”
Tage shifted his weight. “That’s all it would be, Seth. Lies,” he hissed.
“Then give her only the truth she can bear.”
I hoped he understood what was needed. I hopedhecould be strong enough to help my mom, because the power writhing beneath my skin made me weak. I couldn’t stand to hear her cry anymore. I was going to implode.
I needed space, time, and thought.
Space.
To mourn.
