Page 88 of These Godly Lies
The things she once loved—the slow, simple life she once craved—suddenly chafes. Time is moving differently, now. There is an hourglass in her mind, sand spilling through her fingers faster than she can catch it, reminding her that she no longer has forever.
Before, time felt like wading in cool, still waters, but now she’s being swept away by the current—forced to swim with the tide or drown fighting it.
“You seem restless,” Jiro tells her, a question disguised as an observation.
He drives her into town every other Saturday to run errands and deliver the occasional letter. He’d been kind enough to let her use his home address for corresponding with Silas and the others. There are no letters today, but the rolled paper bag from the pharmacy crinkles on her lap as her grip tightens—pills rattling as he stops at a red light.
It still feels strange, the way their relationship has shifted. He’s no longer a boy looking to her for support, but a grown man—afather—trying to give it to her. In her mind, the sand spills a little faster. “I’m…” she trails off, searching for the word to describe the anxiety pacing within the hollow walls of her chest like an animal. The kind that knows when something is coming because instinct tells them to be afraid but not what to do. “Adjusting.”
Jiro glances from her, to the bag on her lap, and back to the road as the light turns green. He releases the brake and steps on the gas. “I didn’t think there would be much to adjust to,” he admits, more curious than unkind. “The life you’re living isn’t all that different from the one we lived together, is it?”
She hesitates, but the silence that falls between them is patient enough to coax an honest answer. Looking out the window, she admires the way ordinary people walk along the sidewalks, unburdened by the weight of knowing how short their lives really are. “It’s been seven hundred and ninety one years since I’ve been mortal,” she says, the words leaving her like a confession. “I’ve lived more lifetimes than any one person should. I should feel satisfied—at peace—with however much time I have left.”
She looks to him, her brow furrowed. “So why doesn’t it feel like enough?”
Jiro is quiet, glancing between her and the road as he pulls over and parks the car. The sound of the engine fills the silence until he releases a heavy sigh and shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
There’s an edge of regret in his stare that tells her he wishes he did. Anna closes her eyes, gathers her resolve, and forces herself to smile. “I don’t think I expected you to. I just—sometimes feelings are easier to navigate when they’re put into words.” She shrugs, dropping her gaze. “Maybe I’ve been immune to death for so long, I’ve forgotten how vulnerable it feels to be powerless against it.”
“You still have a long life ahead of you, Anna.”
“Maybe,” she says, her expression softening. “Maybe not. That’s always been part of it, after all. The not knowing.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.” Jiro’s fingers drum against the leather of the steering wheel. “Those pills… they’re for Khiran, aren’t they?”
Her chest tightens, heart squeezing painfully. Aside from her prescription of birth control, everything in the bag is over the counter pain medication.
“It’s the cold,” she murmurs. “The weather has been hard on him.”
It’s an understatement. Khiran moves around the house with a stiffness, his thin body shivering and his joints aching. She knows he’s been struggling to sleep—can feel the way he turns in the night as if searching for a reprieve. Some mornings, he doesn’t get out of bed until the sun sits high in the sky. Some days, he hardly leaves the bed at all. He’ll lay, burrowed in their blankets, and drift between sleep and a level of glazed detachment that scares her.
Her heart gives a hollow ache, the paper bag crinkling in her hands. “I’ve been giving him what I can from the garden, but most days it doesn’t seem to be enough.”
She hates seeing him in pain. Hates that there’s so little she can do to ease it.
Jiro frowns, rotating the wheel and taking a right turn onto the freeway on-ramp. “Ami mentioned he’s been hurting.”
The family of three drive up to the cottage every few weeks tovisit. Sometimes they would stay the entire day, and Jiro and his wife Jenny would help her in the garden (Anna has learned that it is her touch that was responsible for it thriving while she was gone). Other times they stay only long enough to share a meal and a bit of conversation. Ami, their five year old, had taken an immediate liking to Khiran.
Wherever he went, she followed as faithful as a shadow.
Khiran had found it uncomfortable at first. He admitted, later and only to her, that he feels woefully unprepared on how to interact with someone so small. His only experience with someone her size had been Malik—a boy in mind only. The roles he took in the world’s affairs had rarely merged with family life. Even when they did, it was hardly anything more than passing.
Jiro, absolutely delighted by his obvious discomfort, teases him mercilessly, but there’s a warmth in his eyes when he watches them. Anna understands why. Ami, with her countless questions and insatiable curiosity, softens Khiran’s edges in ways only Anna had once thought herself to be capable.
In the span of a few months, he seems just as fond of her as the child is of him. Anna’s certain he wouldn’t have burdened the girl with his discomfort, but children often understand more than they’re given credit for. It is no surprise that she would have noticed the change in him, no matter how valiantly he tried to hide it.
Anna swallows the emotion lumping in her throat. “She’s a smart girl.”
The acknowledgement sits between them, loud in the silence. Jiro doesn’t say anything else, but as he pulls back onto the road he holds out his hand between them in offering. Anna squeezes it, lets him tether her the way she once tethered him, the entire drive back.
“We should plan a trip.” The words leave her, more inspiration than thought. It’s been four days since her trip to the pharmacy.Outside her window, frost glitters like a thin sheet of snow in the gray early morning light. Her mug warms her hands as they sit together on the couch. The smell of coffee reminding her of fresh figs drizzled with honey and the Bazaar she only ever saw a corner of.
Khiran’s gaze slides to her, her thickest quilt wrapped around his shoulders. “A trip?”
“Yes.” She shrugs. “We aren’t running anymore. What’s stopping us?”
His stare is searching. “You would leave The Tree?”
