Page 106 of Disturbing the Dead
“No? Then it won’t hurt to try.”
When panic washes over me, it’s Dad who pulls me into a hug.
“You’ve got this, sweetheart,” he says. “We’ll be fine.”
I open my mouth to protest. But he’s right. They will be fine without me. They raised me and launched me into the world a decade ago. We might live less than an hour’s drive apart, but that doesn’t mean I see them every day or even every week. As close as we are, most of that closeness these days is in our hearts and thoughts. There are phone calls and texts, but I live my life and they live theirs, and I’m not a vital part of theirs the way I was when we all lived under the same roof.
They have each other, and they will be fine.
Are they right then? That it’s time for me to chase my own dreams? I feel as if I’ve been doing that ever since I left home, but I hadn’t been chasing dreams. I’d been pursuing goals.
What do I want?
Everything. I want that damned magical door so I can come and go as I please. To live in 1869 Victorian Scotland and still be able to visit my parents and, if it doesn’t work out there, to come home again.
I want the safety net, and that’s not an option.
So do I stay where it’s safe? Or do I jump anyway, knowing I leave behind part of myself?
“You want this,” Mom says, taking my face between her hands and meeting my eyes. “Don’t you dare pretend otherwise. You want this, and we want you to have it.”
I throw myself into her arms. They both hug me, and we stay there, and it is like being back at Nan’s bedside. If I cross over—now or some other time—I might never see them again, and there is so much I want them to know.
I tell them how much I love them and how much this is going to hurt. They tell me how proud they are of me, how glad they are that I found my place in the world, how much they will miss me and look forward to the updates.
Mom also, being my mother, hits the practical notes. They presume I’ll lapse into another coma, but they’ll be sure I’m cared for, because who knows what would happen if the plug was pulled, though she doesn’t say that, of course. They’ll look after telling my department and friends what happened—well, that I lapsed back into a coma, not the truth.
Then Mom takes me by the shoulders and says, “Go,” and gives me the softest push. I feel her hands on my shoulders and Dad’s hand locked in mine and then I let go. I walk toward that bed with my gaze fixed on Catriona.
No, with my gaze fixed on me. I am lying in that bed. I don’t know where Catriona has gone, but she’s not there. That’s me. I step up to the bedside, reach forward to touch my cheek, lying in that bed and—
And I gasp, disoriented and flailing, as if I’ve woken in a strange place.
As if I’ve fallen through time.
THIRTY-THREE
I jerk upright, gaze flying to where my parents had been standing moments ago. There’s no one there. Just a dimly lit room… and the patter of snow against the window glass.
I follow the sound to see the snow, and to feel the chill of November and the dry heat of coal, the smell of it acrid and familiar.
I lift my hands. They’re smoother, younger, and yet as familiar as my own. Because they are my own. My own in this world.
The room is silent, and that stops me dead. I’d seen Gray by my bed. Was I imagining that? I turn slowly and inhale sharply as I see him on his feet and staring at me, his expression so guarded that something in me crumples.
Yes, he’d been by my bedside, but he was just watching over a patient, and if some romantic corner of my soul hoped otherwise, here’s the truth of it, in his expression, which is hardly any expression at all.
“Dun—” I swallow. “Dr. Gray.”
If there was any light in his eyes, it fades now as his shoulders slump.
“Catriona,” he says.
“What?” I stare at him, blinking. Then comprehension hits. “No, it’s me. Mallory.”
I try for a smile, but it falters as I realize the enormity of what I’ve done. I once took weeks to decide between two condos, knowing once I made the choice, it would be difficult to reverse. Now I’ve made a decision that is almost certainly irreversible, one that affects my entire life, and I just… did it. Part of me had been so certain it wouldn’t work that the choice seemed more symbolic than real.
The voice in my head isn’t screaming that I left my real life behind. It’s screaming that I took an unbelievable leap of faith in presuming I had a life here. Presuming my home and my job were more than temporary arrangements for a stranded traveler.
