CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“Peter.”

He pushed past the mingling crowd and was suddenly in her arms, swaying back and forth, her body pressed against the buttons of his coat.

“We got pulled,” he whispered in her ear. “My company got pulled early.”

“When did you get here?” she said, still muffled in his shoulder.

“Just now. Just landed in Kansas City. I asked Meg where you were. I wanted to surprise you,” he said, running his fingers through her hair.

“You did!” she said, laughing.

She had so much to take in about him, she didn’t know where to look. His smile, sly and sweet and proud, or his dark blue eyes. She found her favorite part, the white blonde streak in his eyebrow, and brushed her thumb over it.

People were looking. She didn’t care.

She pulled him to a corner of the yard, away from the crowd. “Look at you.” She held him out in front of her.

Peter looked down at the flowers in his hand. “I didn’t know if you like roses, but I figure, who doesn’t like—”

“Everyone likes roses,” she said, and giggled. She led him inside. Shivers poured through her from her chest down to her feet, washing her calm, almost sleepy with happiness.

They sat in the still house, making room on the couch among the balloons.

“I feel like I’m in outer space or something,” he said, looking around.

“This is perfect,” she said quietly. “How long will you be back?”

“Until they call me for another tour,” Peter said. “Which may be in a couple of months, maybe never.”

“Let’s say never.” Red and blue light cast through the spheres. Then Kelsey pulled his face close to her and kissed him. “I love you so much,” she said, and his eyes lit up.

Their foreheads touched.

“I love you, too, Michelle.”

A muted thunder in her head, like a bomb going off.

Kelsey drew back. She was unsure of what she just heard. “What?”

“What?” Peter repeated, pulling back to look at her, his brow coming together over a puzzled smile. He batted a blue balloon away from his shoulder.

Kelsey searched his face, unable to ignore a panicked ringing in her ears. “Was that an accident?”

“Was what an accident?”

“You called me Michelle.”

His voice lilted, joking, “That’s no accident. It’s pretty standard for humans to call one—”

“Peter,” she said quietly. “I’m Kelsey. You know that I’m Kelsey. You said you got my video when we talked last week.”

“What video?” His eyes narrowed, and his smile disappeared. “What do you mean, ‘I’m Kelsey’?” He spoke slowly. “If you’re Michelle’s sister…”

Kelsey’s pulse jackhammered. “I sent you a video to explain. You said you got it.”

Peter spit air, incredulous. “I never got a video, Kelsey! Is this a joke?” Peter frowned. “I honestly don’t know what you mean.”

“Okay,” she started, and humiliation at its purest seemed to form a force field between them. “This is weird. Try to remember the video. Try to remember telling me about the video.”

Her image on-screen, as he was supposed to have watched, came to her, hurting her head.

She had opened her mouth and pointed out her crooked incisor to the camera. See that? she had said to Peter. And this? She had stood and turned to reveal the mole on her lower back. Those are really the only differences. Were. Were the only differences.

“Video? I never said anything about—Oh. I told Michelle the video was bad on our Skype call. That’s the only time I said anything about a video.”

“I thought you understood. I—” Kelsey swallowed.

Peter’s face got gentler, trying to understand. He put his hands on her arms. “You keep saying that. I have no idea what you’re talking about. This is insane. Where is Michelle?” His eyes moved briefly around them, as if she were there, somewhere in the house.

Kelsey’s breaths were coming slow and frayed. She was paralyzed.

She had already done this. She had already broken down as far as she could go. She couldn’t go back now, right here, in a sea of balloons, people laughing and talking outside.

“Say something!” he burst out. “Please tell me what you’re doing!” The beret was crumpled in his fist.

Slowly, the two of them stood.

She couldn’t speak. It took everything Kelsey had to will herself to the mantel, where a folded piece of paper sat, as it had remained for eight months. She handed it to Peter and waited, her eyes down, just feet from where she stood that day in October.

It was a program from Michelle’s funeral. Kelsey had memorized and recited the passage written inside, from the Book of 1 Corinthians.

She remembered: I tell you this, brothers: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

She tried to push away the sound of her own voice saying those mechanical words, but her brain wouldn’t let her forget that cold day. Now of all times, as if it was taking her there to punish her.

Peter read the program, turned it over, and read it again, the letter she should have sent from the beginning.

“She died?” His voice was surprisingly light, with the accidental innocence of a kid. “She’s dead?”

Kelsey tried to choke out a response, but her brain was too busy.

But someone will ask, her voice echoing in the microphone, absorbed by somber faces, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

Her mother entered the room, stepping over balloons. “Kelsey, what is going on?”

But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.

“Shut up!” she said aloud, and her mother looked at her like she was a wild animal. “I’m so stupid,” she muttered. A thin layer of cool sweat coated her skin. “I thought you knew. I thought you had forgiven me.”

She could see the muscles of Peter’s jaw working. “Forgiven you? How am I supposed to forgive you?”

Kelsey’s mother took her shoulders gently, turning Kelsey to face her. “Kels, look at me. What happened?”

But Kelsey couldn’t stop looking at Peter. She wished he would look at her for just a second, a millisecond, so he could remember who she was, really. His best friend. His love.

Peter’s voice bit into the room.

“I can’t believe you did this to me.” Peter paused to laugh, but there was nothing good in the sound. Nothing mirthful. “What a—what a strange thing.”

Her mother’s grip tightened on her arm.

“Peter, please!” Kelsey called, her voice weak and strung.

When he finally met her eyes, there was nothing behind them. “I can’t deal with this.” He set the program carefully back on the mantel.

Kelsey tried to step around her mother, but she held tight to her shoulders. “How was I supposed to tell you?”

“I need to…” Peter put his hand to his forehead, trying to find an exit. “It will be best for everyone if I leave, I think.”

“Don’t leave!” Kelsey was practically screaming. Her words left her before she thought them, quick and sloppy. “It’s still me.… No matter what you called me… I’m still the person you talked to and wrote to.… I love you in every real way.… I tried to stop but I couldn’t.… I…”

Her mother put her mouth close to Kelsey’s ear. “It’s time to be quiet now. Let him be.”

The din of her own words collapsed on her. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans.… She felt a deep pain, but had no idea where it was coming from.

The funeral passage, haunting her, now engraved in Kelsey’s eyes:

Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?