“I love you. Very much.” He nodded, suddenly afraid. “I don’t want you to think this was your fault. It wasn’t. I wasn’t even thinking of it when it happened.” Steele started to stand again, but he sat very still. His heart was pumping so hard he was sure anyone walking down the hall could have heard it.
“Aster? Please tell me what’s going on. I’m worried and scared.” But he knew. As surely as he was sitting there, he knew. But he couldn’t say it, couldn’t admit, not even to himself, what he knew. “Aster, this isn’t funny. What’s going on?”
“I was watching the little baby in the stroller. And you know how much I love babies. But she and her mother were crossing the street and the baby had dropped her dolly. I didn’t think before I acted.” He told her she never did and she smiled at him again. “No, I rarely did. I just stepped off the sidewalk and it was over as soon as I did.”
Dead. Dead. Dead. His sister was dead. Steele felt the tears fall. His heart that had been pounding so hard before suddenly stopped. Dead. Dead. Dead. His wonderful sister, so full of life, was dead.
“No. Please no.” She moved to stand in front of him and he could see it then. Everything that had happened to her. All of it. “Aster. I’m so sorry. I should have let you go with me. I shouldn’t have told you to go away. Please forgive me. Please?”
Her body was bloodied; some of the wounds still seeped blood. Her face, so lovely when she’d left him, now bore the marks of being dragged over concrete. The entire left side of Aster’s face was smashed, her mouth nearly ripped open to her ear. Her left arm was broken and hung limply at her side. Her shorts and shirt were torn as well, and showed more abrasions to her delicate skin. He looked down her legs, so long and muscled before, but now she was missing her left leg from the knee down; her other leg was broken and twisted in a manner that hurt him to see.
“Don’t blame yourself, Steele. It was my fault. I only came back to tell you that it was all me and to beg you not to take on the blame. You will, I know you will, no matter what I say to you, but I had to come back and try. You’ll think that I was hurt and was too distracted to see what was going on. But that’s not what happened. I was happy. I wasn’t paying attention.” The tears streamed down his face. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I don’t hurt. I swear it. It’s over and I don’t hurt.”
“I need you. I need you in my life. You’re all I have. You’re all I will ever have.” She moved to the bed and when she sat down, he could see that she’d made no dent in his covers, no shift in his book still lying there, because as much as he wanted her there, she was gone from the body that had held her for her entire life. There was nothing of her here. Nothing. Because she wasn’t really here. “Aster. What am I supposed to do now?”
“What you’ve been doing all along. Help people like us.” He shook his head. “You have to, Steele. You have to…I can see them now. All of them. There are so many needing you. And there are others like you. A great many of them. You have to help them too. You’re so much stronger than anyone out there trying to help the dead.”
“No. Without you…you can’t leave me.” She smiled sadly at him, and he felt as if his entire being wanted to find a way to join her. His mind seemed to simply shut down. “I don’t want you to go. Please, don’t leave me.”
“Steele.” She sat there for a long time, simply staring at him. He took in everything about her…all her wounds and her pain as they faded from her so that she looked so much like the girl from this morning. His little sister. Steele wanted to join her; go out into the garage, pull down the gun he knew was there, and simply join her. But he knew that he couldn’t. Not like that.
“Don’t leave me. Father killed someone. Mother is mad because I called the police. And when he’s gone, I’ll be here with her all by myself.” Still she sat there and he continued trying to convince her. “The guy, Ray Hancock, he said that she might have known about the death. They found four more bodies. If she goes to prison with him, then I’ll be all alone.”
It was selfish. He knew it, and he was pretty sure she knew it too. But when she stood up, he could see her resolve, see that she’d come to a decision and he wasn’t going to like it. So he stood as well, stood as close to her as he could without touching her.
“You know that I can’t stay here. You know that as well as any one of the people you help.” He nodded and sobbed. His sister, his wonderfully amazing sister, was going to leave him. “I want to give you something. I need to tell you something as well. It’s…I could see them too. The people. I could see them too but never helped. I couldn’t help them like you did. I was too afraid of what Mother and Father would do to me. But the others, the dead, they’ve asked me to give you a gift and to tell you why you can see them. All right?”