Page 96 of Disturbing the Dead
I burst into tears.
Even as I do, my hands fly up, covering my face in horror at the sudden outburst.
“Well,” Nan murmurs, “I always did tell your mother that it would take a very special sort of man to capture my Mallory’s heart. I just never thought she’d need to travel a hundred and fifty years into the past to find him.”
I wipe my eyes. “It’s not like—”
“It’s not like that, yes, yes. He’s a friend, and he’s only part of the reason you were happy there. You aren’t drowning in despair because the man you love is a figment of your imagination. It’s the loss of everything. Which is true. It’s Isla Ballantyne and Hugh McCreadie and Alice and Simon and even Mrs. Wallace. It’s that world and that life. But it’s also, in part, that man.”
“I’m not drowning in despair.”
Nan rolls her eyes heavenward. “God forbid you admit it. Or admit how you feel about a man.” She meets my gaze. “A man who is very real.”
“Was very real,” I say, my voice suddenly a whisper. “A hundred and fifty years ago. What else does it say—”
“Nothing.” She flips the iPad over and holds it down. “You will not look up any of that. Promise me.”
“I—”
“I’m a dying woman, and I’m entitled to my deathbed promises. This is the first of two. You will look up nothing regarding Duncan Gray or anyone else you knew from that world.”
“What’s the second?”
“Agree to the first.”
“Fine. I’ll look up nothing. Now the second promise?”
She meets my gaze and holds it, seconds ticking past before she says, “That you’ll go back.”
THIRTY
I have spent the last hour arguing with my dying grandmother, who wants me to travel back in time after she’s gone. I shouldn’t argue. I should just say “Yes, Nan, whatever you want, Nan.” But I’d never patronize her by making a deathbed promise I can’t keep.
“Fine,” she says finally, slumping against the pillow. “Let me amend that. You will try to go back. Whether you can or can’t may not be up to you. But you will try.”
I throw up my hands. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“We’ll work on that. I had a dream last night…” She trails off. “Let me think more on it. For now, you need to promise me that you will try to go back.”
“To the nineteenth century? Where they don’t even know what botulism is? Or penicillin?”
Her lips twitch. “Is that really your biggest concern?”
“Oh, I have a lot of concerns. It’s freaking terrifying, Nan.”
“And you loved it.” She looks at me. “You found your place there. A place where you were challenged and happy, surrounded by people who made you happy, even when they had to be prodded to scrub their hands after dissecting corpses.”
I say nothing, and she lets the silence stretch.
“I’d never leave Mom and Dad,” I whisper. “Can you imagine? Mom loses you, and then I’m gone, too? Her only child?”
“They thought they lost you already, Mallory,” she says softly. “The doctors believed you’d never wake up.”
“So now we’ll tell them that I want to leave forever?”
“They love you. They love you so much. They only want what you want, what makes you happy, whatever the cost to them.” She pauses and looks at me. “May I speak to them?”
“No,” I say. “I’m back where I should be, where I want to be, and I’m staying.”
